Весна священная for punk rockers…

…and for people who aren’t used to this 78°F weather in New York City we’ve just experienced. If you are a classical music buff, please don’t read this, as I will inevitably trivialize this piece of music for you. I can appreciate the Rite of Spring without being able to place it in context between Baroque and Serialism, and I’m hoping that others can too, without too many footnotes explaining its exact location in the Western Canon of Music.

I think the real importance of The Rite of Spring lies in the fact that punk rock can trace its origins back to the premier on May 29^th, 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. The movements of the ballet dancers were deliberately awkward, clumsy, and jarring (introducing early pogoing and thrashing), the music uses dissonance and rhythm as principle themes, and the violence of the music literally sparked a riot that evening inside the theater.¹ Less than eleven months later World War I broke out.

Even now, my colleague Tom, who escaped marshal law in Poland, calls Stravinsky ‘a bloody Russian’ and can’t tolerate the music. I’m not sure music really expresses ‘a national character’ or if certain countries had strong orchestral traditions allowing music to be conceived and performed, in spite of the presence of standing armies and ambitious aristocratic rulers. Perhaps the music is more of an expression of the underlying tensions and barely contained aggressions fo that period? The Third Reich’s relationship to Wagner during World War II is another matter; I encourage someone more knowledgeable than myself to explain that one to us.

Find Poland on the 1914 map of Europe.

The Rite of Spring with the accompanying ballet performance depicts “a prehistoric ritual in which a young woman is chosen by her tribe to dance herself to death in propitiation of the gods of spring.”² I’m not sure I would have inferred that virgin was being sacrificed without reading all of the titles of the various scenes:

Part I: Adoration of the Earth
Introduction
The Augurs of Spring (Dances of the Young Girls)
Ritual of Abduction
Spring Rounds (Round Dance)
Ritual of the Rival Tribes
Procession of the Sage
The Sage (Adoration of the Earth)
Dance of the Earth

Part II: The Sacrifice
Introduction
Mystic Circles of the Young Girls
The Glorification of the Chosen One
Evocation of the Ancestors
Ritual Action of the Ancestors
Sacrificial Dance (the Chosen One;L’Elue)

Without irony, I listened to a live performance of it by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra with Marin Alsop played over WNYC’s frequency last Saturday in my living room with the lights turned off, before going out for a night of dancing. The DJ at the party turned out to be rather underwhelming in comparison. I didn’t see any virgins who looked like they were going to dance themselves to death either.

What I do hear in the Rite of Spring is the polyphonic dissonance and the use of accelerating rhythms to stir up an increasing sense of unease. There are fragments of melodies that begin with woodwinds and end with brass, an ominous pulsating bass, punctuations by an unrecognizable instrument (turns out to be the bassoon playing an octave higher than its normal range), ostinatos played deliberately out of tune, abrupt switches, and an indeterminate ending. For me, it’s so disturbingly powerful, expressive, violent and aggressive that it makes punk rock sound like mere posturing.

1.) NPR: Igor Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” (there’s a good interview if you hit the audio button at the end)

2.) The John F. Kennedy Center: About the Composition