The Rites of Spring

Music is much like a sense of humor. If you understand the context the of either a joke or a song it's much easier to get it and enjoy it.

A person's musical preferences as well as the jokes they laugh at are real windows into their life experiences and character.  One psychologist did a study and found most people's musical interests peak around the time of their first meaningful sexual relationship and begins to taper off after that. Years later people report their favorite music is either from that time period or in that style.  

Not everyone gets fixated into trying to remember what song played during their first kiss. There's that minority of people always seeking the new and the novel. Pushing the envelope for some is what's normal, in the arts you have the avant-garde. The avant-garde are perennial targets of ridicule for their pretentiousness and overly abstract interpretation of the world.  But if you take the long view of history you see the unchanged principals of one time period become the philosophical debris of another.  That's why Galileo was put under house arrest for publishing a book that said the Earth orbits the sun and four centuries later the Catholic Church forgave him.  Proof that no matter how far ahead of the crowd you are, eventually the true will support you -even when you're up against an organization that claims to know the mind of God.    

Artists like explorers and scientist ask what's out there? What is the truth? They take ideas into new places -which is not only risky but when you do fail it's usually in epic proportions.  Art has more than its share of crash and burn events. The truths in art are not empirical truths. The weight of an electron, as tiny as it is, remains constant. If that weigh should vary more than 5% the whole universe would be an entirely different place. Feelings do vary, and the truths we obtain from things like love, aesthetics and spirituality build up a body of emotional wisdom.  All of the elements we think of as the bedrock of an individual's personality are all subject to change. We change over the course of a lifetime, we get molded by our circumstance and if were honest with ourselves we realize revelations and epiphanies can happen anytime. Nothing is duller than a person who firmly believes his mind can't be changed.

 

Very soon will be the 100th anniversary of the first performance of The Rites Of Spring. You might hate classical music and ballet, and yet I'm sure most people would recognize the opening score. For its time it was a huge shift in music. Haft the audience was intrigued and the other half outraged.  The evening almost ended in a riot. This was bigger than Dylan going electric.

Back when I was in college there was one head strong art student that want to do a parody of the original ballet. It was planned to be performed on Earth Day as the Rights Of Spring. When the college administration found out the dancers were going to be nude, they almost had a heart attack.  The funniest part was listening to the over-the-top rant (or heartfelt counter argument) from the art student. She felt the flesh tone body stockings the college required were total infringement on her creativity.  In the end The Rights Of Spring never got on stage, thought they did have an un-dressed rehearsal back in the dance studio.

Always one of the big questions is does great art stand alone on its own merits?  The near riot they had in Paris on the opening night made the Rites Of Spring legendary. People paid to see it just find out what the controversy was all about. Because the ballet had some finical success it survived long enough to influence other composers and even other genres of music.

There's a wonderful luxury looking back on history, like when Dylan when electric. Part of his fan base was outraged but his next three albums were his best selling.

I have never developed much of an appreciation for either ballet or Dylan -but can not deny both have a real influence over arts and entertainment today.   

 

It's a nice spring day today, the winter storm that was suppose to come missed us here. I'm ready to have something challenge my prejudices and change my world. If anything it will be nice to see people walking around without being bundled up under several layers of clothing.