"A certain part of the audience was thrilled by what it considered to be a blasphemous attempt to destroy music as an art, and, swept away with wrath, began very soon after the rise of the curtain, to make cat-calls and to offer audible suggestions as to how the performance should proceed. The orchestra played unheard, except occasionally when a slight lull occurred. The young man seated behind me in the box stood up during the course of the ballet to enable himself to see more clearly. The intense excitement under which he was labouring betrayed itself presently when he began to beat rhythmically on top of my head with his fists. My emotion was so great that I did not feel the blows for some time".
Marie Rambert heard someone in the gallery call out: "Un docteur … un dentiste … deux docteurs…". The second performance (June 4) was fortunately less eventful, and, according to Maurice Ravel, the entire work could actually be heard.
The complicated music and violent dance steps caused some to boo. They started to shout and whistle. They argued, and other people who liked it argued back. Then some people started to fight. In the end the police were called. Stravinksy was very upset and ran out of the theatre. The performance was a scandal, but this actually made people curious and soon the ballet became very famous. It was performed six times that season, and there were no more interruptions during the other performances.
"The Rite of Spring" is divided into two parts, and each part has several sections:
Stravinsky's music has many complex harmonies with dissonant sounds. There are passages with polyrhythms (several rhythms at once) as well as polytonality (music in several keys at once). The time signatures keep changing, and he often uses ostinati (repeated patterns).
Stravinsky wanted his music to describe the releasing of lots of energy. Most composers would have done this by using a lot of percussion instruments. However, although two players are needed for the timpani, there are not many other percussion instruments. Instead, the whole orchestra becomes a kind of percussion instrument. Also, the music often sounds like Russian folkmusic.
"The Rite of Spring" uses a very large orchestra with some unusual instruments. There are almost 100 people on stage playing the piece. Here is a list of the instruments used:
Nijinsky's choreography was thought almost as shocking as the music. The idea is: a tribe sacrifices a young virgin each year in the Spring to please their gods, and make sure crops grow well. The dancers adopt a pigeon-toed stance (position); their moves are heavy. They move together in groups; their movements are like a ritual. They look like a primitive tribe performing a ritual. The ritual moves towards the sacrifice of the girl. "The Rite of Spring" is a link between classical ballet and Modern dance.
Nijinsky's choreography has not been kept very well, but there have been efforts in recent years to reconstruct his performance, using costumes and set designs that look like the original ones from 1912.
"The Rite of Spring" became even more popular when Walt Disney used some of the music in his animated movie "Fantasia" in 1940. It is used in the film to describe early life on planet earth with dinosaurs roaming about.
Recapitulation theory
The theory of recapitulation is often known as ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.
Étienne Serres first proposed this idea in 1824–26. In 1886 Ernst Haekel suggested that the embryonic development of an organism (its ontogeny) followed the same path as the evolutionary history of its species (its phylogeny). It is also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism
It was a theory (idea) that tied evolution (the change in organisms over time) with embryology (the way organisms develop before they are born). The theory stated that before they are born, organisms pass through developmental stages that look like adult animals of other species, in roughly the same order that these other species split off during evolution.
Although there is something to this idea, it is no longer thought to be such a useful way to look at development.
Haeckel formulated his theory as ""Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"". Ontogeny is the steps an organism takes in its development before it is born, starting as a single cell and ending as a baby. Phylogeny is the steps a species takes in its development, starting as a very simple organism and evolving into the current organism. "Recapitulates" is a synonym for "reflects" and implies that the ontogeny of an organism is similar to the phylogeny of its species.
For example, Haeckel realized that before they are born, there is a time when humans have slits in their necks. These slits look like the gills on adult fishes. Haeckel took this to mean that some time before our species became human, we were fish-like. This view is supported by the fossil record and other evidence. As the unborn human gets closer to being born, it develops a tail. In fact, some human babies are even born with tails. Haeckel concluded, again correctly, that at some time in humanities more recent evolutionary past (after we had gone through our fish stage) the species that would go on to become humans had a tail.
However, not all of Haeckel's evidence or conclusions were this good. Haeckel produced several embryo drawings that often overemphasized similarities between embryos of related species. These found their ways into many biology textbooks, and into popular knowledge, even though they were wrong. Furthermore, Haeckel used this "evidence" to conclude that white people were evolutionary superior to people of other races. Not only is this a racist view, but we know today that it is not true.
Today, scientists think that Haeckel overstated the case. For example, the "gills" of a developing human do not work (though Haekel never said they did). Furthermore, as better observations were made, it was discovered that developing babies don't look exactly like the pictures Haeckel drew. He may have exaggerated what he saw in order to support his point better. Also, Haekel's discussion was entirely about morphology: he did not discuss the evolution and development of animal behaviour.
However, this is not to say that nothing about the theory makes sense. It is true that our ontogeny gives clues about our phylogeny. However, the relationship is not nearly as direct as Haeckel said it was. In fact, Haekel's over-emphatic claims led in due course to over-emphatic rejections.
Today, scientists agree that some parts of Haeckel's theory still make sense. For example:
Mount Tambora
Mount Tambora (8°14’41”S, 117°59’35”E) is an active volcano in Indonesia. It is on top of a subduction zone. Tambora was taller before its explosive volcanic eruption in 1815. This killed tens of thousands of people around the world. Later eruptions have been smaller.
When the volcano erupted in 1815, it climaxed on 10 April. It was the most destructive volcanic eruption in modern history. It has been estimated that it was four times larger than the 1883 eruption of Krakatoa, between Java and Sumatra, in terms of volume of magma ejected. Before the explosion, Tambora was 4,300 m (14,100 ft) high, now it is only 2,722 m (8,930 ft) high. Its massive crater is therefore a caldera.
The eruption destroyed a small Asian culture, known to archaeologists as the Tamboran kingdom. Most deaths from the eruption were from starvation and disease, as the fallout ruined farming in the local region. The death toll was at least 71,000 people, of whom 11,000–12,000 were killed directly by the eruption. The often-cited figure of 92,000 people killed is believed to be overestimated.