John Sheldon's photos with the keyword: Stravinsky

One of the most innovative and influential of western musicians, his musical ideas are still heard with alarming frequency in 'new' film and TV scores. His dates were 1882-1971 and he composed until 1968. Vesna Svyashchenaya, ' Spring the Sacred' or Le Sacre du Printemps (Scenes from Pagan Russia) provoked a famous riot when first performed in Paris in 1913.

Picture created using layers. The ballet Rite (or Coronation) of Spring by Igor Stravinsky, Nicolas Roerich and Vaslav Nijinsky was first performed in Paris in May 1913. As well as provoking a riot, it seismically shifted the direction of Western music. The scene is Pagan Russia, tribes of people come together to carry out ceremonies, venerate their ancestors and elders and choose a young girl who will have the honour of dancing herself to death to ensure a good harvest. In my picture the spring growth, dancing wildly in the wind, sprouts from the music score of the Sacrificial Dance and the ground is symbolically stained red. The message, in 1913 and 2013, is that no matter how sophisticated your industry and technology is, if the harvest fails you are in trouble. The ballet reflects a time when people were so aware of this that they were prepared to sacrifice something of utmost value to ensure a good harvest. We lose contact with the soil that feeds us at our peril. There are about 100 recordings of this music currently available, countless more archive recordings. Encountering it in my mid-teens, I abandoned rock and pop music as just too tame.