Keeping Score: Stravinsky's Rite of Spring

A 2006 Arts Documentary hosted by Michael Tilson Thomas.

Keeping Score investigates the compelling stories behind and intertwined with classical music. Regardless of your musical background, the San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas are ready to conduct you through the fascinating history and modern interpretations of these masterworks.

You never know when or where revolutions will start. They can be social or political or artistic. Often, these artistic revolutions—revolutions in taste—seem to predict other changes in society. That's exactly the case with The Rite of Spring. Igor Stravinsky wrote The Rite of Spring in 1913. It redefined 20th-century music, much as Beethoven's Eroica had transformed music a century before.

Savage and primitive, hypnotic and hell-bent, Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring turned Paris into the scene of one of the most astounding opening nights in history. The Rite of Spring may not be as shocking today as it was at that scandalous premiere in 1913, but it still has that edgy, intense, almost out-of-control feeling that makes it as exhilarating—and liberating—as music can be.

In this episode of Keeping Score, the clutching tendrils of the music pull us back through France and Russia to the wild abandon of pagan times. With it, Stravinsky took himself far into the realm of the unconscious. The music seemed designed with no apparent order but driven by pure gut feeling.

Keeping Score: Stravinsky in Concert: https://rumble.com/v6qq79y-keeping-score-stravinsky-in-concert.html