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Le Sacre du Printemps - the most unlikeliest of riots.
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Prose #OTD 111 yeas ago, arguably the greatest musical scandal and riot took place.
Unlike shock rocker Alice Cooper’s 1980 cancellation in Toronto, this performance played till the end
(despite the orchestra drowned out by rioters).
Introducing the OG shocker Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps
https://youtu.be/5UJOaGIhG7A?si=QuChGREBvphoBnDW
The ballet, performed by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes and was equally scandalously choreographed by Vaslav Nijinsky.
Premiering at the Theatre du Champs-Élysées in Paris on 29 May 1913 as mentioned earlier, it caused a riot. Not by the common folk (as sometimes erroneously claimed) but by the “toffs”. People from lower classes were simply too poor to be able to afford tickets.
What caused these aristocrats, wealthy and well cultured balletomanes to riot?
It started, as the score did, with a bassoon. Not just a bassoon. With a bassoon solo in an unusually high register.
This was done by Stravinsky to imitate the sound of a reed-pipe, used by shepherds, to the tune of the Lithuanian folk song “Tu, manu seserėlė” albeit with different flourishes and accents.
Which leads to the perfect segue into one of my favourite composer/author quotes.
Stravinsky’s “A good composer does not imitate; he steals” compared with T.S. Eliot’s “Bad poets imitate, good poets steal.”
Which also links to my favourite Latin saying “nani gigantum humeris insidentes”.
Issac Newton’ letter better known “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Sorry, tangent! But then I am #ActuallyAutistic
Eliot was good friends with Stravinsky and two thought alike especially regarding “stealing” and building upon others work.
For example in Eliot’s poem “The Hollow Men” the 2nd line ‘We are the stuffed men’ comes directly from Valerie Eliot, the marionette from Stravinsky’s 1911 “Petrouchka”.
Furthermore, and continuing with the theme, and in the knowledge that my phone is dying and I’m straying for OG topic…
Stravinsky’s score contained many novel features for its time, including experiments in tonality, metre, rhythm, stress and dissonance.
It was these features Eliot ‘stole’ to implement in “The Waste Land”.
Will have to continue at a later date, my phone and I need to recover our spoons.
