Post subject: ADP #11: The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky
ADP #11: The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky
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It's 1913 premier in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées caused a near riot. The music was something violent and unaccustomed to for the commoner, but the ballet was even more disturbing - the dancing of the virgin of spring to death in pagan ritual. The origins of this concept Stravinsky claims were from a dream/vision, but historians believe it comes from Sergey Gorodetsky's collection of poems called Yar.
The riot itself I learned likely wasn't because of how violent the ballet and music was, rather because people thought it sucked. This was kind of shocking to me to learn to be honest because it made more sense to me that people rioted because the music was so violent/powerful. Perhaps it was a mixture of both - there is no really knowing. This taught me something that I'd like to discuss in my questions later.
The ballet was very challenging to execute. The music very challenging to play and to listen to. There's a recorded moment where the orchestra while rehearsing busts up laughing because of its unique and unorthodox sound scapes. To which Stravinsky explodes with the seriousness of his concepts/art.
I decided on this not only because of recent talks about classical music on this site, but also because it's likely the only "experimental" music I find fantastic. Although the instrumentation is all over the place:
it purposely has instruments in the same section of the orchestra playing dissonant notes from each other, it's time signature or metre is all over the place. There's beautiful soaring melodies, dark spurring moments, and violent rhythms. I feel though in spite of all this, it is one of those works that actually pushed the boundaries and it worked. It worked VERY well.
Before this performance, Stravinsky (composer) and Nijinsky (choreographer who 10 years later was diagnosed with schizophrenia) had many popular and well received ballets. They had common themes of love or tragedy. This performance however was nothing like this - so all these rich Parisians were expecting the same old same old and they get hit with this! It caused quite the ruckus on many different levels. Nijinksky's choreography was so strange it was almost completely removed from repertoire until the Joffrey Ballet tried to reconstruct it to the original. The music itself was revised and revisited over and over again as well.
This shocking performance I think was only performed 9 times and then shelved for a time. For a time it only was performed as music and the ballet was completely abandoned. There's also a four-hand piano arrangement which he and the composer Claude Debussy played together which would have been interesting to hear.
A great number of BEA members already embrace stuff like this (the esoteric/unique/challenging), but I thought I'd pay hommage to my favorite piece that challenges the listener. I think for me why it works is because the rhythms and melodies are still interesting and intriguing. Dissonant, sure. Challenging, sure, but it still is beautiful. I suppose I also chose this because of the discussions that can come out of it.
And then another recording I find better (better mix and I like the arrangement/performance better) from Berliner Philharmoniker conducted by Herbert von Karajan: https://open.spotify.com/album/317b74rpNBO2uhaJFyMaxJ
Also "mini-doc" on the piece and its premiere worth watching if you'd like to know more:
A great number of BEA members already embrace stuff like this (the esoteric/unique/challenging), but I thought I'd pay homage to my favorite piece that challenges the listener. I think for me why it works is because the rhythms and melodies are still interesting and intriguing. Dissonant, sure. Challenging, sure, but it still is beautiful. I suppose I also chose this because of the discussions that can come out of it.
1. When, for you personally, is it that art goes to far? When is it just garbage and when is it pushing boundaries? Does it ever? Is it likely a lack of understanding that causes distaste or are there art pieces that really are just garbage no matter how you look at it?
2. What are your favorite challenging works and why are they worth getting to know? What makes them aesthetically pleasing?
3. What do you think of the Parisian debut? What do you personally think about the music/ballet?
4. Is challenging music for you the main course or is it an appetizer? In other words how often do you listen to challenging music and why?
5. This site constantly talks about music from 1950 onwards. How aware are we that classical music was alive and well in the 1960s? Why do you think this site kind of ignores that, but still represents Jazz from those time periods very well?
6. Was your first listen of this challenging or did you find it just as normal as anything else you listen to?
7. Do you hear influences from this piece or John Adams' Shaker Loops on groups that are well represented on this site like Pink Floyd and Radiohead?
8. Let's be honest, did you first hear this piece thanks to Fantasia?
Last edited by RoundTheBend on 04/30/2017 23:07; edited 2 times in total
I listened to this piece a couple weeks ago, not having heard it in years, and have listened to it a couple times a week since (I’ve been listening to the Valery Gergiev conducted recording recommended by AfterHours’ page of best recordings https://open.spotify.com/album/7aMXMUuS10G2eEpobqX3Ep). It truly is a powerful piece of music. I mentioned it over on the Greatest Works of Art of All Time thread as a possible candidate for being selected for my Top 50.
Excellent write-up, and lots to talk about from the questions. Here goes.
sethmadsen wrote:
1. When, for you personally, is it that art goes to far? When is it just garbage and when is it pushing boundaries? Does it ever? Is it likely a lack of understanding that causes distaste or are there art pieces that really are just garbage no matter how you look at it?
For me, art can never go too far in terms of its formal characteristics, but it can go too far in terms of its themes and message (but that’s a completely different story). Placing limits on art goes against the very nature of art in my opinion.
In terms of when it’s garbage versus boundary pushing, I’d say that as long as the work provides the audience with something relatable, and it is possible for the audience to eventually get from that element to an understanding of what’s at the core of the work, then the work has done its job. It doesn’t have to be an easy path, in fact it can be a very convoluted and difficult path, but as long as the audience has a relatable element from which they can eventually (perhaps with much effort) understand the themes of the work, from that point on, it’s on the audience to leap in and try to figure things out. This is an odd analogy, but think of the work of art like a hedge maze. It can have many points of entry, but at minimum, it needs at least one point of entry, and there needs to be a path from that point of entry to the centre of the maze. With some works, the path is straightforward, and there aren’t that many ways to go wrong, but then the maze isn’t all that rewarding. On other, more challenging works, it may take quite a lot of searching, looking through every nook and cranny to find the right path. If, however, there was a maze with no points of entry, or no paths that took you to the centre of the maze, you’d probably call it a garbage maze. On a related note, I think that often distaste comes from audiences not putting in the effort to try to understand the work. They encounter a work isn’t what they were expecting, or it doesn’t fit their view of what that work should be, and they label it as ugly or weird instead of trying to look beyond what their biases tell them.
sethmadsen wrote:
2. What are your favorite challenging works and why are they worth getting to know? What makes them aesthetically pleasing?
The works of Tarkovsky can be challenging, but are truly worth the effort. Nostalghia and Solaris are minor masterpieces, Zerkalo is pure cinematic poetry, Offret and Andrei Rublev are all time greats, and Stalker is possibly the best work the medium has ever produced. His films can be slow to progress, the action can be sparse, and the dialogue can be difficult, but there is such a wealth of ideas and emotion which is expressed by his narratives and visuals. This abundance of meaning is in my opinion unmatched by any other filmmaker, and his style created images of such beauty that they will stay with you forever.
One film I’d like to mention very quickly is Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. Definitely does not abide by any rules, and can be perplexing at times, but it is an amazing film.
For literature, I’d say Pynchon is definitely worth reading despite how...uh...unique his writing is. This applies to Gravity’s Rainbow in particular. It’s incredibly dense, following a seemingly endless cast of characters related to a sprawling conspiracy. It has no one central theme, but rather comments on nearly every topic you can imagine, and switches from slapstick comedy to devastating existential tragedy within the course of a sentence. It is truly an overwhelming literary assault on the mind, but it is pure magic every step of the way.
sethmadsen wrote:
3. What do you think of the Parisian debut? What do you personally think about the music/ballet?
I can’t comment on the ballet portion, but the music is, in its own way, gorgeous, and full of energy and emotion. It is at times completely unrestrained in its expression of idea and feelings. At the time, something like this may have been rather frightening, seemingly the work of an unhinged madman. As well, the pagan imagery would have been considered much more scandalous in 1913 than they would be today.
sethmadsen wrote:
4. Is challenging music for you the main course or is it an appetizer? In other words how often do you listen to challenging music and why?
I would like to think that most of the music that I choose to listen to is, if not challenging per se, at least slightly more demanding of a listener than your average fare. In terms of truly challenging works, they don’t comprise most of the music I listen to, but I wouldn’t call it an appetizer rather than the main course. It doesn’t make up a majority of the music that I listen to, but it’s not secondary to the rest of my music. I listen to it for its own sake, not as the lead up to something else.
sethmadsen wrote:
5. This site constantly talks about music from 1950 onwards. How aware are we that classical music was alive and well in the 1960s? Why do you think this site kind of ignores that, but still represents Jazz from those time periods very well?
This site tends to focus on albums, and classical music has historically been focussed on music in its written form rather than its recorded form (this makes sense, since the majority of classical music was written prior to the invention of recorded music). As such, for many pieces of classical music, there is not one album representing a definitive recording of the work, perhaps problematic for a site devoted to discussion of albums. For example, this is post is part of an Album Discussion Party, yet we are not discussing any one specific album, but rather the various recordings of a piece of music which together represent the Rite of Spring. I know that some of the more modern classical composers recorded their compositions to albums, but the fact that this is the exception rather than the rule makes it a potentially hard sell for a site which revolves around LPs. Don’t know if this is the reason, just a guess.
sethmadsen wrote:
6. Was your first listen of this challenging or did you find it just as normal as anything else you listen to?
This work is definitely more challenging than much of what I listen to, but not enough that I’d put it in a separate class as much of the other music listen to. I think that the evolution of music means that certain pieces which broke boundaries at the time are viewed as being less revolutionary in comparison to present music. Extensive use of dissonance, utilization of extremely harsh textures to represent the extremes of human experience, rapid shifts in intensity and mood, human physicality represented through driving rhythms, and violent and sexual themes are not infrequent in a lot of music nowadays. I therefore think it possibly would have challenged audiences 100 years ago more than audiences today.
sethmadsen wrote:
7. Do you hear influences from this piece or John Adams' Shaker Loops on groups that are well represented on this site like Pink Floyd and Radiohead?
Maybe it’s just me, but the first band I thought when listening to Rite of Spring was Nine Inch Nails. Layers of harshly textured instruments playing dissonant lines over driving rhythms, which suddenly recede into soft gentle pleas, only to just as suddenly explode into such bombastic noise as you’ve never heard before, evoking the violent sexual energy within humanity, ultimately resulting in total destruction and death. If that’s not a perfect description of NIN, then I don’t know what is. Haven't listened to Shaker Loops, I'll check it out.
sethmadsen wrote:
8. Let's be honest, did you first hear this piece thanks to Fantasia?
Yep, and I can’t thank Fantasia enough. Prior to the last few weeks, Fantasia was probably my only exposure to this work. Fantasia did, in my opinion, a wonderful job of making classical music something accessible. It took the power and emotion of those piece of classical music, and linked it to a medium which children (and also adults) would be able to relate to more easily, animation. This allowed children to not only enjoy classical music, but to understand the immense expressive potential it has.
Last edited by souplipton on 04/30/2017 22:01; edited 1 time in total
Love the choice for ADP! Im crazy busy right now but I will get back to you on this as soon as I can squeeze some time in _________________ Best Classical Best Films Best Paintings
Post subject: Re: ADP #11 The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky
1. When, for you personally, is it that art goes to far? [..]
Never.
2. What are your favorite challenging works and why are they worth getting to know? What makes them aesthetically pleasing?
I'm not sure what 'challenging' means. Any kid that grabs a guitar is experimenting.
3. What do you think of the Parisian debut? What do you personally think about the music/ballet?
I wasn't there. I never saw the ballet. The music is fantastic.
4. Is challenging music for you the main course or is it an appetizer? In other words how often do you listen to challenging music and why?
cf 2.
5. This site constantly talks about music from 1950 onwards. How aware are we that classical music was alive and well in the 1960s? Why do you think this site kind of ignores that, but still represents Jazz from those time periods very well?
This site references albums. There wasn't any before the XXth century.
6. Was your first listen of this challenging or did you find it just as normal as anything else you listen to?
I'm always challenged.
7. Do you hear influences from this piece or John Adams' Shaker Loops on groups that are well represented on this site like Pink Floyd and Radiohead?
Don't know about John Dams, as for Pink Floyd or Radiohead: no.
8. Let's be honest, did you first hear this piece thanks to Fantasia?
No. This is deeply-rooted into bourgeois French culture, which is part of where I'm from.
[quote="souplipton"]I listened to this piece a couple weeks ago, not having heard it in years, and have listened to it a couple times a week since (I’ve been listening to the Valery Gergiev conducted recording recommended by AfterHours’ page of best recordings https://open.spotify.com/album/7aMXMUuS10G2eEpobqX3Ep). It truly is a powerful piece of music. I mentioned it over on the Greatest Works of Art of All Time thread as a possible candidate for being selected for my Top 50.
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Cool - I'll have to check out the recording. Sometimes recordings add things that weren't there originally and it is a turn off, some are mixed better, some are really old recordings that nearly sound terrible, but actually have the most energy and proper dynamic, etc. It's really hard to find the perfect recording sometimes. I mean it's often a live recording, so doing a perfect performance in one take... well that isn't common (ok I'm rambling).
Cool -it's on my top 50 too (well I haven't organized mine just yet either though so not sure where it falls).
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Excellent write-up, and lots to talk about from the questions. Here goes.
Thanks - I had been planning on this and thought about the concepts for a bit, but then totally forgot about it and wrote it up last minute. Feel like a bad rough draft at college but got the job done... haha.
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For me, art can never go too far in terms of its formal characteristics, but it can go too far in terms of its themes and message (but that’s a completely different story). Placing limits on art goes against the very nature of art in my opinion.
I'm not saying you are wrong or even that I don't agree with you, but have you heard these adages before:
1) The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
2) The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.
Sometimes fine art is amazing because it does have limitations. For example, you'd likely not see a revered piece of art that was made with crayon, chalk, water color, oil, and then have a speaker coming out of it with a recording on loop saying this is good art over and over. haha (idk, I just made that up)... point being most famous works of art are limited to a medium - they aren't poems and movies at the same time, etc. At some point in time there's this discussion in art that for art to be good, it needs a limitation. Otherwise it is just a big mess. I'm sure there's artists out there who have challenged this, and I've seen it myself, and usually the response is, hmm... that's interesting - they broke all the "rules". Usually it isn't, wow this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Such art rarely has any type of catharsis and such art rarely taken seriously.
Having said that, let's take Jackson Pollock as an example. That was just pure creativity and at first glance you could say it had no limitation. But neither did he mix mediums or paint one side of his picture in pointillism and then the rest in a drip painting. No - if he was doing a drip painting, he only did a drip painting. Perhaps at times there's a small mismatch of both that still could be aesthetic. I'm not saying they have to be completely fitting in nice boxes (I hate genre's for this reason in music), but what I am saying is sometimes it'd be hard to take a song seriously if it had the first verse be a modern country song, then the second verse a 5 minute atonal piece, followed up by violent gangster rap. Perhaps that'd become something interesting. I mean look at Weezer's song "The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived"... it has a quaker melody, rap influence, Elvis influence, punk influence, 50s military song influence, Queen influence... I mean I might be able to go on, but it really is all over the place, but I think it's possibly one of the greatest songs they ever wrote - so yes it can be done.
Thoughts?
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In terms of when it’s garbage versus boundary pushing, I’d say that as long as the work provides the audience with something relatable, and it is possible for the audience to eventually get from that element to an understanding of what’s at the core of the work, then the work has done its job. It doesn’t have to be an easy path, in fact it can be a very convoluted and difficult path, but as long as the audience has a relatable element from which they can eventually (perhaps with much effort) understand the themes of the work, from that point on, it’s on the audience to leap in and try to figure things out. This is an odd analogy, but think of the work of art like a hedge maze. It can have many points of entry, but at minimum, it needs at least one point of entry, and there needs to be a path from that point of entry to the centre of the maze. With some works, the path is straightforward, and there aren’t that many ways to go wrong, but then the maze isn’t all that rewarding. On other, more challenging works, it may take quite a lot of searching, looking through every nook and cranny to find the right path. If, however, there was a maze with no points of entry, or no paths that took you to the centre of the maze, you’d probably call it a garbage maze. On a related note, I think that often distaste comes from audiences not putting in the effort to try to understand the work. They encounter a work isn’t what they were expecting, or it doesn’t fit their view of what that work should be, and they label it as ugly or weird instead of trying to look beyond what their biases tell them.
I like this analogy and well said.
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The works of Tarkovsky can be challenging, but are truly worth the effort. Nostalghia and Solaris are minor masterpieces, Zerkalo is pure cinematic poetry, Offret and Andrei Rublev are all time greats, and Stalker is possibly the best work the medium has ever produced. His films can be slow to progress, the action can be sparse, and the dialogue can be difficult, but there is such a wealth of ideas and emotion which is expressed by his narratives and visuals. This abundance of meaning is in my opinion unmatched by any other filmmaker, and his style created images of such beauty that they will stay with you forever.
One film I’d like to mention very quickly is Ingmar Bergman’s Persona. Definitely does not abide by any rules, and can be perplexing at times, but it is an amazing film.
For literature, I’d say Pynchon is definitely worth reading despite how...uh...unique his writing is. This applies to Gravity’s Rainbow in particular. It’s incredibly dense, following a seemingly endless cast of characters related to a sprawling conspiracy. It has no one central theme, but rather comments on nearly every topic you can imagine, and switches from slapstick comedy to devastating existential tragedy within the course of a sentence. It is truly an overwhelming literary assault on the mind, but it is pure magic every step of the way.
As I read over this - I bolded those things which probably is the motivator to
Another thought that came to mind as I read over this is that of monotony. Sometimes these challenging works are fantastic because we are inundated with same old same old - and these works are often breath of fresh are. They break the mold, and that in of itself is a reason to like it.
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I can’t comment on the ballet portion, but the music is, in its own way, gorgeous, and full of energy and emotion. It is at times completely unrestrained in its expression of idea and feelings. At the time, something like this may have been rather frightening, seemingly the work of an unhinged madman. As well, the pagan imagery would have been considered much more scandalous in 1913 than they would be today.
I think this was literally true for Nijinsky as I alluded in the OP. Sometimes the greatest artists are mad. Goethe called it his Dämon and here's what Kant had to say about the inspiration of an artist (the Genie or Genius... much different definition here than our typical "smart" meaning we have today):
Kant, Immanuel. The Critique of Judgment. 1790. Transl. James Creed Meredith.
Available online at class.uidaho.edu/mickelsen/texts/Kant%20Crit%20Judgment.txt
SS 46. Fine art is the art of genius.
Genius is the talent (natural endowment) which gives the rule to art. Since talent, as an innate productive faculty of the artist, belongs itself to nature, we may put it this way: Genius is the innate mental aptitude (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art.
Whatever may be the merits of this definition, and whether it is merely arbitrary, or whether it is adequate or not to the concept usually associated with the word genius (a point which the following sections have to clear up), it may still be shown at the outset that, according to this acceptation of the word, fine arts must necessarily be regarded as arts of genius.
For every art presupposes rules which are laid down as the foundation which first enables a product, if it is to be called one of art, to be represented as possible. The concept of fine art, however, does not permit of the judgement upon the beauty of its product being derived from any rule that has a concept for its determining ground, and that depends, consequently, on a concept of the way in which the product is possible. Consequently fine art cannot of its own self excogitate the rule according to which it is to effectuate its product. But since, for all that, a product can never be called art unless there is a preceding rule, it follows that nature in the individual (and by virtue of the harmony of his faculties) must give the rule to art, i.e., fine art is only possible as a product of genius.
From this it may be seen that genius (1) is a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given, and not an aptitude in the way of cleverness for what can be learned according to some rule; and that consequently originality must be its primary property. (2) Since there may also be original nonsense, its products must at the same time be models, i.e., be exemplary; and, consequently, though not themselves derived from imitation, they must serve that purpose for others, i.e., as a standard or rule of estimating. (3) It cannot indicate scientifically how it brings about its product, but rather gives the rule as nature. Hence, where an author owes a product to his genius, he does not himself know how the ideas for it have entered into his head, nor has he it in his power to invent the like at pleasure, or methodically, and communicate the same to others in such precepts as would put them in a position to produce similar products. (Hence, presumably, our word Genie is derived from genius, as the peculiar guardian and guiding spirit given to a man at his birth, by the inspiration of which those original ideas were obtained.) (4) Nature prescribes the rule through genius not to science but to art, and this also only in so far as it is to be fine art.
I would like to think that most of the music that I choose to listen to is, if not challenging per se, at least slightly more demanding of a listener than your average fare. In terms of truly challenging works, they don’t comprise most of the music I listen to, but I wouldn’t call it an appetizer rather than the main course. It doesn’t make up a majority of the music that I listen to, but it’s not secondary to the rest of my music. I listen to it for its own sake, not as the lead up to something else.
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This site tends to focus on albums, and classical music has historically been focussed on music in its written form rather than its recorded form (this makes sense, since the majority of classical music was written prior to the invention of recorded music). As such, for many pieces of classical music, there is not one album representing a definitive recording of the work, perhaps problematic for a site devoted to discussion of albums. For example, this is post is part of an Album Discussion Party, yet we are not discussing any one specific album, but rather the various recordings of a piece of music which together represent the Rite of Spring. I know that some of the more modern classical composers recorded their compositions to albums, but the fact that this is the exception rather than the rule makes it a potentially hard sell for a site which revolves around LPs. Don’t know if this is the reason, just a guess.
Totally fair reasoning and totally agree. I mean it was a bit unfairly questioned. And it is terribly annoying to find the original 1960 recording of Stravinsky himself conducting the Columbia Orchestra. But I wanted to point out the fact that it was recorded and did happen in 1960 is kind of the point that I think most people (including myself) kind of ignore when they review music history. That's a big deal to me. It'd be like Beethoven did a recording in "our time". Sometimes we think classical music (the writing of new material by famous composers) died in like the 1800s. Aaron Copland was also writing some of his most famous pieces into the 1940s and 1950s. That's more or less what I wanted to bring to our attention. Perhaps that'll be my next goal... idk. There are limitations to the site in this way, but what did I say about limitations? That limitation likely is what makes this site great.
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This work is definitely more challenging than much of what I listen to, but not enough that I’d put it in a separate class as much of the other music listen to. I think that the evolution of music means that certain pieces which broke boundaries at the time are viewed as being less revolutionary in comparison to present music. Extensive use of dissonance, utilization of extremely harsh textures to represent the extremes of human experience, rapid shifts in intensity and mood, human physicality represented through driving rhythms, and violent and sexual themes are not infrequent in a lot of music nowadays. I therefore think it possibly would have challenged audiences 100 years ago more than audiences today.
Yeah for sure - I was kind of asking because I find myself going through phases where I just want to listen to pop music and then phases where I just want to listen to angry music, and then classical, and then serene... so for me classical has usually been an appetizer for me. I listen to it much limited than say what most this site is made up of. And I remember AfterHours asking why maybe that is, and to be honest I do things to get a reward out of it. It isn't to say classical music isn't rewarding, but pop music is just instantaneously so. Art music often stretches you and demands more out of you. I have enough things in my life that are demanding, I often turn to music for solace, not something to test me, etc. But I do find it is like the choice to eat healthier - I often feel better when I do... hahaha. Not always - sometimes I get demotivated listening to classical music because sometimes it is demanding. Beethoven almost never is, but Mahler or this piece aren't really desert. They are like this weird vegan quinoa dish your girlfriend/wife/mom wanted to try out and while it nutritionally is way better than a steak, sometimes you just want steak.
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Maybe it’s just me, but the first band I thought when listening to Rite of Spring was Nine Inch Nails. Layers of harshly textured instruments playing dissonant lines over driving rhythms, which suddenly recede into soft gentle pleas, only to just as suddenly explode into such bombastic noise as you’ve never heard before, evoking the violent sexual energy within humanity, ultimately resulting in total destruction and death. If that’s not a perfect description of NIN, then I don’t know what is. Haven't listened to Shaker Loops, I'll check it out.
I actually see this parallel quite fitting. Shaker Loops remind me a bit of Radiohead's latest Burn the Witch single and then John Adams has some electronic music called Light Over Water which is worth checking out as well.
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Yep, and I can’t thank Fantasia enough. Prior to the last few weeks, Fantasia was probably my only exposure to this work. Fantasia did, in my opinion, a wonderful job of making classical music something accessible. It took the power and emotion of those piece of classical music, and linked it to a medium which children (and also adults) would be able to relate to more easily, animation. This allowed children to not only enjoy classical music, but to understand the immense expressive potential it has.
I have my family and Fantasia to thank for my exposure and love of classical music. My father always wanted to learn to play the violin growing up. He loved the beauty of Scheherazade and half my siblings played in orchestras, one of which played and conducted and loved it so much he got a PhD in music.
Fantasia as a kid probably played in my house once a week for about 4 years. Fantasia 2000 is ok, but not nearly as good (the art is a bit too modern/less traditional for my taste).
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Also, on a side note, isn’t this ADP #11?
Nice catch - I actually had the body say 11 and my subject say 10 and then got confused and looked at last ADP which was 9... but then looked at OP and saw we had 2 #9s (wouldn't John Lennon like that? Probably not, but referenced regardless).
Love the choice for ADP! Im crazy busy right now but I will get back to you on this as soon as I can squeeze some time in
Yeah, no rush. Am curious about your opinion of the piece/ballet and answers to questions. Seems like challenging music is often your favorite, so curious as to why (besides the obvious "it is better").
Post subject: Re: ADP #11 The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky
Norman Bates wrote:
1. When, for you personally, is it that art goes to far? [..]
Never. I actually agree with this. Thinking back on the question, I suppose I should have asked, when has art gone to far or been distasteful to you and why?
2. What are your favorite challenging works and why are they worth getting to know? What makes them aesthetically pleasing?
I'm not sure what 'challenging' means. Any kid that grabs a guitar is experimenting.
I consider challenging music music that stretches the listener and is more difficult to digest. As souplipton put it so well with his maze analogy... in which perhaps the more complex maze in the end is more rewarding... but if you can't find the entrance it is demotivating to want to give it a chance.
3. What do you think of the Parisian debut? What do you personally think about the music/ballet?
I wasn't there. I never saw the ballet. The music is fantastic. I hadn't seen the ballet until doing this in the BBC documentary above. IMO it actually isn't very good. It could have been better - but the dancing structures were extremely unique. And good point that you weren't there... it really is hard to say what happened, but it was clear from a New York Times article there was hissing and a great deal of people thinking it was terrible - which for me is interesting because I agree the music is fantastic.
[b]I also haven't dug into this yet and anyone can respond (likely will add to OP questions): I think this work was slightly detrimental to the career of Nijinsky (was fired from his position over it) and Stravinsky... Although the stain on their career was short lived, it seems in retrospect quite worth it. Anything you can think of that was similar in our day and time (a famous well received artist does something radical and is at least temporarily shunned for it?)
4. Is challenging music for you the main course or is it an appetizer? In other words how often do you listen to challenging music and why?
cf 2. cf 6.
5. This site constantly talks about music from 1950 onwards. How aware are we that classical music was alive and well in the 1960s? Why do you think this site kind of ignores that, but still represents Jazz from those time periods very well?
This site references albums. There wasn't any before the XXth century. Yup. However I have expressed interest in having it be all music, and it can be, but the fun part of the decade lists is the music history side of things... and I realize that's not the focus of the site, which may just be why it is such a strong site.
6. Was your first listen of this challenging or did you find it just as normal as anything else you listen to?
I'm always challenged.
Not sure if serious, but in English, that's a funny response . I suppose I'm asking do you think Daft Punk and this piece are equally digestible for you because your horizon of understanding of music is different than mine or do you agree this piece is harder to digest than Daft Punk?
7. Do you hear influences from this piece or John Adams' Shaker Loops on groups that are well represented on this site like Pink Floyd and Radiohead?
Don't know about John Dams, as for Pink Floyd or Radiohead: no.
For me the Radiohead influence I hear is more in the rhythms (not saying it is a direct influence, but more in a round about way... the two relate distantly). John Adams' electronic music possibly?
8. Let's be honest, did you first hear this piece thanks to Fantasia?
No. This is deeply-rooted into bourgeois French culture, which is part of where I'm from.
I'd be very interested on your take on the piece then. Any insights/opinions?
Love the choice for ADP! Im crazy busy right now but I will get back to you on this as soon as I can squeeze some time in
Yeah, no rush. Am curious about your opinion of the piece/ballet and answers to questions. Seems like challenging music is often your favorite, so curious as to why (besides the obvious "it is better").
For me, art can never go too far in terms of its formal characteristics, but it can go too far in terms of its themes and message (but that’s a completely different story). Placing limits on art goes against the very nature of art in my opinion.
I'm not saying you are wrong or even that I don't agree with you, but have you heard these adages before:
1) The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.
2) The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.
Sometimes fine art is amazing because it does have limitations. For example, you'd likely not see a revered piece of art that was made with crayon, chalk, water color, oil, and then have a speaker coming out of it with a recording on loop saying this is good art over and over. haha (idk, I just made that up)... point being most famous works of art are limited to a medium - they aren't poems and movies at the same time, etc. At some point in time there's this discussion in art that for art to be good, it needs a limitation. Otherwise it is just a big mess. I'm sure there's artists out there who have challenged this, and I've seen it myself, and usually the response is, hmm... that's interesting - they broke all the "rules". Usually it isn't, wow this is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. Such art rarely has any type of catharsis and such art rarely taken seriously.
Having said that, let's take Jackson Pollock as an example. That was just pure creativity and at first glance you could say it had no limitation. But neither did he mix mediums or paint one side of his picture in pointillism and then the rest in a drip painting. No - if he was doing a drip painting, he only did a drip painting. Perhaps at times there's a small mismatch of both that still could be aesthetic. I'm not saying they have to be completely fitting in nice boxes (I hate genre's for this reason in music), but what I am saying is sometimes it'd be hard to take a song seriously if it had the first verse be a modern country song, then the second verse a 5 minute atonal piece, followed up by violent gangster rap. Perhaps that'd become something interesting. I mean look at Weezer's song "The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived"... it has a quaker melody, rap influence, Elvis influence, punk influence, 50s military song influence, Queen influence... I mean I might be able to go on, but it really is all over the place, but I think it's possibly one of the greatest songs they ever wrote - so yes it can be done.
Thoughts?
To me, this goes into the difference between limitations and discipline. Limitations are outside influences on the work of art, whereas discipline is limits that the artist places on themselves. Limitations are bad, they prevent the artist from completr expression, whereas discipline can lead the artist the test their own abilities by placing restrictions on themselves. Limitations originate from political, religious, or societal pressure, whereas discipline originates from the artist themselves. A discipline can be as simple as using only one medium for the work, using standard instrumentation, adhering to a certain time signature, using the western 12 tone scales, etc. As long as those choices are made by the artist, it's a discipline. If it's dictated by an outside forces that the artist must use these instruments in this tuning in this tempo and this time signature, then it's a limitation. Most works adhere to many disciplines, but some do not. Avant-garde music often doesn't. Free Jazz also abandons many of these disciplines.
Working in just one medium is also a discipline that is usually followed, but is sometimes ignored. Rite of Spring was both a piece of music and a work of dance, and as well, it's presentation involved sets, so also included elements of visual arts, so its presentation involved the use of many different media. One example of an artist deciding to purposefully produce works which are not bound by only one medium is Richard Wagner, who wanted his works to exist in all media, in what he described as a Gesamtkunstwerk.
sethmadsen wrote:
souplipton wrote:
In terms of when it’s garbage versus boundary pushing, I’d say that as long as the work provides the audience with something relatable, and it is possible for the audience to eventually get from that element to an understanding of what’s at the core of the work, then the work has done its job. It doesn’t have to be an easy path, in fact it can be a very convoluted and difficult path, but as long as the audience has a relatable element from which they can eventually (perhaps with much effort) understand the themes of the work, from that point on, it’s on the audience to leap in and try to figure things out. This is an odd analogy, but think of the work of art like a hedge maze. It can have many points of entry, but at minimum, it needs at least one point of entry, and there needs to be a path from that point of entry to the centre of the maze. With some works, the path is straightforward, and there aren’t that many ways to go wrong, but then the maze isn’t all that rewarding. On other, more challenging works, it may take quite a lot of searching, looking through every nook and cranny to find the right path. If, however, there was a maze with no points of entry, or no paths that took you to the centre of the maze, you’d probably call it a garbage maze. On a related note, I think that often distaste comes from audiences not putting in the effort to try to understand the work. They encounter a work isn’t what they were expecting, or it doesn’t fit their view of what that work should be, and they label it as ugly or weird instead of trying to look beyond what their biases tell them.
I like this analogy and well said.
Thank you. I'm always worried that my attempts to explain my thoughts will make sense only to me, so I'm glad it didn't come across as nonsense.
sethmadsen wrote:
Another thought that came to mind as I read over this is that of monotony. Sometimes these challenging works are fantastic because we are inundated with same old same old - and these works are often breath of fresh are. They break the mold, and that in of itself is a reason to like it.
Monotony can be a useful tool in works of art. A great example is Chantal Akerman's “Jeane Dielman…” in which the mundane life of a single mother is show over the course of three days. The portrayal of each day takes about an hour, and there is very little variation until the end of the third variation, but each small deviation from the routine gains immense weight due to the monotony of her life, suggesting that her perfectly regulated life is falling apart due to some inner turmoil. Definitely a challenging work, and can be perceived as a very boring movie to watch, but it uses its monotonous repetitive structure to the maximum effect.
sethmadsen wrote:
Genius is the talent (natural endowment) which gives the rule to art. Since talent, as an innate productive faculty of the artist, belongs itself to nature, we may put it this way: Genius is the innate mental aptitude (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art.
Whatever may be the merits of this definition, and whether it is merely arbitrary, or whether it is adequate or not to the concept usually associated with the word genius (a point which the following sections have to clear up), it may still be shown at the outset that, according to this acceptation of the word, fine arts must necessarily be regarded as arts of genius.
For every art presupposes rules which are laid down as the foundation which first enables a product, if it is to be called one of art, to be represented as possible. The concept of fine art, however, does not permit of the judgement upon the beauty of its product being derived from any rule that has a concept for its determining ground, and that depends, consequently, on a concept of the way in which the product is possible. Consequently fine art cannot of its own self excogitate the rule according to which it is to effectuate its product. But since, for all that, a product can never be called art unless there is a preceding rule, it follows that nature in the individual (and by virtue of the harmony of his faculties) must give the rule to art, i.e., fine art is only possible as a product of genius.
From this it may be seen that genius (1) is a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given, and not an aptitude in the way of cleverness for what can be learned according to some rule; and that consequently originality must be its primary property. (2) Since there may also be original nonsense, its products must at the same time be models, i.e., be exemplary; and, consequently, though not themselves derived from imitation, they must serve that purpose for others, i.e., as a standard or rule of estimating. (3) It cannot indicate scientifically how it brings about its product, but rather gives the rule as nature. Hence, where an author owes a product to his genius, he does not himself know how the ideas for it have entered into his head, nor has he it in his power to invent the like at pleasure, or methodically, and communicate the same to others in such precepts as would put them in a position to produce similar products. (Hence, presumably, our word Genie is derived from genius, as the peculiar guardian and guiding spirit given to a man at his birth, by the inspiration of which those original ideas were obtained.) (4) Nature prescribes the rule through genius not to science but to art, and this also only in so far as it is to be fine art.
I studied some Kant in university, so I'm somewhat familiar with the density of language with which he writes, but I learned about his ethical philosophy, not this aesthetic philosophy, so this is all new to me. As I understood it, art is not something which can be learned by studying technique, but something whose core attribute is a basis in originality and creativity. As such, art is not imitative of the past. Since its basis is not from technique, its process can not be explained, and cannot be created en masse or on demand, but only under the influence of creative inspiration. Being original does not make it art though, as something original may be both original and without purpose. What differentiates it is that, although true art is not imitative of the past, it itself is imitated in the future. Overall, something is only fine art if it is created not through technique or science or imitation, but rather through an inspired original natural talent for creativity.
If my understanding is correct (and please let me know if it's not), then I believe that, to a large degree, Kant is correct. The one thing I'd say is that his definition is somewhat narrow, but would have made more sense at the time at which it was written. Contemporary works of art often utilize the recontextualization of elements of prior works of art. This can occur in the form of parody, pastiche, or other forms of reference to prior works. Picasso made a series of paintings which were based on the famous painting La Meninas, but executed in the cubist style. This work is both imitative of a prior work of art (in its content) but is simultaneously unique and original (in its style). A different example could be seen in the work of pop artists like Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Warhol created giant prints of images from advertisement, television, and newspapers, while Lichtenstein used a style and subject taken from comic books and pulp fiction. Both artists shifted the context of these images to that of the world of the fine arts. In music, contemporary compositions often includes passages which are snippets of melodies from prior compositions. Sampling is a more obvious and prevalent example of this in music. Collectively, these works can be viewed as presenting a challenge to Kant’s theory of aesthetics. One solution is to adhere to Kant’s theory with no deviation, and state that these works are not truly works of fine arts, since they are in some ways imitative. Another solution would be to use a less strict reading of Kant’s theory, and state that the method by which these works was created was original and creative, or that the purpose or message of the works was original and creative, and therefore would qualify as a work of fine arts. Another solution is to reject Kant’s theory entirely. I personally opt for the second option (the looser reading of Kant’s theory). What is your opinion?
sethmadsen wrote:
souplipton wrote:
Also, on a side note, isn’t this ADP #11?
Nice catch - I actually had the body say 11 and my subject say 10 and then got confused and looked at last ADP which was 9... but then looked at OP and saw we had 2 #9s (wouldn't John Lennon like that? Probably not, but referenced regardless).
The first ADP #9 was the one I hosted, and was confused by the numbering.
AfterHours wrote:
sethmadsen wrote:
AfterHours wrote:
@seth
Love the choice for ADP! Im crazy busy right now but I will get back to you on this as soon as I can squeeze some time in
Yeah, no rush. Am curious about your opinion of the piece/ballet and answers to questions. Seems like challenging music is often your favorite, so curious as to why (besides the obvious "it is better").
Well ... that's because, it is better, and ... my mom is better than your mom ... so there
Love the choice for ADP! Im crazy busy right now but I will get back to you on this as soon as I can squeeze some time in
Yeah, no rush. Am curious about your opinion of the piece/ballet and answers to questions. Seems like challenging music is often your favorite, so curious as to why (besides the obvious "it is better").
Well ... that's because, it is better, and ... my mom is better than your mom ... so there
My dad can beat up your dad. Except my dad's dead...
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