“Soundings” was a vast smorgasbord of a show, more akin to a Beaubourg extravaganza than anything normally experienced in an American museum. It had as its goal nothing less than a survey of the marriage of art and sound in this century.

The show was divided into four main categories: “Paintings, objects and books that sound or imply sound”; “Instruments as sculpture and sculpture as instruments”; “Records and tapes”; and “Sound installations/Documentation of sound projects.” The loveliest work in the first category came from the dervish days just prior to World War I, when Europe was spinning