I am obliged to the BBC News Page for reminding me that today marks the 100th anniversary of the first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. But, asks Ivan Hewett, their classical music critic, was there really a riot?
Finnish National Ballet's 2013 revival of the original 1913 production
Well, if there wasn't a riot there should have been! Even today the music alone is shocking, in the literal sense of the word. It is also compelling, there is something in those primitive off-beat rhythms that touches a primeval core you think was long buried. In addition, the knock-kneed, pidgeon-toed dancing technique insisted on by Nijinsky who choreographed the ballet must have been shocking to an Edwardian-era audience used to the classical steps of traditional ballet. The whole thing, the music, the dance, the performance and the 'riot', has now become an icon for 'the birth of the modern'. Of course, that doesn't bear too much scrutiny because there had been signals of modernism for some time in the arts but even so, the immense power of the piece still hammers home the message that the world had just shifted, that things would never be as they had been before. But, was there a riot?
Dozens of witnesses left accounts of the evening, but they tend to say different
things. According to some, blows were exchanged, objects were thrown at the
stage, and at least one person was challenged to a duel.
There is no doubt that there was a lot of noise - contemporary press reports
make this clear. Esteban Buch, director of studies at the School of Advanced
Studies in Social Science in Paris, says it's difficult to deny that "something
really extraordinary" took place - but he points out that if you look at the
accounts given over the months, years and decades that followed, "the riot"
acquires greater importance as time goes on.
On this anniversary it is worth reading Hewett's article based on Buch's research. For myself, I am always grateful for the music and the myth that goes with it because sometimes, just sometimes, it acts as a brake to my instinctive detestation of 'the modern'. Roughly half the audience in that Parisian theater that night one hundred years ago were wrong so when faced with the latest concoction thrown up (I use the phrase carefully) by the 'artistic community', just pause and think before you riot!
