Rioting with Stravinsky: a Particular Analysis of the Rite of Spring

Abstract

The riot that greeted the Rite of Spring only found its analytical counterpart some 70 years after its première, with factions headed by Pieter van den Toorn, Richard Taruskin and Allen Forte. But the analytical tussle was hardly a genuine riot in as much the differing camps subscribed to a premise of authenticity in order to stabilise the work under a universal concept: the result was a Rite unified by theory. The scholars may have battled with each other, but the music was not allowed to have its own riot. This article suggests a more contingent analysis of the Rite, focussing on the rebellion of the particular against the universal. The point is not to champion an anarchic or barbaric reading of the music, which is often attributed to the work because of the ballet's violent content, but to open the possibility of a new order that arises from the rioting particular.

Applying Acoustical and Musicological Analysis to Detect Brain Responses to Realistic Music: A Case Study

“…The following 'Augurs of Spring' part begins with the novel 'Augurs' chord, which is commonly defined as atonal or as a polychord consisting of an E-major superposed on an Eb-major seventh chord (music score measure 76, at rehearsal number 13) [40]. Although the chord is consistent with the chromatic tuning system of contemporary Western music, it is novel and presumably evokes a measurable novelty related brain response [17,20], since it neither belongs to a typical harmonic progression in major or minor mode, nor adheres to a common major or minor mode pitch class [40] (e.g., see Figure 1, bottom). These two cases of novel events in the music structure were found among the full set of automatically detected MoRI peaks for both the loudness (RMS) and the spectral flux increases (see These two cases of novel events in the music structure were found among the full set of automatically detected MoRI peaks for both the loudness (RMS) and the spectral flux increases (see Section 2.4 and Table 1).…”

Structural Density and Clarity, Technical Death Metal, and Anomalous’s “Ohmnivalent”

“…(33) From Alban Berg's essay "Why is Schoenberg's Music So Difficult to Understand?" (Reich 1924), to Stravinsky's fragmented textures and meticulously surprising rhythms (Chua 2007;Huron 2006, 333), to Stockhausen's discussion of the "degree of alteration" (1959), to Ellio Carter's densely packed "metric modulations," dominant strands of modernist music, and scholarship about modernist music, have dealt with concerns overlapping with those that have guided this article. In much modernist music, like in technical death metal, structural density is, among many other things, an aesthetic end unto itself.…”

Using exploratory factor analysis and Bourdieu’s concept of the illusio to examine inequality in an English school

“…It is a fluid rating that is changed by time and place. Nijinsky’s controversial choreography for The Rite of Spring (Chua, 2007) demonstrates how yesterday’s edge becomes today’s mainstream. Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses – art for some and anathema for others – exposed how cultural values vary from one field to another (Fowler, 2000).…”