Rupert Christiansen

A Riot in Two Parts

The Rite of Spring: The Music of Modernity

By

Apollo 208pp £18.99 order from our bookshop

Over a century after its legendary premiere in Paris in 1913, Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring remains an essential work of modernism. It has been performed on numerous occasions across the world and has been recorded more than 150 times; it has been bastardised and plagiarised in the scores for such films as Fantasia and Psycho; and it has inspired the likes of Frank Zappa, Radiohead, and countless other jazz and rock performers.

Gillian Moore’s succinct, lucid and beautifully illustrated book explains the history of this unique musical phenomenon with a keen sense of its broader significance. She starts with its gestation in the milieu of the Russian diaspora in western Europe during the years preceding the First World War.

Sign Up to our newsletter

Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.

Follow Literary Review on Twitter

  • Last Tweets

    • The mystery of Jack the Ripper's identity has long been agonised over. But what do we know about his victims?… ,
    • A piece of Literary Review history from way back in 1983: John Haffenden talks to the great Iris Murdoch. ,
    • Britain’s only travelling lit fest, the Garden Museum Literary Festival is heading to Houghton Hall, Norfolk, for a… ,
    • 'The 19th-century German sage is not my idea of a pleasant travel companion' goes hiking with Friedr… ,
    • If you want ideas about what to read next, sign up to our free email newsletter, and get book reviews, archive mate… ,
    • 'The heroic male nude could not, I think, be used today to signify civic pride and glory', as Michelangelo’s 'David… ,
    • 'Munch’s later works show us a man liberated from the torments that gave rise to some of the best-known early works… ,
    Follow Us