[Borges]

Classical Ping

[Maceman]

I’m really not much of a fan of 20th century “classical” music.

But I LOVE the Rite of Spring. Truly a work of incredibly inspired genius.

My favorite recording of it is the one by Pierre Boulez and the Cleveland Symphony Orchestra.

[demshateGod]

Rite of Spring is fine, but I don’t think there’s been much since 1913 to get excited about. The pieces written now are movie scores which are typically modeled after 19th century Romanticism, if I’m not mistaken.

[PowderMonkey]

"The work of a madman...sheer cacophony"


"...but great mosh, man!"

[Moose4]

“Is not riot, da? Is MOSH PIT!”

}:-)4

[dangus]

Actually, “cacophany” is accurate, yet fascinating. The intro invokes nothing more than the orchestra warming up before a play. Stravinsky uses that sense of anticipation and emergence as an auditory metaphor for the dawn.

[dangus]

It’s so easy for modernists to sneer at the notion of being angered by truly brilliant music. I’m more impressed if they can appreciate why music such as this was so dangerous and outrageous; if they can’t, they can neither appreciate why this music is so brilliant.

For centuries, classical music was the domain of the truly civilized, the cultivated. Beauty meant engineering, design, perfection, tradition. Before quantum mechanics and chaos theory, science was set about reducing the secrets of the universe to clock-like predictability. Although this fact has been forgotten, and nature itself emasculated, nature always strives to kill you, as anyone who has actually dwelt in nature, as opposed to merely looking at pictures of polar bears, would know.

Stravinsky found the beauty in the wild, in the creative destruction, in the unplanned, in the chaotic. In doing so, classical music would never be the same. And those who loved what it had been were rightfully alarmed.

The Western church adorned Easter with gold; the Eastern church to which Stravinsky belonged adorned it with live trees. To understand how enormous this social gulf was, understand that the English word, “green” comes from the French word, “grey,” (”gris,” which is pronounced, “gree”) and signifies not life, but death. Green meant the reclamation by the natural (un-Christianized) world through death; but to the East it mean the return to God.

[Ruy Dias de Bivar]

I’ve heard THE RITE OF SPRING. I would rather not hear it again.

I will take Vivaldi’s THE FOUR SEASONS any day.

[Mase]

Thankfully, Stravinsky was able to escape the theater, and the mob, by climbing out a window (in the bathroom iirc). That’s one account of the evening I’ve read.

[COBOL2Java]

Walt Disney listened to "The Rite of Spring", and in his mind's eye, saw the creation of the earth, the beginnings of life, and the birth and death of the dinosaurs.

Watch what his incredible imagination put together in "Fantasia".

[mrs. a]

I don’t know if this is a true story, but I recall hearing that there was quite a to-do when Rossini introduced this piece - the musicians thought it was sacrilege to tap with their bows and threatened to walk out on him...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKUJvGBtAkM

[Billthedrill]

I can't see striking another person for it, but I didn't get it first either. Love it now. Shelling the orchestra with fruit, however, that strikes me as a little cold, but I have heard orchestras that deserved it. Shelling conductors with fruit - I wouldn't say that more than 50% of them deserve it, some on general principle.