#rites of spring

[mcroutfits]

10/10 wearing a rites of springs tank top basic knowledge that "Real Emo" only consists of the dc Emotional Hardcore scene and the late 90's Screamo sce....

[scullys-scalpel]

[emotionalhardcore]

1985, washington dc

[lazzarachan]

Notable bands in emo music history from Alternative Press, November 2017.

[blackswaneuroparedux]

There is no beauty in Music itself, the beauty is within the listener.

- Igor Stravinsky

“The idea of The Rite of Spring came to me while I was still composing Firebird,” Igor Stravinsky recalled, 45 years after the ballet’s first performance in 1913, in his book Conversations. “I had dreamed of a scene of pagan ritual in which a chosen sacrificial virgin danced herself to death.” If Stravinsky is to be believed, this dream marked the beginning of a process that culminated in the premiere of one of the 20th century’s most important musical works.

Stravinsky’s music was meant to capture the spirit of the scenario, which he had outlined with the help of painter and ethnographer Nikolai Roerich and dancer and choreographer Mikhail Fokine during the spring and summer of 1910. Roerich had filled Stravinsky’s head with tales about all sorts of rituals from ancient Russia – divinations, sacrifices, dances, and so on – involving a variety of characters. The ballet that resulted revolves around the return of spring and the renewal of the earth through the sacrifice of a virgin. In his handwritten version of the story, Stravinsky described The Rite as “a musical choreographic work. It represents pagan Russia and is unified by a single idea: the mystery and the great surge of the creative power of spring….”

Stravinsky completed the score on 29 March 1913, and exactly two months later, the ballet premiered in Paris at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, where it caused the famous scandal that ushered in modern music. Nijinsky’s choreography and the wild, unchecked power of Stravinsky’s score were something wholly new. Stravinsky wrote for one of his largest orchestras ever in The Rite of Spring, and he used it with an assurance and confidence one would hardly expect from a composer just out of his twenties and with only two big successes - The Firebird and Petrushka - behind him.

But those two scores, for all of their individuality and accomplishment, did not seem like they were leading to The Rite of Spring. What Stravinsky did was totally unexpected.

The stage action during the ballet’s second half, leading up to the sacrifice, was enough to capture the attention of even that raucous audience at the first performance. Finally quiet, they could hear Stravinsky’s score and watch as Maria Piltz, the dancer who played the sacrificial victim, stood motionless as the ritual unfolded around her, gradually coming to life to perform her dance, with its angular contortions and tortured motions.

What actually happened on that scandalous night will always be a mystery to some degree, because the reports contradict each other. Was it the choreography that annoyed people, or the music? Were the police really called? Was it true that missiles were thrown, and challenges to a duel offered? Were the creators booed at the end, or cheered?

The dancer Dame Marie Rambert remembered that right at the beginning ‘a shout went up in the gallery: “Un docteur!" (Call a doctor!). Somebody else shouted louder, “Un dentiste!" (a dentist!)’. The aristocrat Harry Kessler said that people started to whisper and joke almost immediately. Stravinsky himself was so angry that he stormed out and went backstage to help the dancers keep time.

What is certain is that the audience was shocked - and with good reason. Stravinsky’s score for The Rite of Spring contradicted every rule about what music should be. The sounds are often deliberately harsh, right from opening Lithuanian folk melody, which is played by the bassoon in its highest, most uncomfortable range. The music was cacophonously loud, assaulting the ears with thunderous percussion and shrieking brass. Rhythmically it was complex in a completely unprecedented way. In the ‘Ritual of the Rival Tribes’ the music unfolds in two speeds at once, in a ratio of 3:2. And it makes lavish use of dissonance, i.e. combinations of notes which don’t make normal harmonic sense. ‘The music always goes to the note next to the one you expect,’ wrote one exasperated critic.

Then there was the dance, choreographed by Nijinsky. According to some observers this was what really caused the scandal at the first night. When the curtain rose the audience saw a row of ‘knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down’ as Stravinsky called them, who seemed to jerk rather than dance. Classical dance aspired upwards, in defiance of gravity, whereas Nijinsky’s dancers seemed pulled down to the earth. Their strange, stamping movements and awkward poses defied every canon of gracefulness.

Both the music and the dance of The Rite of Spring seemed to deny the possibility of human feelings, which for most people is what gives art its meaning. As Stravinsky put it, ‘there are simply no regions for soul-searching in The Rite of Spring’. This is what separates it so decisively from Stravinsky’s hit of 1911, Petrushka. There we’re immersed in a human world, which exudes the very specific cultural ambience of Russia. It’s true that the main characters are puppets, rather than rounded human beings. But they have characters, even if they’re somewhat rudimentary, and at the end there’s even a suggestion that Petrushka might have a soul.

* Pina Bausch's interpretation of Stravinksy's Rite. A masterpiece of modern dance.

[dreamofyouandi]

anybody else here rocking with fugazi or should i just kill myself

[bra1nxfreeze]

[napunk-history]

Rites Of Spring

[impulsivedecisionsat3am]

Ok so we all know that My Chem was influenced by Queen and Rites of Spring and some riot girl and punk shit yeah? But I just listened to Rites of Spring and holy shit it sounds almost exactly like mcr. Like Gerard really just heard them and went "yep this is my band now, this is what it's going to be," and I don't think we out enough of an emphasis on how much they fucking sound like each other.

[0fallen0]

Everyone pray to the founding fathers of emo

[fght-ff-yr-dmns]

Currently Reading

Where Are Your Boys Tonight? The Oral History of Emo's Mainstream Explosion 1999-2008 By Chris Payne

I've finally picked up a copy of this mammoth deep dive into the scene that I lived and breathed for so many years.

I had to import it from the USA so it cost me a pretty penny, but for such a niche subject, I'm more than happy to pay it.

I'd probably refer to my exposure as 2nd/3rd wave emo and I love how this book covers the different versions of what the genre and term 'emo' means to different people.

[goopout]

always loved this photo of Guy Picciotto dunking himself during a show

[spilladabalia]

Brendan Canty, photographer unlisted.

[anduinwrynngaysex]

the real reason that wrathion and anduin could never forgive each other is that anduin is an emo purist who only listens to american football, car seat headrest, home is where and rites of spring, and wrathion is a myspace emo who only listens to metalcore and pop punk

[dreamofyouandi]

“that was at a show at the 9:30 club, where he'd roll around and throw himself off things, and it looked like it hurt a lot of the time. i don't think he was hurt in that picture, but i do think he was spent. i thought it was an interesting choice to put on ​the cover of repeater. guy made fun of it himself when it came out; he would tell people, “my ass is on the cover.” he might have been a little embarrassed, i don't know.” -jim saah on his shot that became the cover of fugazi’s repeater

[gayandloveableperidot]

Finally made my back patch for my vest!!!

It took two hours and I went to sleep at 2:00 on a school night because I’m an idiot