September 12, 2018

Stravinsky derangement syndrome.

I'm so glad I just made a "Stravinsky" tag — prompted by Spike Jones's tale of squeaky shoes —because I do have old posts that I can add it to — 5 old posts! I'm strangely proud of that. I'm not in any way suggesting I have serious musical analysis anywhere in this blog's 13-year archive, but that's not the kind of thing I've ever tried to do, so I'm not looking for pride in anything I'm not ashamed of having failed to do. It's the miscellany that amuses me. I'm going for something between the extremes of subtle and corny.

Stravinsky comes up in a September 2016 post, "Donald Trump, Sex Pistol/The punk-rock appeal of the GOP nominee." A writer in The Atlantic — James Parker — talked about "the impression Stravinsky’s 'Sacre du Printemps' made in Paris in 1913, then shifts to 1976, when The Sex Pistols went on British daytime TV live," and I wrote:
But what's Parker's point here? Is Donald Trump like The Sex Pistols because he goes on TV and talks to his interviewers in a way they're not used to and that busts up their game? Well, sort of. Parker says he's that and simultaneously the guy watching at home getting pissed off at the Pistols, because he's using a "transgressive, volatile, carnivalesque" style with respect to conservative things like "chaos in our communities" and "barbarians at the border."...

Parker says (among many other things): "Trump’s speaking style is from the future, from a time to come when human consciousness has broken down into little floating atavistic splinters of subjectivity and superstition and jokes that aren’t really jokes." Of course, Parker loathes Trump, but that reminded me of something I said about Trump as an exemplar of a new way of speaking:



I'm seeing something more positive about the speaking style of the future (and not just because I do cruel neutrality but because I think I'm speaking in the style of the future too).
I just watched that Bloggingheads clip — from a month and a half before the election — and it's quite interesting in light of Trump's actually becoming President and taking his new way of speaking to the White House.

Following the tag further back into the archive, back in 2013, it was, "Picture yourself, 100 years ago, losing your composure over this":

22 comments:

Andrew said...

Ann, just out of curiosity, have you ever listened to the Rite of Spring?

Chuck said...

I watched that entire 3:02 clip.

I could not generate any interest in the interchange. It sounded like two academic lifers.

And I think that the reason I was so put off was because Althouse is lost in the weeds on all of this Scott Adams persuasion/messaging/new era of speaking stuff. What I've been thinking about today was Lawrence O'Donnell's September 11 remembrance of Donald Trump having claimed that he lost hundreds of friends in the collapse of the WTC. It was immediately thought to be untrue and the next day it turned into "many friends," and still later because O'Donnell wasn't going to let it go, O'Donnell figured that Donald Trump did no attend any funerals of any 9/11 victims. None.

A lie, from Trump. One of those lies that get tossed out so casually, and with such regularity that they pile up beyond counting. That's not a new way of speaking. That is an old way of lying. A callous, craven, embarrassing lie.

Does anybody's speaking style rate a discussion in the face of that?

iqvoice said...

We've returned to 100 years ago, because that photograph is very triggering for today's SJW.

rehajm said...

Liz Warren!

tcrosse said...

How most of us were introduced to Rite of Spring:
Cool dinosaur fight from Fantasia

Ken B said...

Dumbarton Oaks Concerto

Just sayin'

Hagar said...

"It will be tremendously big and tremendously wet. Tremendous amounts of water."

Trump tends to speak in pictures. I don't see what is so bad about that.

robother said...

From the Rite of Spring to Miss America contestants ditching their swim suits. The culture is going down faster than a CBS intern.

tim in vermont said...

Are jokes ever really just jokes? Not the funny ones.

buwaya said...

I don't think that's the part of "Rite of Spring" that shocked la bourgeoisie.

The Godfather said...

@Althouse, don't sell yourself short as a music maven. It was on this blog that I first heard about, saw, and heard Lady Gaga. Thanks. I guess.

buwaya said...

Its amazing how Russia has collapsed, culture-wise, since 1914.

Back then Russia was hot stuff. Cutting edge in high culture, music, literature, art.
Add to that tech. Its often missed just how advanced Russia was. Igor Sikorsky was probably at the top of the global aviation game; he did invent the first multi-engine air liner, and later in exile the first really practical helicopters.

And Russia was in a truly fizzing state of economic takeoff.

But this bursting-out was crippled by blood and fire. What was left was redirected into armored militarism. And it has never really recovered since.

rhhardin said...

Photo of Stravinsky I took in 1963 (Oberlin, Ohio)
https://www.flickr.com/photos/rhhardin/8549267605/sizes/o

Michael K said...

But this bursting-out was crippled by blood and fire. What was left was redirected into armored militarism. And it has never really recovered since.

There was quite an exile Russian colony in Paris in the 1920s. The Murphy's were at the heart of it.

a good many of the Frenchmen and other Europeans who were forging the art of the twentieth century—Picasso, who had a studio near them in Paris, and who came down to visit them in Antibes; Léger, who liked to take them on nocturnal tours of Paris’s earthy little cafés, bars, dance halls, and sideshows; Stravinsky, who came to dinner and unfailingly commented on the flavor of the bread, which Sara sprinkled with water and put into the oven before serving. “The Murphys were among the first Americans I ever met,” Stravinsky said recently, “and they gave me the most agreeable impression of the United States.” The couple had come to know most of their European friends through the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev, for whom they had both volunteered to work as unpaid apprentices soon after their arrival in Paris in 1921,

todd galle said...

Didn't Johnny Lydon just come out with a defense of Trump? Or perhaps just an understanding of his media MO? Perhaps one showman paying tribute to another, although I think Trump is far more successful in politics than Lydon would be.

Clyde said...

I went to YouTube and found the Ballet Russes 100th Anniversary performance of "The Rite of Spring" from 2013 and watched it. I skipped most of the first few minutes of the young man talking in French and cut to the beginning of the orchestral introduction; from there, I watched the whole thing. Unlike the premiere audience, I knew what to expect: Dissonant music and primitive costumes, both of which flouted the norms for ballet at the time. It told the story quite effectively, but perhaps it wasn't a story that the audience cared to see. There was too much dissonance and primitivism in the near future. 1913, after all, was the last year before the 20th Century really began in earnest, with the Great War breaking out a year later, the impending collapses of monarchies and empires on the horizon, the Four Horsemen readying their steeds...

Big Mike said...

I didn't find a salacious "Rite of Spring" on YouTube, however I did find a performance of the Overture to Wagner's "Tannhäuser" by the Bavarian Staatsoper featuring approximately two dozen bare-breasted dancers shooting bows and arrows. Does that count?

IMHO female athletes who wish perform topless should eschew archery.

Big Mike said...

Almost forgot: NSFW

Michael K said...

IMHO female athletes who wish perform topless should eschew archery.

Cross bows should be OK. Or A cups might work.

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

The Rite of Spring with Pina Bausch is some weird, scary stuff.

AFChiling said...

IMHO female athletes who wish perform topless should eschew archery.

That's why the Amazons removed their right breast.

Big Mike said...

@AFChiling, if you take a look at the archer's stance, I'm sure it's the left breast that gets in the way.