{"id":307,"date":"2013-01-29T22:11:19","date_gmt":"2013-01-30T06:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/?p=307"},"modified":"2013-01-31T14:01:08","modified_gmt":"2013-01-31T22:01:08","slug":"succes-de-scandale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/?p=307","title":{"rendered":"Succ\u00e8s de Scandale"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Fb-Button\"\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>
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After largely ignoring the 100th anniversary in 2012 of the composition of\u00a0Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire<\/em><\/a>, the Los Angeles music community is about to celebrate the 100th year of Stravinsky’s\u00a0Rite of Spring<\/a><\/em> in typical a-historical fashion. \u00a0Breathlessly announcing the upcoming festivities, art critic Edward Goldman writes on the kcrw art talk page<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Exactly one hundred years ago, a riot broke out among the Parisian sophisticates attending the premiere performance by the Ballets Russes of\u00a0Le Sacre du printemps<\/em>, otherwise known as “The Rite of Spring.” Since then, the names of its composer, Igor Stravinsky; impresario, Sergei Diaghilev; and choreographer, Vaslav Nijinsky have become synonymous with the birth of 20th century modern culture.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I suppose if one only looked to France, and ignored Austria and Germany, one might consider only Stravinsky, Diaghilev and Nijinsky’s achievement “synonymous with the birth of 20th century modern culture.” \u00a0Of course, the Rite<\/em>‘s premiere on May 29, 1913 came a bit too late for that honor.<\/p>\n

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I would argue that\u00a0the Munich premiere of Schoenberg’s\u00a0Three Pieces for Piano, Op. 11<\/em><\/a> on January 2, 1911, which gave rise the next day to\u00a0Kandinsky’s\u00a0Impressions III (Concert)<\/em>,\u00a0holds a greater claim to the title.<\/p>\n

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I’ve often wondered if anyone has explored whether the rioting in Paris at the\u00a0Rite<\/em>‘s first performance on May 29, 1913 might have been influenced by news reports of the huge riot that took place at the famous\u00a0Skandalkonzert<\/em><\/a> conducted by Schoenberg in Vienna two months earlier, on March 31, 1913. \u00a0At that orchestral concert at the Vienna Konzertverein, fistfights broke out during the performance of Alban Berg’s\u00a0Altenberglieder<\/em><\/a> and the concert had to be stopped. \u00a0How was the Vienna riot reported in Paris?<\/p>\n

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Das n\u00e4chste Wiener Sch\u00f6nberg-Konzert. Karikatur in Die Zeit vom 6. April 1913<\/p><\/div>\n

In the Supplement to Nicolas Slonimsky’s\u00a0Lexicon of Musical Invective<\/em>, he includes the following review published in Paris-Midi\u00a0<\/em>on May 29, 1913, the day of the premiere of Stravinsky’s\u00a0Rite<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Yesterday’s concert merits our attention for historic reasons. \u00a0It was indeed on May 28, 1913, at about ten o’clock in the evening that musical cubism made its appearance in the fair city of Paris. \u00a0By singular irony of fate, it was in the venerable hall of the Conservatoire, the temple of all tradition, that this revelation took place. \u00a0The Soci\u00e9t\u00e9 Musicale Ind\u00e9pendante presented a concert there offering to its habitu\u00e9s the first performance of three piano pieces by Arnold Schoenberg. \u00a0This composer hails from Vienna, preceded by an intriguing reputation. \u00a0Every performance of one of his works in Austria and Germany has provoked disorders, police intervention, transportation of the wounded to the hospital and of the dead bodies to the morgue. \u00a0At the sound of the last chord the listeners would come to blows, and music lovers strewn on the floor would be picked up in bunches. \u00a0So we awaited with impatience the first contact of this explosive art with French sensibilities, and the organizers had provided stretchers and mobilized ambulance drivers to clear the hall after the deflagration. \u00a0But all expectations were deceived. \u00a0The pianist E. R Schmitz, who was assigned the task of igniting the fuse, could accomplish his dangerous exercise in perfect silence. \u00a0True, there were some uncomfortable smiles, some anguished sighs, some stifled groans, but no scandal erupted. \u00a0Arnold Schoenberg would not believe it! \u00a0The French public has resigned itself to the fact that music eludes it and has renounced public protests. . . . \u00a0And we are appalled by the speed with which musical conceptions replace each other, overtake each other and destroy each other. \u00a0Composers like Debussy and Ravel could not preserve for more than a year or two their revolutionary label and they are already relegated to the retrograde group even before they have succeeded in making themselves comprehensible to the crowd! \u00a0It is, alas, in music that new stars rapidly become old moons!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Has anyone researched how these, and perhaps other Paris newspaper reviews, might have precipitated the riot at the\u00a0Rite<\/em>?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After largely ignoring the 100th anniversary in 2012 of the composition of\u00a0Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, the Los Angeles music community is about to celebrate the 100th year of Stravinsky’s\u00a0Rite of Spring in typical a-historical fashion. \u00a0Breathlessly announcing the upcoming festivities, art … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=307"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307\/revisions\/319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/schoenblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}