Fantasian Stravinsky
I'm listening to "The Rite of Spring" by Alexander Stravinsky. I downloaded it off the iTunes store some time back, after seeing it mentioned in the Wikipedia article about unusual time signatures. Then I forgot about it until just now.
Anyhow, I was listening to it again, and thinking how much I like the song. The first section especially, "The Adoration of the Earth", disturbs me in an almost Lovecraftian manner. The later sections, which are more violent, are easier to categorize, but that high warbling oboe at the start of The Adoration seems wrong in a much more subtle way.
Since Wikipedia recommended the track to me in the first place, I decided to go look at the Wikipedia article about it for more insight. And when I did, I was shocked and disappointed to find out that it was used as the soundtrack for one of the segments in Disney's bland 1941 experiment "Fantasia". It was apparently paired with a cartoon about "a pageant, as the story of the growth of life on Earth", which I vaguely remember as an ill-informed 1930s technicolor sketch about evolution.
To think of a piece as disturbing as "The Rite of Spring" bowdlerized into a Fantasia sketch about dinosaurs makes me vaguely nauseous. Sure, animals are violent to one another, but Disney's nature-documentary take on it makes this actually wholesome, virtually the opposite of Lovecraftian. Which is just wrong. And besides, the piece didn't need an imaginative illustration; it was written for a ballet, so it has a very clear plot. It is about a human sacrifice. Now if they had put that in Fantasia, maybe I'd have a little more respect for the movie.
But then, I haven't watched Fantasia since I was a kid. I've come to appreciate most of the old Disney animated films a lot more as an adult than I did as a child, so perhaps Fantasia will be the same. One of these days I'll reactivate my NetFlix account, and then sooner or later Fantasia will get to the top of my queue and I'll find out.
In the meantime, I'm glad I had the chance to discover and interpret this piece on my own, before it was irrevocably linked with the Disney animation in my mind. Perhaps I should find out what other pieces are in Fantasia and listen to them separately as well. It's certainly already too late for me break the association between Dukas' "L'apprenti sorcier" and Mickey Mouse as The Sorceror's Apprentice.
Anyhow, I was listening to it again, and thinking how much I like the song. The first section especially, "The Adoration of the Earth", disturbs me in an almost Lovecraftian manner. The later sections, which are more violent, are easier to categorize, but that high warbling oboe at the start of The Adoration seems wrong in a much more subtle way.
Since Wikipedia recommended the track to me in the first place, I decided to go look at the Wikipedia article about it for more insight. And when I did, I was shocked and disappointed to find out that it was used as the soundtrack for one of the segments in Disney's bland 1941 experiment "Fantasia". It was apparently paired with a cartoon about "a pageant, as the story of the growth of life on Earth", which I vaguely remember as an ill-informed 1930s technicolor sketch about evolution.
To think of a piece as disturbing as "The Rite of Spring" bowdlerized into a Fantasia sketch about dinosaurs makes me vaguely nauseous. Sure, animals are violent to one another, but Disney's nature-documentary take on it makes this actually wholesome, virtually the opposite of Lovecraftian. Which is just wrong. And besides, the piece didn't need an imaginative illustration; it was written for a ballet, so it has a very clear plot. It is about a human sacrifice. Now if they had put that in Fantasia, maybe I'd have a little more respect for the movie.
But then, I haven't watched Fantasia since I was a kid. I've come to appreciate most of the old Disney animated films a lot more as an adult than I did as a child, so perhaps Fantasia will be the same. One of these days I'll reactivate my NetFlix account, and then sooner or later Fantasia will get to the top of my queue and I'll find out.
In the meantime, I'm glad I had the chance to discover and interpret this piece on my own, before it was irrevocably linked with the Disney animation in my mind. Perhaps I should find out what other pieces are in Fantasia and listen to them separately as well. It's certainly already too late for me break the association between Dukas' "L'apprenti sorcier" and Mickey Mouse as The Sorceror's Apprentice.