Stravinsky: “The Rite of Spring”

From the soft uneasiness of the introduction to its final frenzied death-dance, “The Rite of Spring” is inundated with a sense of impending doom. Desperation, hysteria, madness, helplessness — listening to it felt a bit like having a bad dream. So I wanted to choose an piece of art that could fully embody the illogical but overwhelming sense of dread that comes with every nightmare.

To me, Goya’s Black Paintings came to mind. The one that I felt best suited this piece was “A Pilgrimage to San Isidro”. Distorted faces, half agonized, half ecstatic, meld together into a sickly mess just as the strings’ melodies blur uneasily into one another. The crowd, driven by some compulsion we do not understand, marches into the hills; many cry out, their voices mimicking the cacophony of horns and drums in Stravinsky’s piece. There is chaos and madness in this painting, but there is also an eerie stillness in the grey bleakness of the hills, reminiscent of the introduction in the symphony.

Both “The Rite of Spring” and “A Pilgrimage to San Isidro” are unsettling pieces of art. But art is not always intended to soothe — and the results of Stravinsky’s and Goya’s efforts were masterpieces whose impact on Western art will be felt for generations.

Jane Pan, Applied Mathematics, SEAS ’21