Is it age? - The Rite of Spring

[Serial_Apologist]

The same applies to the Mahler symphonies, btw.
Over-exposition diminishes one's surprise and appreciation of the power and the originality of a piece eventually.

Then I guess it's because of the infrequency with which I hear The Rite that keeps it fresh for me in good performances.

The unexpected has always been important for me in appreciating pieces, and I have yet to fail to appreciate Stravinsky's extraordinary orchestration in the effects he gets, nor yet to predict correctly where every accent will fall in the more rhythmically fragmented of its passages, which are what keeps it fresh and thrilling for me.

Having heard The Rite, nothing subsequent quite lived up to it for me in this composer's oeuvre because he mostly eschewed that energy and those colours (apart from in The Song of the Nightingale and Les Noces) and after leaving Russia behind increasingly went for emotionally remoter territory - the Symphony in Three Movements being the one exception in terms of rhythmic and harmonic energy. It's always struck me that it was composers other than Stravinsky who followed up on what he achieved in The Rite: Milhaud, Bartok, Honegger, Cowell, Messiaen, Varese, Henze, Boulez.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm not sure how to define "over-exposure"/"over-exposition" - the same terminology turned up in relation to the Eroica during the Proms, and I couldn't understand it then, either. I have known the Rite for nearly forty years (in fact, it will be exactly forty years this approaching Christmas day that I got the boxed set of Stravinsky conducting the first three ballets - I've been listening to it for nearly as long as Barbi's been alive!) and have heard it countless times since then - and still listen to it about four or five times every year. And it remains (in a good performance) as fresh and exciting as ever - yielding ever new details and subtleties of rhythm, harmony, structure and instrumentation each time I listen to it.

Unlike BeefO and others, the ballet "story" isn't very important to me - in fact, it seems increasingly tawdry and distasteful to me (I don't need the programme of the Symphonie Fantastique, either - more risible than a Hammer Horror film: I find the Music has all the fantasy I need and then some). But the Music - the astonishing Music! Definitely coming with me to any desert island I get abandoned on.


(PS: I should also point out my disagreement with S_A and Richard Tarleton about Stravinsky: I adore everything that I know of his work after Firebird and think it's wonderful - no better/greater composer ever IMO.)

[ahinton]

I've never found it 'exciting', just violent. I never liked it much, and now in my old age (70s) I positively loathe it, and avoid it at all costs. I wonder if it could be partly a gender thing? Do men find it more exciting than women do?

I don't know but cannot imagine that they do; I don't recall hearing it conducted by a woman but I'm quite sure that it will have been. In any case, isn't any violence in the score a reflection of the violence of nature rather than of human ritual?

[ahinton]

I'm not sure how to define "over-exposure"/"over-exposition" - the same terminology turned up in relation to the Eroica during the Proms, and I couldn't understan it then, either. I have known the Rite for nearly forty years (in fact, it will be exactly forty years this approaching Christmas day that I got the boxed set of Stravinsky conducting the first three ballets - I've been listening to it for nearly as long as Barbi's been alive!) and have heard it countless times since then - and still listen to it about four or five times every year. And it remains (in a good performance) as fresh and exciting as ever - yielding ever new details and subtleties of rhythm, harmony, structure and instrumentation each time I listen to it.

Unlike BeefO and others, the ballet "story" isn't very important to me - in fact, it seems increasingly tawdry and distasteful to me (I don't need the programme of the Symphonie Fantastique, either - more risible than a Hammer Horror film: I find the Music has all the fantasy I need and then some). But the Music - the astonishing Music! Definitely coming with me to any desert island I get abandoned on.


(PS: I should also point out my disagreement with S_A and Richard Tarleton about Stravinsky: I adore everything that I know of his work after Firebird and think it's wonderful - no better/greater composer ever IMO.)

I'm with you completely on Le Sacre but with S_A on quite a lot of what followed it in the composer's output, a large proportion of which I find tiresome and deeply disappointing given what he had achieved up to the mid-WWI years. I can just about manage to enjoy the Symphony in Three Movements as long as I don't hear it too often, Requiem Canticles has its attractions as well but as for much of the rest I've never really understood what all the fuss is about. When leaving a Prom concert some years ago that had included the première of Carter's Boston Concerto and which had begun with IS's Chopin arrangements for Dyaghilev and ended with Agon, a well-known soprano with whom I was chatting at the time (no names, no pack-drill!) described IS - quite loudly, so a lot of people heard - as the most over-rated and unnecessary composer of the 20th century; unsurprisingly, I've never forgotten that - it rther reminded me of Sorabji's barb about him as "the Igrigious Igor"...

The concert was conducted by the excellent Oliver Knussen (and included his own violin concerto); he was to have done an intgerview at RCM's Concert Hall pre-Prom but when Carter decided to come after all (he'd not been expected to be able to make it), OK deferred to him and he did it instead - and brilliantly. Something was mentioned about Chopin and that OK generally found him acceptable only in Stravinsky's arrangments(! - ye gods!) and Carter immediatley leapt to Chopin's defence, speaking warmly of his work and citing in particular the 24 Préludes.

[Beef Oven!]

,

Unlike BeefO and others, the ballet "story" isn't very important to me - in fact, it seems increasingly tawdry and distasteful

No, you misquote me. I make no mention of the story, or the "story". I can rarely remember it, nor "it"!

It's the dynamic, physical movement, the dancing, that is inextricable to the experience for me.

[ahinton]

,

No, you misquote me. I make no mention of the story, or the "story". I can rarely remember it, nor "it"!

It's the dynamic, physical movement, the dancing, that is inextricable to the experience for me.

Whilst I can fully understand that, especially as throughout much of his career Stravinsky retained a most remarkable ability to write for dance, not only do I have a serious blind spot about dance in all its forms (my fault - no one else's), it's a fact that Le Sacre has, right across its century or so of existence, been far better known as a work for the concert hall than one for the theatre and, for me, at least, it is the music itself that dances (as in certain works of J S Bach) and it's that music which tells its own story - or "story"(!)...

[Mary Chambers]

In any case, isn't any violence in the score a reflection of the violence of nature rather than of human ritual?

I think they're connected in the original concept for the ballet.

[ahinton]

I think they're connected in the original concept for the ballet.

Connected therein, of course, but it's surely the sheer suddenness of the change from winter into spring with its greater ratcheting up of temperatures and rapid thawing then we're accustomed to in Western Europe that came first and perhaps inspired that concept.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

No, you misquote me. I make no mention of the story, or the "story". I can rarely remember it, nor "it"!
It's the dynamic, physical movement, the dancing, that is inextricable to the experience for me.

YES!

Apologies

[Beef Oven!]

YES!

Apologies

[MickyD]

I've just got hold of the period instrument Xavier Roth version, which many were raving about here not so long ago. I'll be giving it a spin today.

[Pabmusic]

I think many people forget it started life as a ballet, choreographed by Nijinsky. It is meant to be performed on stage...

Here's the Nijinsky with Gergiev:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BryIQ9QpXwI

[Nick Armstrong]

The same applies to the Mahler symphonies, btw.
Over-exposition diminishes one's surprise and appreciation of the power and the originality of a piece eventually.

I agree with your second sentence (you mean 'over-exposure' I think ) - and this effect has led me to have similar feelings about RoS to the ones that triggered the original post. It was interesting and involving to hear the live 'hipp' Prom from Roth and Les Siècles the other summer, but I wasn't leaping from my seat; but after nearly 40 years of hearing it (not to excess - just every so often), every bar seems so familiar now.

But I don't find the same is the case with all pieces. RoS being 'merely' illustrative, music for effect, there's not much else to make it fresh than the notes and sounds themselves, encountered when unfamiliar.

However, I disagree with your first sentence quoted above, Roehre, I think - the same thing hasn't happened for me with Mahler, even though I've heard the symphonies more often. I think it's because they create such a richer and more complex set of feelings / emotions / psychological narratives / spiritual insights (call them what you will), and these are constantly refreshed as one's life goes on, and hence one's response to the music likewise.

So for me, for similar reasons, Shostakovich's music is largely inexhaustible, whereas a lot of other music which is purely or largely 'for effect' like Rite of Spring has paled with exposure - a lot of 20th C ballet scores, pieces like Janacek's 'Sinfonietta' springs to mind too, or all those Bartok and Kodaly dances... (I think only Prokofiev's 'Romeo and Juliet' is evergreen, for me, among 'that type of music' - and most of Ravel...! )

[Petrushka]

I agree with your second sentence (you mean 'over-exposure' I think ) - and this effect has led me to have similar feelings about RoS to the ones that triggered the original post. It was interesting and involving to hear the live 'hipp' Prom from Roth and Les Siècles the other summer, but I wasn't leaping from my seat; but after nearly 40 years of hearing it (not to excess - just every so often), every bar seems so familiar now.

But I don't find the same is the case with all pieces. RoS being 'merely' illustrative, music for effect, there's not much else to make it fresh than the notes and sounds themselves, encountered when unfamiliar.

However, I disagree with your first sentence quoted above, Roehre, I think - the same thing hasn't happened for me with Mahler, even though I've heard the symphonies more often. I think it's because they create such a richer and more complex set of feelings / emotions / psychological narratives / spiritual insights (call them what you will), and these are constantly refreshed as one's life goes on, and hence one's response to the music likewise.

So for me, for similar reasons, Shostakovich's music is largely inexhaustible, whereas a lot of other music which is purely or largely 'for effect' like Rite of Spring has paled with exposure - a lot of 20th C ballet scores, pieces like Janacek's 'Sinfonietta' springs to mind too, or all those Bartok and Kodaly dances... (I think only Prokofiev's 'Romeo and Juliet' is evergreen, for me, among 'that type of music' - and most of Ravel...! )

I'd broadly agree with most of this, especially what you say about Mahler and Shostakovich. It's a lifetime's commitment to both for me and no matter how long the gap between hearing one of their works it's like meeting old friends again once I do. Disagree though about the Janacek Sinfonietta which I love and doesn't suffer from over-exposure in the Petrushka listening room.

Strange that you should mention Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet as I went through a period around 40 years ago when the Cleveland/Maazel highlights LP was never off my turntable but nowadays I find the ballet or selected highlights discs largely gathering dust on the shelves as it's one of the very few works that has palled. Ravel's Daphnis though remains a great favourite, ditto the Piano Concertos.

There are works that remain inexhaustible for me and they include the two Elgar symphonies, the Beethoven symphonies and concertos, Mahler, Bruckner, Shostakovich and Mozart. The test, having played a work by one of them is: do I want to play this again the next night or at least, very soon? Prokofiev's R&J fails that test while the Rite passes it.

[Richard Tarleton]

But I don't find the same is the case with all pieces. RoS being 'merely' illustrative, music for effect, there's not much else to make it fresh than the notes and sounds themselves, encountered when unfamiliar.

However, I disagree with your first sentence quoted above, Roehre, I think - the same thing hasn't happened for me with Mahler, even though I've heard the symphonies more often. I think it's because they create such a richer and more complex set of feelings / emotions / psychological narratives / spiritual insights (call them what you will), and these are constantly refreshed as one's life goes on, and hence one's response to the music likewise.

So for me, for similar reasons, Shostakovich's music is largely inexhaustible, whereas a lot of other music which is purely or largely 'for effect' like Rite of Spring has paled with exposure - a lot of 20th C ballet scores, pieces like Janacek's 'Sinfonietta' springs to mind too, or all those Bartok and Kodaly dances... (I think only Prokofiev's 'Romeo and Juliet' is evergreen, for me, among 'that type of music' - and most of Ravel...! )

I've been struggling since last night to work out how to express my feelings coherently in answer to ferney ( by the way ferney, put it down at least in part to my lack of a decent musical education, I've rarely met proper musicians who don't revere Stravinsky) but had given up - you put it beautifully - with you on all counts.