Posted on 05/29/2013 6:20:53 AM PDT by Borges
Stravinsky's work caused a scandal in 1913 but has since been recognized as one of the 20th century's most important pieces.
The audience, packed into the newly-opened Théâtre des Champs-Élysées to the point of standing room only, had neither seen nor heard anything like it.
As the first few bars of the orchestral work The Rite of Spring – Le Sacre du Printemps – by the young, little-known Russian composer Igor Stravinsky sounded, there was a disturbance in the audience. It was, according to some of those present – who included Marcel Proust, Pablo Picasso, Gertrude Stein, Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy – the sound of derisive laughter.
By the time the curtain rose to reveal ballet dancers stomping the stage, the protests had reached a crescendo. The orchestra and dancers, choreographed by the legendary Vaslav Nijinsky, continued but it was impossible to hear the music above what Stravinsky described as a "terrific uproar".
As a riot ensured, two factions in the audience attacked each other, then the orchestra, which kept playing under a hail of vegetables and other objects. Forty people were forcibly ejected.
The reviews were merciless. "The work of a madman … sheer cacophony," wrote the composer Puccini. "A laborious and puerile barbarity," added Le Figaro's critic, Henri Quittard.
It was 29 May 1913. Classical music would never be the same again.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
By that, you mean John Williams and his imitators.
Sweeping Romantic film scores go back to the 1930s.
I’ve heard THE RITE OF SPRING. I would rather not hear it again.
I will take Vivaldi’s THE FOUR SEASONS any day.
True. But by the 1960s, movies were certainly moving away from that. Williams certainly revived and then dominated the Romantic scores.
Apples and Oranges?
SREECHING vs SMOOTH.
That is why I never listen to modern ROCK music. It has none of the mellow sounds of the 1950s and early 1960s.
LONG LIVE DOO WOP !!!!!
Do you dislike Beethoven? He wrote a lot of stuff that still sounds very discordant.
LOL.
Indeed.
I remember being a sixth grader raised on Classical Music, and attempting to play “Moonlight Sonata”. I was appalled by a chord that had a half step played together. I thought it was a misprint in the sheet music, but my teacher assured me that Beethoven wrote it that way!
Watch what his incredible imagination put together in "Fantasia".
I have his nine symphonies and can listen to them all day long.
Same for Mozart
Wagner
Vivaldi
Rossini
Verdi
And many, many others.
***Watch what his incredible imagination put together in “Fantasia”. ***
I saw Fantasia in 1971. I’ll never forget the reaction of a family behind me.
Half way through the movie the woman said...”This is TERRIBLE! I hope they at least show a cartoon!” A little later I noticed they had walked out.
Ever hear the Grosse Fugue? It’s as discordant as any contemporary music.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s0Mp7LFI-k
“understand that the English word, “green” comes from the French word, “grey,” (”gris,” which is pronounced, “gree”)”
I’m pretty sure it comes from the Germanic “grun”/”groen”.
Fantasia was a great disappointment to the movie goers. There were too many expressions of difficult-to-absorb thinking. Not forewarned, movie goers had expected another Disney “classic.”
Maybe that is why it is gross.;-)
Years ago, on a Classical music radio station, they played some modern symphony that was so bad it mad Rite of Spring sound good! It was torture to listen to it. Kind of like something by THE BLACK ANGELS would do only worse.
I read several years later that some symphony members were trying to sue the company for disability because the sudden change in musical notes caused them “irreparable harm” and stress.
LOL! Oh dear. I wonder if she made it through "The Sorcerer's Apprentice"...
Grosse means Grand :)
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