Getting estranged from prog

^ but how do you filter all the information?

Guys, if you don't mind this conversation has gone way off-topic.  If you want to continue this discussion about Stravinsky, please make a separate thread in the General Music forum.

If you're asking if any other composer ever wrote a ballet score about a virgin who dances herself to death to appease the gods which featured flat-footed dancing, vigorous rhythms and dissonant octatonic harmonies?  The answer would be probably not.  If that equates to innovation for you, that's fine, but virtually all those separate elements had been used before to one extent or another by previous composers.

I'm not selling anything so you don't need to buy it.  I'm just laying out the facts of the times.  Do your own research and come to your own conclusions.  The fact that it could sound revolutionary without being revolutionary in any way was the whole point I was trying to make.  That, in a nutshell, was Stravinsky's genius.

I did give some examples, but I'll expand a bit here.  

Edited by Trademark - January 22 2009 at 08:43

Come on, sexy dancing causing a problem in France?? They invented sexy dancing.  Anyway Salome was much worse in that respect.  She does this long erotic striptease (the dance of the seven veils) and then plants a wet sloppy kiss on the severed head of John The Baptist.  That didn't even cause a ripple in Paris.  No, the dancing and the dissonance were not the main issues.

Edited by Trademark - January 21 2009 at 21:11

You haven't been lied to, you just haven't been told the whole story.  It certainly wasn't the first piece of its kind.  Strass' Salome and Elektra had both explored very similar themes 3-5 years before.  Alexander Scriabin had been using ocattonic scales (which are fairly common in much Russian folk music) in his piano compositions for several years and Mussorgsy had hinted at the whole primitivism notion in the 1860's, so Bartok wasn't the only other game in town.  In the early 1900's Bartok was still out trudging around the woods in Hungary collecting the folk songs that would later help define his style.  Stravinsky's harmony and rhythms were modern but not ground breaking and were certainly nowhere near unprecedented.

Eh, it's fair enough to nitpick. It's the best way to learn, right? I agree that stravinsky never actually broke any barriers, but he was very innovative. I mean, I've never heard a piece as innovative as the rite of spring. Sure, it is primitivism, and other composers were making primitivist pieces before him, but the rite of spring is in a class of its own. For example, the harmonies he used were pretty much unprecedented, and the rhythms he used were likewise very adventurous. I mean, I've read entire articles just devoted to one chord he created for the song. I agree that a lot of his other work isn't quite so innovative, but I was thinking of the rite of spring when I mentioned his name. If stravinsky were alive today and writing prog, what he would be doing would depend on how old he was . In his youth, he would be breaking down barriers, in his middle age he would be doing symphonic prog, and in his late life he would be hanging out with the avant prog folks and doing derivitive yet superior works. Perhaps beethoven would have been a better example (although people who don't know music history too well might not know how innovative he was). I dislike cage, but steve reich would also have been a better example. 

Edited by Nuke - January 21 2009 at 19:24

Well, I'm not sure that too much innovation makes you lose your identity. I mean, it seems to me like most great bands establish themselves by having a unique sound, by having innovations. I mean, the bands that broke all tradition and just did whatever they pleased have some of the strongest identities. King crimson? Magma? Ulver? Black Sabbath? Miles Davis? Igor Stravinsky? All have broken down barriers, and have established a strong identity. I very much disagree that too much innovation and experimentation makes you lose your identity. I think that as long as all of your music has something in common, something in common that it doesn't have in common with other music, then it will have an identity.

^ sure, breaking down barriers and reinventing genres is nice. But having listened to literally thousands of albums, I realize that - at least for me - it doesn't make sense to look for innovation all the time. At some point, if a band tries too hard to be experimental and innovative, they lose their identity (or fail to establish one in the first place). The really difficult thing is to walk the fine line between innovation and adherence to standards/tradition. And a band has to be creative ... which is entirely possible without being experimental and/or innovative.