Heritage; Walter Piston. Part 4: Problems and Challenges of the Arts

WQED (Television station : Pittsburgh, Pa.) · 1961

Episodes 123 - 126 of Heritage feature the working philosophy of one of America's foremost contemporary composers and teachers, Walter Piston. In this episode, the problems and challenges of the arts are examined in a discussion among men representing four art forms: music, painting, poetry, and the theater. Composer Piston chats with Virgil Cantini, president of the Association of Artists of Pittsburgh; Laurence Karra, a member of the theater faculty at Carnegie Tech and a director of off-Broadway plays; and Dr. Sam Hazo, author and instructor in the English Department at Duquesne University. The four discuss art as an individual endeavor and the responsibility of the artist, the different ways to appreciate art, the different methods of communicating in the various art forms, and the degree to which a work of art comes out just as the artist intended. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche) Through "Heritage," a selected group of prominent persons individually address themselves to broad areas of subject matter in fields where they are particularly qualified to speak. Rather than being a simple series of conventional pattern, this is a "series of series," where each guest appears on several episode in several formats (i.e. straight talk, interview, talk with small group, conversation). This series totaling 131 half-hour episodes was originally recorded on various formats including film and videotape. (Description adapted from documents in the NET Microfiche)