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blackswaneuroparedux · 10 months
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There is no beauty in Music itself, the beauty is within the listener.
- Igor Stravinsky
“The idea of The Rite of Spring came to me while I was still composing Firebird,” Igor Stravinsky recalled, 45 years after the ballet’s first performance in 1913, in his book Conversations. “I had dreamed of a scene of pagan ritual in which a chosen sacrificial virgin danced herself to death.” If Stravinsky is to be believed, this dream marked the beginning of a process that culminated in the premiere of one of the 20th century’s most important musical works.
Stravinsky’s music was meant to capture the spirit of the scenario, which he had outlined with the help of painter and ethnographer Nikolai Roerich and dancer and choreographer Mikhail Fokine during the spring and summer of 1910. Roerich had filled Stravinsky’s head with tales about all sorts of rituals from ancient Russia – divinations, sacrifices, dances, and so on – involving a variety of characters. The ballet that resulted revolves around the return of spring and the renewal of the earth through the sacrifice of a virgin. In his handwritten version of the story, Stravinsky described The Rite as “a musical choreographic work. It represents pagan Russia and is unified by a single idea: the mystery and the great surge of the creative power of spring….”
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Stravinsky completed the score on 29 March 1913, and exactly two months later, the ballet premiered in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where it caused the famous scandal that ushered in modern music. Nijinsky’s choreography and the wild, unchecked power of Stravinsky’s score were something wholly new. Stravinsky wrote for one of his largest orchestras ever in The Rite of Spring, and he used it with an assurance and confidence one would hardly expect from a composer just out of his twenties and with only two big successes - The Firebird and Petrushka - behind him.
But those two scores, for all of their individuality and accomplishment, did not seem like they were leading to The Rite of Spring. What Stravinsky did was totally unexpected.
The stage action during the ballet’s second half, leading up to the sacrifice, was enough to capture the attention of even that raucous audience at the first performance. Finally quiet, they could hear Stravinsky’s score and watch as Maria Piltz, the dancer who played the sacrificial victim, stood motionless as the ritual unfolded around her, gradually coming to life to perform her dance, with its angular contortions and tortured motions.
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What actually happened on that scandalous night will always be a mystery to some degree, because the reports contradict each other. Was it the choreography that annoyed people, or the music? Were the police really called? Was it true that missiles were thrown, and challenges to a duel offered? Were the creators booed at the end, or cheered?
The dancer Dame Marie Rambert remembered that right at the beginning ‘a shout went up in the gallery: “Un docteur!" (Call a doctor!). Somebody else shouted louder, “Un dentiste!" (a dentist!)’. The aristocrat Harry Kessler said that people started to whisper and joke almost immediately. Stravinsky himself was so angry that he stormed out and went backstage to help the dancers keep time.
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What is certain is that the audience was shocked - and with good reason. Stravinsky’s score for The Rite of Spring contradicted every rule about what music should be. The sounds are often deliberately harsh, right from opening Lithuanian folk melody, which is played by the bassoon in its highest, most uncomfortable range. The music was cacophonously loud, assaulting the ears with thunderous percussion and shrieking brass. Rhythmically it was complex in a completely unprecedented way. In the ‘Ritual of the Rival Tribes’ the music unfolds in two speeds at once, in a ratio of 3:2. And it makes lavish use of dissonance, i.e. combinations of notes which don’t make normal harmonic sense. ‘The music always goes to the note next to the one you expect,’ wrote one exasperated critic.
Then there was the dance, choreographed by Nijinsky. According to some observers this was what really caused the scandal at the first night. When the curtain rose the audience saw a row of ‘knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down’ as Stravinsky called them, who seemed to jerk rather than dance. Classical dance aspired upwards, in defiance of gravity, whereas Nijinsky’s dancers seemed pulled down to the earth. Their strange, stamping movements and awkward poses defied every canon of gracefulness.
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Both the music and the dance of The Rite of Spring seemed to deny the possibility of human feelings, which for most people is what gives art its meaning. As Stravinsky put it, ‘there are simply no regions for soul-searching in The Rite of Spring’. This is what separates it so decisively from Stravinsky’s hit of 1911, Petrushka. There we’re immersed in a human world, which exudes the very specific cultural ambience of Russia. It’s true that the main characters are puppets, rather than rounded human beings. But they have characters, even if they’re somewhat rudimentary, and at the end there’s even a suggestion that Petrushka might have a soul.
* Pina Bausch's interpretation of Stravinksy's Rite. A masterpiece of modern dance.
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Lee Friedlander – Thelonius Monk
1957
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sunsetretro1041 · 2 months
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Resharing this piece of fanart for like the 10th time on this site.
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shihlun · 4 months
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Toshi Ichiyanagi
- Music for "Confessions Among Actresses"
1971
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zauddu · 9 months
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King Krule
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anamon-book · 8 months
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灰野敬二 わたしだけ? P.S.F. Records (PSFD-38)
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mikrokosmos · 11 months
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Sergei Prokofiev
(27 April 1891 - 5 March 1953)
Happy Birthday, Sergei!
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gayasshedgebitch · 2 months
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Okay, Doctor Who peeps. I have a question for you for a fic I'm writing. Mostly because I don't listen to a lot of current music and I *certainly* don't know what teenagers in the UK might be listening to so maybe you can help me out?
What is a band (that would reasonably still be touring as it needs to happen in real time for plot reasons) that both Rose Noble and Missy would enjoy? Bonus points if you think it's something Donna would also normally listen to with her.
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The formalization that I attempted in trying to reconstruct part of the musical edifice ex nihilo has not used, for want ol time or of capacity, the most advanced aspects of philosophical and scientific thought. But the escalade is started and others will certainly enlarge and extend the new thesis. This book is addressed to a hybrid public, but interdisciplinary hybridiza¬ tion frequently produces superb specimens. 1971
Formalized Music Thought And Mathematics In Composition : Iannis Xenakis : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
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sjwallin · 8 months
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The Official Release of SHARDS
SHARDS is officially available for listening today! Go check out where to stream or buy it, as well as liner notes and artist info, here! Also… enjoy photos from some of the recording sessions purchase the score collection as a PDF or hardcover book Enjoy! 💕
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spreadtunes22 · 1 year
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Prophetic to many acts.
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faredollasign · 1 day
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I do be wishing that modern music had soul in it like it used to you know? Nowadays music be so commercial and there just for the money, the attention and what not when in fact music back then was so thought of, you could feel the touch through the music you're receiving whether it's through your speakers or earphones/headphones. I just wish I'll be able to deliver the things we lack in modern music, I wish I'll be able to put my soul through it and hug every listener through their ear piece.
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hellocanticle · 4 months
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Not Just Another Black Composer Compilation: Kellen Gray Revives Neglected American Masterpieces
LINN CKD 731 For the humble listener, a musician’s technical and interpretive performance skills are one of the most compelling reasons to buy a concert ticket or a recording of said musician. But your humble reviewer has another, perhaps equally important reason for investing time and money in the work of a musician. And that skill is what I like to call “musical radar”. It is the (sometimes…
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I'm curious
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shihlun · 9 months
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schibborasso · 2 months
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the forgotten genius of modern music: Арсений Михайлович Авраамов
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