Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) is considered one of the most influential works of the 20th Century. The ballet, originally choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky with music by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, made its groundbreaking debut in 1913 Paris. The Rite of Spring was initially considered a failure: the audience, packed into the newly-opened Théâtre des Champs-Élysées had neither seen nor heard anything like it. As the first few bars of the orchestral work by the young, little-known Russian composer Stravinsky sounded, there was discomposure 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. As a riot ensued, two factions in the audience attacked each other, but the orchestra 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. npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88490677 Modern music critic Alex Ross has described The Rite as a prophetic work, presaging the second avant-garde era in classical composition—music of the body rather than of the mind, in which melodies would follow the patterns of speech; rhythms would match the energy of dance npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9041627 This work contains many novel features for its time, including experiments in tonality, metre, rhythm, stress and dissonance. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoclassicism_%28music%29
Posted on: Tue, 15 Apr 2014 19:35:40 +0000
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