The Rite of Spring...

[raleigh_stclair]

So, when we hear something we have never heard before, the neurons in our brains receptive to sound try to unravel it, figure it out. They find bits and pieces, get confused again, and if this happens enough times they squirt a ton of dopamine and we get PISSED

Comments

[onelatebloomer]

I submit that the ultimate goal of art is the wake up. If audiences were only ever shocked and disturbed, at some point the effect would be meaningless. If Stravinsky continued, time after time, to make you angry, you would simply stop listening. Instead, you're angry, then confused, then lukewarm, then accepting, then rapturous, and then we've entered a new realm of art. Of course, the process is never-ending, and after Stravinsky people needed someone like, say, Schoenberg, to come along and confuse us all over again.

Though I, personally, still get angry every time I listen to Schoenberg because I think his work sounds terrible, I firmly believe that someday my brain will figure out how to process it and I will WAKE UP.

And then I'll start looking for something new.

That's what motivates us, right??? The something new. The next thing. Whether its good or bad, its human nature.

My 22 cents, for what they're worth.

oh, and---I LIKE YOU TOO!!!

[onelatebloomer]

And yes, I realize that Schoenberg was actually born first, and that they really were contemporaries. But I still see Schoenberg as a more modern composer. And as a composer that no one has yet really figured out.

So there. : )

[raleigh_stclair]

I think you are the best! You overestimate my music history chops in this era. I had no idea that Schoenberg was born first, haha.

I agree. Wake up. I think that is probably the biggest thing in life. Pretty much.

[matthewmckinley]

i think pieces of art that are influential shock and scandalize at first because they are so far "ahead", but repeated exposure/discussion and the creeping influence among followers softens the blow and when it is looked back upon, the piece is seen as a difficult, yet completely new watershed and heralded as such.

[matthewmckinley]

P.S. i have a hard time listening to the rite of spring today but i doubt i would have rioted over it.

[raleigh_stclair]

Yeah, I would like to think I wouldn't have started throwing punches. I just can't fully place myself in that mindset to know what it would have been like, though. I love to do this with different milestones in art history. Where would I have been?

I agree with your first comment, as well. I think that other artists and art appreciators (dare I use 'critic' in the most hopeful of ways) do so much to help the brain 'hear' new things. I have been reading Greil Marcus' Shape of Things to Come, and it really is reshaping my once idealistic relationship to art criticism. He places the artist as modern society's prophet. Which would place him (and other like minded 'critics') among those that point and draw those connections. An essentially selfless and vital role, I think.

[onelatebloomer]

I also have to add that part of the Rite of Spring rioting was not really the music--I mean, yes, there are many stories about other composers being there that night and storming out--but most of the rioting was because the choreography was depicting crazy pagan sex rituals. I think that's what got people riled up. Though the argument is all still the same--just using dance as the art form.

word.

[raleigh_stclair]

those dancers WERE...

...contorting themselves.

It just isn't right.

[onelatebloomer]

Okay, last one--two more things:

1. Are you reading or did you happen to just finish reading Proust Was A Neuroscientist??

2. Thoughts from book I'm reading right now:
"This new importance poetry and art in general is having for me has to do a great deal with my precarious emotional state. Does this raise or lower, then, the everyday importance of art? Does something which exists on the edge have no true relevance to the stable center, or does it, by being on the edge, become a part of the edge and thus a part of the boundary, the definition which gives the whole its shape?"

Thoughts?

[raleigh_stclair]

I AM reading Proust Was a Neuroscientist! I haven't gotten to the Stravinsky part yet, but this post comes from a Radiolab podcast about music (check that show and that podcast out. for real, yo) in which they interview the author of Proust Was...

What is this other book you quote? I am intrigued. And I am all for the latter argument. I think that the extremes out on the edges greatly inform the center and the times of stasis. In fact, I think those extremes help make the times of stasis and stability kind of come alive. I think you become more awake in the day to day.