The Mothers of Invention. The present day composer refuses to die. Edgar Varèse. Refuses to die. When Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was first performed in Paris there were riots. That even occurred in recent history. Music causing riots? That was in a time when respectable people listened to concerts of Wagner in fashionable Paris opera houses and a Nazi-like seriousness almost destroyed the art-form altogether. It took a youthful Stravinsky and the dada-freaks to revitalize music. Time takes its toll. Stravinsky is now half-dead and does witty interviews for the New York Review of Books and dada (God help us) has been enshrined in the bourgeois emporium on 53rd. street. Well, let's see now why don't we have some ART in the office. Plastic people oh no you're such a drag. (read more)

Source: Charles Ulrich, Eclecticity