I haven’t been blogging much lately and that’s a shame. With Memorial day today, I thought I’d write about something that is very close to me. One of my absolute favorite pieces of music, La Sacre Du Printemps, or The Rite of Spring.
Igor Stravinsky wrote this ballet to be the soundtrack to a sacred pagen ritual in which a young girl dances herself to death. The piece is filled with intense rhythms and melodies. My favorite passage occurs about 4 minutes in. A driving, repeated rhythmic chord that can’t be explained in standard musical notation. An octatonic scale, of sorts. Whole and half steps stacked on top of each other pounded on the strings with an intoxicating rhythm. It is the most beautiful type of dissonance.
||: Bum, bum, bum, BUM, BUM bum, BUM, bum, bum, BUM, BUM, BUM, BUM, bum, bum, bum :||
Igor can explain it better than me, in his words …
“… there arose a picture of a sacred pagan ritual: the wise elders are seated in a circle and are observing the dance before death of the girl whom they are offering as a sacrifice to the god of Spring in order to gain his benevolence. This became the subject of The Rite of Spring.”
The premiere was in 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris with original choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky. The Parisian audience was not used to such primitive rhythms and melodies. From the very beginning bassoon melody, there was loud talking, arguing and booing. Throughout the entire piece people were throwing chairs and fighting in the aisles. They attempted to regain orderin the house by flashing lights. The police came at intermission.
By then, it was all over. This was the first mosh pit. This was punk ballet. Paris in 1913 couldn’t handle it. Amplified music and the electric guitar was still a dream. It was disruptive to conventional thinking. It was Beethoven breaking the form, Charlie Parker running laps on the alto, Chuck Berry on Johnny B. Goode, Miles Davis electrifying the trumpet, Jimi Hendrix’s Star Spangled Banner. The Rite of Spring changed how people write and listen to music. Conventional form had been broken before, but never this violently. Never with so much passion and controversy. It’s hard to write music for strings and winds that is this intense. Igor hit it out of the park.
Personally, I discovered this piece of music in the winter and spring of 2003. I was a senior at the UW finishing up my music and political science degree. At the time I was taking music history classes, atonal music theory and international relations classes. I found a copy of this on vinyl and started listening to it. A lot. That time in 2003 was depressing. I was quite upset about the unnecessary drive to war against Iraq. Listening to music was the only way to make sense of the world. My Music studies were lining up in my mind with my political science classes. The tension that Stravinsky (and others) created in the early 20th century felt like an appropriate soundtrack for the bullshit that was arising in our political world.
In case you were curious, there is a wikipedia page dedicated to classical music riots. Think about that next time you attend the symphony.