Instead of simplistic, black-and-white, romantic notions of war draped in patriotic glory, the listener encounters a more difficult and nuanced 20th-century musical landscape of existential questions, gruesome descriptions, defiant submissions and cold dissonance.
Brian Horay, a classical music critic for The Huffington Post, questioned Kalmar's claim that his selections should not be interpreted as political, writing that listeners "[encounter] a more difficult and nuanced 20th-century musical landscape of existential questions, gruesome descriptions, defiant submissions and cold dissonance".
Yet he was already subverting the genre of the harem painting: the master of the house, far from being the lascivious cruel Turk of tradition, has a young fresh face, full of wonder; his new acquisition has something of a defiant stance, and the description places the painting firmly in the past, in Mamluk times.
Given the negotiators' agreement not to speak to reporters, it is impossible to know how much those descriptions of a defiant Mr. Arafat are for home consumption or how much they reflect a true picture.
Despite its clunkily repeated preposition, the latter job description spells out a defiant faith in practice as opposed to theory.
Andrew Litten's amusing small oil, "Flasher," in which a figure of indefinite sex makes a defiant gesture of self-exposure, straddles a middle ground between description and abstraction.
Additionally the Diagnostic Checklist for Oppositional Defiant or Conduct disorders (DCL-SSV) was used to have a dimensional description of ODD-symptoms in both the ASD and the ADHD group.
Would one call Mr. Hussein defiant, spirited, forlorn, dejected, animated, or loyal based on these proceedings, and how would each of these descriptions affect how Mr. Hussein is perceived to different audiences?
Hope defiant in our hearts.
