Joe Queenan’s A-Z of classical music: Q is for quirkiness, R is for Rite of Spring:
It is impossible to list the number of movie scores whose soundtracks are either influenced by or lifted from The Rite of Spring (only Gustav Holst’s The Planets is more routinely borrowed from), but let’s just say this: when that shark showed up in Jaws, Stravinsky helped him get there.
That’s sort of how I perceive much of Zappa’s music: a quirky, hyper-cinematic soundtrack to a movie that is being written by nothing more than your imagination. And with that profound statement out of the way, I think what we need now is giant rabbits.
Yes! More giant rabbits please!
Your wish is my command. :)
By the way Dr Sharl, may I congratulate you on having posted the 11,000th comment on this blog? Huzza!
heeeeey! the 11,000th!!! Pe pe pepepepe, pe pe..!
I’d say Petrushka might be even more influential in the movie-soundtrack sense than The Rite. It’s hard to imagine musical life before them, but that piece actually invented several of what Frank called ‘musical icons’ which are in hundreds of movies, and especially cartoons: skittering xylophones and quizzical woodwind figures.
Now, I’ve given you a good excuse to listen to Petrushka (my real aim)!
Rite of Spring?
Stravinsky?
He was born in 1880, + some.
Where are the new ones?
That’s kind of the problem – there aren’t new ones. Varese, but he’s the same age as Igor. Maybe Penderecki? Hollywood movie music, like the movies they adorn, is pretty fucking stale.