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What If We Got the Story of the “Rite of Spring” Wrong?


gvopedz

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"...relying primarily on Tamara Levitz’s chapter “Racism at The Rite” in the book The Rite of Spring at 100."

A tertiatry source of the present day relying on a secondary source of the present day (the chapter "Racism at the Riot," which sounds like it's got an axe to grind). That settlles it then.

A quote from Levitz on another subject:

"In this talk, I investigate the early history of the American Musicological Society’s as an institution of white supremacy with the goal of providing the understanding necessary to dismantle that system in the present....  I uncover and critique how knowledge production in the American Musicological Society was and continues to be determined by 1) white property, or ownership of land, resources, media, and ideas; 2) white undemocratic acts of excluding racial and gender minorities; 3) white privileged practices of social distinction; and 4) white institutional acts of settler colonialism. By undertaking this historical analysis and critique I hope to encourage a shift in the American Musicological Society away from its current emphasis on strategies to increase minority representation that maintain the status quo, and toward direct political activism that ends white supremacy. "

An axe-grinder par excellence. 


 

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I've always thought that "riot" was probably overstating the case at least a little bit. But a robust public demonstration of disapproval, that wouldn't surprise me at all. I've heard the jazz records where the French audience is not shy about expressing their disapproval, and I can only imagine how the audience for Rite might have reacted, it being far more radical relative to its time and audience than, say, Dolphy or Coltrane were to theirs.

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9 minutes ago, JSngry said:

 But a robust public demonstration of disapproval, that wouldn't surprise me at all. I've heard the jazz records where the French audience is not shy about expressing their disapproval,

Don't know exactly which FRENCH jazz concert recordings you are refering to, but quite a bit of this "lack of shyness" in the 50s was not a case of disapproving but rather of factions of the rivaling moldy fig vs. progressives partisans trying to ruin the OTHER faction's concerts (see contemporary concert reviews). Childish. Certainly. Prehistoric hooligans? Maybe ...

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29 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Don't know exactly which FRENCH jazz concert recordings you are refering to, but quite a bit of this "lack of shyness" in the 50s was not a case of disapproving but rather of factions of the rivaling moldy fig vs. progressives partisans trying to ruin the OTHER faction's concerts (see contemporary concert reviews). Childish. Certainly. Prehistoric hooligans? Maybe ...

Coltrane with Miles in Paris + Mingus with Dolphy at Antibes.

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27 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Coltrane with Miles in Paris + Mingus with Dolphy at Antibes.

Those two responses were certainly factional to some degree, though they may not have been planned in advance, as most of the disruptions that Big Beat Steve mentions were.  French audiences in general are were/are fairly "free" along those lines. As for factional disruptions, in the late '40s or early '50s the young Pierre Boulez organized an infamous disruption of a concert of Stravinsky's neo-classical works, which Boulez and his pals then professed to despise. Of course, in later years Boulez the conductor made recordings of those same works. (see below)

"As Paris repaired itself from four horrific years of Nazi occupation, the great Russian neoclassical composer Igor Stravinsky returned to the city which he had called home before the war. Thousands of Frenchmen and women gathered at the Theatre Champs-Elysees that winter to hear the  French premiere of Stravinsky's Danses Concertantes and Four Norwegian Moods, pieces he had written during his exile in America. But to Stravinsky's surprise, as he walked toward the conductor's podium, instead of being greeted by the cheers of endearing fans, he was pummeled with a fit of prolonged shouts and jeers.

"In the audience a small group of students from the Paris Conservatoire, France's leading music academy, booed the aging Russian considered by many as the greatest composer of his time. But the young men did not boo him because he was Stravinsky -- they were actually fans of his work. They booed him because the music establishment, mesmerized by his neoclassical revival, had all but deified Stravinsky, deeming his school of thought as the only school of merit. So in order to bring attention to their own avant-garde composing methods, these bold students hissed and raved in the face of the man that was both their musical hero and intellectual nemesis. And leading the fracas was a wild-eyed country boy named Boulez."

BTW, Stravinsky had no idea that Boulez had organized this demonstration until many years later (1966). When he found out -- this after a good deal of friendly correspondence between the two composers -- Stravinsky was not happy (see link below).
.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/964114?seq=1#page_scan_tab_conten

Further, Robert Craft writes that IS "was fully informed of the controversy surrounding a festival of his music after the liberation, but the dossier he kept on the  affair ... does not mention Boulez. That Stravinsky understood Parisian musical politics at the time is evident in a letter to [conductor] Manuel Rosenthal, dated 1/12/46 (which also has relevance to the initial subject of this thread):

"The sincere and spontaneous manifestations against the Sacre in 1913 [were] comprehensible because of the violent character of this score.... But one doubts the spontaneity of a howling manifestation against the Norwegian Moods, the elements [in the music] that could provoke boisterous protestations being totally absent.... Unless I am mistaken, it seems  that once the violent has been accepted, the amiable, in turn is no longer tolerable."

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54 minutes ago, medjuck said:

Duke Ellington's first performances in England were also greeted with laughter when the brass used mutes to create growls. 

That'd happen with certain audiences today even, I recon.  Not entire audiences, but if animated enough (both the growls, and the audience), I'm sure any number of folks could very well laugh audibly if 'provoked' in just such a way to as to try and garner that exact response.

I'm practically never at concerts with much Ellington (or Basie, etc...), but the scenario I describe can't be all that hard to imagine even now, eh?

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In his autobiography, Gunther Schuller had a whole chapter on that bad boy of classical music, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and his disruption of concerts at an annual Music Festival in Germany. If KS' followers thought the music was too conservative, they'd let loose a series of catcalls, boos and other sounds that would completely derail the performances.

The breaking point came when KS himself disrupted an intimate performance in a small room of Webern lieder. Even Webern had become too conservative for the 'forward-looking' KS!

This disgusted Schuller to the point that he wanted nothing to do with KS anymore.

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1 hour ago, AllenLowe said:

the question to me is whether audience offense is a good or bad thing; a response to being challenged or to not being challenged enough?

I got a death threat once as a result of a recording I made, but to this day I am uncertain as to how I should feel about it  - 

 

As long as the threat wasn't carried out.

I got an anonymous death threat (though it was possible to take a good guess as to who sent it) in response to a review I wrote of an original musical show. Strange thing was that the threat came some 30 years after the review appeared in the paper! Talk about nursing a grudge.

In fact, the threat was menacing and specific enough (either the person who made it was nuts or could do a good imitation of being nuts -- he knew where I lived, the members of my family etc.) that I contacted the police and the postal service (the threat came in the mail). The postal inspector did a seemingly sincere job of trying to track down the person who sent the threat, but it all finally went nowhere. I think the intent of the threat was just to spook me, and it did ...  for about five minutes. Then it began to seem both sad and funny. BTW, I looked up the review of that show; it was very negative, though after 30 or so years I didn't recall much about the show.

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59 minutes ago, Simon Weil said:

He waits 30 years - to say he's going to....

...Not.

Right. But even though I don't recall the precise wording of his threat, his knowledge of where I lived, the makeup of my family, and some other details that suggested actual recent observation of me on his part was kind of ominous. I'm thinking that without doubt the guy is unhinged, and if he's been brooding about this for 30 years, where in his head might he chose to go next. In any case, I'm temperamentally mellow enough to not have lost any sleep over it. Besides, from what I recall it was a really terrible play.

One other odd thing. This play had in its lead role an actor whose performance in a recent local production of Bernstein's "Candide" I'd praised; he was very funny there, in a kind of Mel Brooks bag. But whatever his talents, he couldn't save this play, and the person who made the threat had cooked up some conspiratorial, personal spite on my part story that  I couldn't begin to decode that explained why I'd praised this actor's performance in "Candide" but thought that this new play was so bad.

Another odd thing. The envelope the threatening letter came in had a genuine Chicago return address on it. But the postal inspector who investigated (it's illegal to send threats through the mail), said that no one at that address sent the letter.

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23 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

some conspiratorial, personal spite on my part story that  I couldn't begin to decode that explained why I'd praised this actor's performance in "Candide" but thought that this new play was so bad.

Pathetic-crazy.

You're "Spite"...Kind of stereotype of a critic (I guess).

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