The man who wrote the Rite. Today, the internet is bursting with articles commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Rite of Spring. So here’s my contribution: an essay I wrote for the May issue of Literary Review of Canada about Stravinsky’s masterpiece and its influence over 20th-century music.
Claude Debussy famously described Richard Wagner’s music as “a beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.”
The French composer wasn’t the only one who saw Wagner as the culmination of an old era, rather than the beginning of a new one. Friedrich Nietzsche called Wagner’s music “the song of a dying swan.” And the Austrian critic Eduard Hanslick wrote, “Wagner’s art recognizes only superlatives, and a superlative has no future. It is an end, not a beginning.”
Claude Debussy famously described Richard Wagner’s music as “a beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.”
The French composer wasn’t the only one who saw Wagner as the culmination of an old era, rather than the beginning of a new one. Friedrich Nietzsche called Wagner’s music “the song of a dying swan.” And the Austrian critic Eduard Hanslick wrote, “Wagner’s art recognizes only superlatives, and a superlative has no future. It is an end, not a beginning.”
RSS Feed
