The Rite to Riot
A Century after Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring
It’s Monday morning, and I’m lying in bed listening to Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth. And though I’m about halfway through the album, the idea that it would take “a teenage riot to get me out of bed right now” sounds about right.
For those unfamiliar with the music of Sonic Youth,it’s, well, noisy. It is loud, it is abrasive, filled with reverb and vinegar. But the strangest thing, as I’m listening to this record, I can’t help but think about how pop it sounds. It’s as if the past quarter century has normalized this record, or rather, I’ve grown accustomed to this brand of organized noises (because god knows that Sonic Youth is not a household name).
In the 25 years since this albums release, we’ve seen the evolution of genres from Minor Threat’s Hardcore to the Blood Brother’s Hardcore. From The Clash’s Punk to Green Day’s Punk. These evolutions produce something sometimes unrecognizable from the original as they get noisier and more chaotic or softer and more nuanced. At times these divergences can cause riots.
This year is the 100th anniversary of the premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps). And as the story goes, when it premiered, it caused something close to a near-riot. And I feel like I might be repeating myself, but I can’t help but think how pop it sounds to my ears.
Filled with crescendos and cacophony, this piece has been lionized by it’s reputation as a riot starter. I could very well go on to explain The Rite of Spring to the uninitiated, but it’s better to just take a listen.
As you’ll hear in the half-hour it takes to listen to the full piece, Stravinsky takes you on a roller coaster of a ride. And what’s most awesome about this ride is the singular vision. I could be wrong, or misguided, but when I hear the Rites, I hear, I think, exactly what I was supposed to hear.
This may sound like a strange way to describe a piece of transcribed music, because if it is played as it is transcribed, then, well, I heard it as intended. But that’s not what I mean. There is a metaphysical sense to this song that is in line with the transcribed music.
I can give the example, borrowed from Slavoj Zizek, that Beethoven’s 9th has this ideology behind it that gives it a slipperiness in meaning. Zizek shows us in his “Pervert’s Guide to Ideology” that the 9th has been used by the German Nazis, the Chinese Maoists, and slews of other national identities that couldn’t be more disparate. It is a battle cry and a call for peace.
What it lacks is the singularity of chaos that the Rites has. What the chaos does is makes the viewer fail to grasp onto what makes it so brilliant, while constantly proclaiming it. This effect would go on to be a mark of modernism (from Finnegans Wake to Autumn Rhythm).
Though I can neither support nor claim that Stravinsky invented modernism, the Rites is a good show of just where the world was when it premiered. But it is also important to understand the works that it presaged.
Last night I saw a concert for Stravinsky called Rite Now! at Yale’s Woolsey Hall. What the project aimed to do was celebrate the Rites 100th anniversary, in what I think was a very special way.
A group of 8 composers wrote music to be combined into a pastiche that somewhat mimicked the original tableau style of the Rites. The performance started with a procession of musicians led by bagpipes that echoed the Rites opening bassoon line.
As all the musicians finally were seated, the music flooded in and grew louder, and I noticed something very strange. Just like in the original, the instruments seemed to swarm, but instead of insects, I thought sharks. With the intensity of the moment, I couldn’t but feel like Jaws would swim up at any moment.
And as the piece progressed, I heard other cinematic moments, but also a bossa-nova dance rhythm, and hints of rock and roll. It was finally when it was over that it dawned on me that many of the composers were my age, or at least only a little bit older.Many of their first experiences with Classical were the same as mine: Cinema!
There is no doubt that Stravinsky influenced modern classical music through the past 100 years, but what also happened over the last century was the advent of film, rock and roll, and dance music. And these in turn influenced classical.
What was brilliant about this original piece was the idea that while trying to honor Stravinsky, they instead honored the tradition of revolution. For many years people like Bernard Herrmann used the dissonance he learned from the Rites to inject his scores with an eerie tenacity that really transformed the movies he worked on. From him though, John Williams built a softer palate, and now, well, meh.
What the Rite Now Project shows is that Classical has the capacity to be interesting again, as their piece was. And even more so, that Classical exists outside of the movie screen, and that it can captivate an audience for as long as a movie can (both Rite Now and The Rites were just over 30 minutes with an intermission).
So back to Sonic Youth. What I like about Daydream Nation (other than the Gerhard Richter cover) is the fact that it’s so comforting these days. I remember when, a decade ago, it was noisy and chaotic to me. Now it’s like a warm blanket.
The Rite Now Project cured that temper in me last night, at least for Classical, and it was the inspiration for revisiting Daydream Nation. They were able to reintroduce the chaos back into The Rites, and they did so by stretching the mind in ways that it should not go. Pulling you from the vision of one composer to that of another, in a plethora of styles, all seamlessly glued together. Each composition had its own identity, and this did not detract from the overall piece.
When they next performed The Rites, the blanket had been pulled off and I was ready once again to hear the piece as it was, not how rote listening had contrived it to be.
Unfortunately, rock and roll has been a bore lately. And I have all these albums lying around waiting for someone to start a riot that might get me out of bed.
