The Rite of Spring’s Reception and Influence on Heavy Metal

David Burke (University of Southampton)

In 1913, on the cusp of the First World War, a ballet played in Paris for the first
time. The Rite of Spring followed Igor Stravinsky's successful Firebird and
Petrushka, but had a very different effect on its first audience to that of its
predecessors; fights broke out during the performance to the extent that the music was
inaudible and critics took pains to savage Stravinsky and choreographer Vaslav
Nijinsky in the press. Its subject matter, like the cause of the conflict it prefaced, took
influences from a violent and primitive past that loomed large over European culture,
and the emergence of such visceral behaviours in musical and dance performance led
to controversy in European high society. This study will examine the premiere of the
Rite, whilst also considering several other sites of reception such as the 1920 Paris
revival, later performances, and recorded editions. Taking influence from both
Richard Taruskin and Peter Hill, it will be demonstrated that by delivering ‘perfect’
renditions, the primal and violent nature of the composition has been neutered and
recording such performances has added to this effect. However, the currents
introduced by Stravinsky live on in heavy metal music both in the genre’s use of
disorienting and abrasive musical elements, and in its fascination with controversial
and fantastical themes. This study will draw particular comparisons with progressive
metal band Meshuggah, whose compositional techniques borrow from ideas laid out
in the Rite whilst mirroring and developing its themes and imagery. Their utilisation
of polyrhythms and dissonance within note-perfect performances sees the chaos of the
Rite displaced into the band’s distorted tone, whilst their lyrics and aesthetic suggest
fears of a dystopian future, as opposed to the Rite’s echoes of a brutal and uncivilised
past.
Stravinsky’s contemporaries were certainly shocked when they first heard the
Rite performed. Pierre Monteux, who conducted the premiere, wrote regarding a
piano reduction of the score that ‘The very walls resounded as Stravinsky pounded
away…I was convinced he was raving mad’.1 Similarly, Louis Laloy describes being

1
Pierre Monteux, in Peter Hill, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), p. 27.

49
‘overwhelmed by this hurricane which had come from the depths of the ages’.2 Both
descriptions characterise the piece as one of tremendous force, with Monteux also
mentioning the extreme demands it placed on the performer and audience: ‘By the
time [Stravinsky] had reached the second tableau, his face was completely covered
with sweat […]. I did not understand one note…my one desire was to flee that
room’.3 Considering that both accounts refer to performances played on piano as
opposed to full orchestra, it is clear that the Rite was intended to overwhelm its first
audiences with its savage yet complex composition, combined with a ferocious
performance style. Hill comments that Stravinsky’s ‘unprecedented features’ included
the combination of multiple melodic and rhythmic layers, ‘in such a way that they
retain a reptilian indifference to one another’, which evoke a ‘lack of sentiment or
‘pity’’, strongly contrasted to the aesthetic of the Romantic movement which had
dominated the late 19th century.4 When combined with Roerich’s imagery of a primal,
pagan and authentic Russia (as opposed to the ‘made-for-export’ Russianness of
Firebird), the overall effect was a savage and bewildering experience that challenged
its audience’s conception of compositional technique.5
Although the Rite’s first production did receive praise from critics and
journalists, some of the most prominent comments were also the most damning; H.
Colles wrote in The Times that Stravinsky's work was ‘more intentionally bizarre than
sincere [...]. [If he] had wished to be really primitive, he would have been wise to [...]
score his ballet for nothing but drums.’6 Worse, in many cases critics focused entirely
upon Nijinsky’s choreography and the reactions of the crowd to the music. Amidst
this negative reception, Stravinsky confided to Diaghilev that ‘people who were full
of enthusiasm for my earlier works have turned against this one. [...] enough about 'Le
Sacre'. It makes me miserable.’7 It could certainly be argued that Stravinsky, by now
used to congratulatory recognition, resented Nijinsky for the comparative attention he
received.8 It would not be until a year later, when Monteux conducted a performance

2
Louis Laloy, in Hill, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, p. 27.
3
Ibid, p.27.
4
Ibid, p. 53.
5
Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996),
pp. 849, 891.
6
H. Colles, The Times, 12 July 1913, in Hill, p. 96.
7
Richard Taruskin, ‘Shocker Cools into a “Rite” of Passage’, New York Times, 16 September 2012.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/arts/music/rite-of-spring-cools-into-a-rite-of-passage.html>
[Accessed 20 October 2018].
8
Hill, p.116.

50
without dancers, that Stravinsky described the Rite as a ‘triumph’.9 Following the
premiere, Stravinsky sought to distance himself from the choreography by claiming a
celebratory article he had written for Montjoie! ahead of the May 29th performance
was not his.10 For Stravinsky, the content of the article was problematic; it delved
deeply into the symbolism that Stravinsky had developed with Roerich, and also
described Nijinsky as ‘the ideal collaborator.’ This denial began Stravinsky’s process
of suppressing the original influences of the Rite in its subsequent performances.
The controversy of the Rite’s premiere began a dramatic turn by its composer
away from the naturalistic, primal sound and message of the piece itself, towards a
vision of the work separated from the ballet for which it had been composed, as an
‘objective construction’ that has ‘no story and no subject.’11 These quotations derive
from Stravinsky's statements concerning the 1920 Paris revival of the Rite, which was
performed in a very different context to that of the debut. The First World War had
come to a close and the Bolsheviks had deposed the Tsar, which would have rendered
the savage and quasi-nationalist tale embedded in the Rite a controversial narrative to
perform.12 At the same time, European culture was beginning to experience an era of
free cultural expression, which in part had been inspired by the Rite’s performances
seven years before. This new imagining of the Rite was taken by Stravinsky as an
opportunity to redefine the piece as a modern classic, free from the ‘shock and awe’
that accompanied the 1913 performances. The choreography, now arranged by
Massine, was proclaimed to be ‘constructed freely on the music’, with Nijinsky’s
influence removed.13 Hill also argues that Stravinsky’s developing enmity toward
Nijinsky played a role in this subduing of the Rite’s visceral features in favour of a
more ‘architectonic’ approach that eschewed the pagan symbolism of the original
collaboration.14 By the mid-1930s, Stravinsky had attempted to diminish the role of
Nijinsky even further, denouncing the ‘knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas’ who
had delivered the 1913 performances and claiming that the choreographer ‘knew
nothing of music’.15 This defamatory approach was combined with pronouncements

9
Taruskin, ‘Shocker’.
10
Hill, pp. 112–13.
11
Ibid, pp. 110–11.
12
Taruskin, ‘Shocker’.
13
Stravinsky, in Hill, p. 111.
14
Taruskin, ‘Shocker’; Hill, pp. 105–11.
15
Stravinsky, in Hill, p. 111; Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography (London: Victor Gollancz, 1936), p.
40.

51
that the piece ‘gains by being played in concert’ without the accompaniment of the
dancers for which the score was originally set.16 Taruskin suggests that this process
formed a ‘resistance’ to the original intent of the piece and served to obscure the
primal vision envisioned by Stravinsky and developed by Roerich.17
Successive ballet directors since the premiere have extended this resistance to
a visceral, chaotic Rite. Rather than attempting to capture its original primal
expression, post-war productions focused heavily on the erotic aspects of the dance,
such as the 1957 Berlin and 1959 Brussels renditions. The 1965 Bolshoi production
downplayed religious imagery in favour of a heroic Soviet who saves the victim and
plunges a dagger into the idol; Taruskin describes this as ‘the clumsiest attempt’ at
removing the original subject matter.18 He also notes that the 1987 Joffrey Ballet
production, which claimed to revive the harshness of the original, ‘allowed a bit of
sentimentality to seep in […] when the victim tries repeatedly to break out of the
circle of elders.’19 The lead dancer showing complete submission to the will of the
tribe, according to Taruskin, is what fills modern audiences with horror. Her sacrifice
reveals a willing abandonment of individual agency, and devotion to gods that (to
modern audiences) do not exist and to a social unit that enforces her death without
ethical qualms. These traits formed a pre-modern challenge to Enlightenment ideals
of personal free will, empirical discovery, and rational methods of ascertaining justice
and truth, and to see them recalled alongside a thoroughly modern compositional style
created a jarring contrast. This can be compared to Stravinsky’s contemporaries such
as Picasso, who was influenced by the 1907 Trocadero exhibition of African art in his
development of cubism, and, in doing so, combined modern techniques with
‘primitive’ culture to create art that challenged even Impressionism with its
deconstruction of shape and form.20
Whilst some ballet productions sought to remove the more horrifying aspects
of the Rite, the legacy of Stravinsky’s preference for concert-only renditions produced
a different effect. As the piece became established as one of the most influential
pieces of the 20th Century (Taruskin compares it to Beethoven’s 9th in the 19th

16
Stravinsky, in Hill, p. 111.
17
Taruskin, ‘Shocker’.
18
Taruskin, ‘Shocker’.
19
Ibid.
20
Nadeen Pennisi, ‘Picasso and Africa: How African Art Influenced Pablo Picasso and His Work’
<https://www.palmbeachstate.edu/honors/Documents/Picasso_and_Africa_How_African_Art_Influenc
ed_Pablo_Picasso_and_His_Work_NadeenPennisi.pdf> [Accessed 9 October 2018].

52
Century), orchestras began to use it to display their technical prowess. It is now so
accepted in the repertory, and so established as a metric for performance, that ‘any
conservatory orchestra can give a fleet and spiffy performance of what used to stump
their elders’, with the focus being on delivering a ‘fluent and rhythmically secure’
performance.21 Whilst the earliest recordings conducted by Monteux were ‘sweaty
and sloppy’, Leonard Bernstein’s recital with the London Symphony Orchestra is
note-perfect, every musician playing in lock-step, despite the conductor’s exertions
being clear in the sweat he wipes from his brow between movements.22 Not only is
the contrast between music and dance removed entirely, but by creating a ‘perfect’
performed version of the Rite, the chaotic nature of the original performances has
been lost. In effect, only Bernstein, who forgoes the use of a score during the
performance, is recreating the frantic energy of the premiere. Interestingly, Hill
concludes in his analysis of multiple recorded versions of the piece that ‘comparison
between the pioneer performances and succeeding generations reveals a marked loss
of character’, whilst one of the best performances comes from the USSR State
Symphony orchestra in 1962: ‘the orchestra sounds as though it has just encountered
the Rite […] seems to have recaptured the shattering newness of 1913’.23
This can be extended further; all recorded versions of the Rite are adding to
the interpretation of the piece as having a ‘correctly performed’ version, as the ability
to replay the same work without any alteration removes any uncertainty from the
reception. This turns the ‘welter[s] of competing lines’ from a bewildering assault of
noise into an object of technical analysis, which counters the original intent of the
work.24 Further, listeners can now choose between recorded versions based on their
personal preference and repeatedly listen to a piece until it can be followed or
memorised, which similarly serves to diminish the Rite’s potential for shock.
Although this could be expanded to cover much of 20th Century avant-garde music,
the Rite’s case is perhaps more unusual due to Stravinsky’s deliberate encouragement
of its normalisation. The fact that a listener can also manipulate playback using
modern devices enhances this effect; not only could this make preferred sections less
alien (especially if slowed down so the individual parts can be heard more distinctly),

21
Taruskin, ‘Shocker’.
22
Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring, London Symphony Orchestra, cond. by Leonard Bernstein
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9M2oTHa3GM> [Accessed 5 March 2018].
23
Hill, pp. 138–39.
24
Ibid, p. 53.

53
but listeners can also forgo sections of a piece, in doing so altering its content and
effect. For the Rite, this serves to diminish its shocking and chaotic aspects yet
further. The use of the Rite as backing music for visual media can also be considered
as part of a sanitising process as it has been employed for such diverse productions as
John Waters’ Mondo Trasho (1969) and the videogame Crash Tag Team Racing,
which have no overt relation to the pagan dance ritual portrayed in the ballet —
although it could be argued that both draw on chaos and transgression, which would
explain the Rite’s inclusion.
Despite the issues presented by the Rite’s legacy its influence has spread
across the musical world and emerged, perhaps most faithfully to its original
renditions, in heavy metal. Metallica began citing the influence of the Rite in their
mid-1990s interviews as a major influence alongside metal bands such as Iron
Maiden. It has also been noted in documentaries such as Heavy Metal Britannia that
the scale and power of symphonic music was an influence on early metal musicians;
this places heavy metal aside from much popular music in terms of its compositional
ambition and scale.25 Stravinsky’s usage of dissonance and complex rhythms marks
him as a composer of particular interest, as does the Rite’s thematic association with
paganism, violence and mortality. Genres such as grindcore, which feature extremely
fast tempi, growled vocals and punk-influenced guitar riffs, can be seen to be
implementing the ‘sloppy’ and chaotic performances of the Rite’s premiere, whilst
black metal artists’ abiding interest in natural environments combined with the
genre’s abrasive textures can also be seen to draw influence from Stravinsky and
Roerich’s initial visions of a primitive and thus ‘natural’ Russia (in comparison to the
comparably industrialised state within which both men lived and worked).
Some of the most interesting parallels can be found in the music of
Meshuggah, a Swedish band who are widely renowned for their complex and extreme
compositional style. Like Stravinsky, their songs often employ riffs (or ostinati) that
overlap and shift in order to keep the piece unpredictable, and guitar solos are largely
played in a jazz fusion-based style which disregards conventional melody.
Structurally, many of their songs also avoid verse-chorus patterns in favour of a more
abstract form where one set of riffs will follow another, thereby bearing similarity to

25
Zachary Wallmark, ‘Stravinsky and Heavy Metal’,
<https://taruskinchallenge.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/stravinsky-and-heavy-metal/> [Accessed 5
March 2018]; Heavy Metal Britannia, dir. by Chris Rodley (BBC4, 2010).

54
20th-century compositional techniques as opposed to pop songwriting. Despite the
band only using five instruments and occasional electronic effects, the sound is
extremely dense, relying on a combination of low tunings, high distortion levels and
the use of droning root notes in compositions. Their drummer often plays in two time
signatures simultaneously, which also aids in disorienting new listeners. Moreover,
the band’s use of pinched harmonics and chromatic melodies alongside dense chords
are often reminiscent of Stravinsky’s experiments in bitonality and dissonance, and
his combination of high and low-pitched melodies, such as in Symphony of Psalms
(1930). The stabbing chords in Augurs of Spring, the best-known section of the Rite,
are paid homage in 2008’s Bleed, which features an opening riff which is strongly
reminiscent of the off-kilter accents in Stravinsky’s work:
Figure 1: Opening guitar melody to Bleed by Meshuggah.
Note that the drums play in 4/4 whilst the guitar plays in 23/16

Figure 2: Opening bars in Augurs of Spring from The Rite of Spring

55
Both focus on hammering a single chord, using polyrhythms in order to disorient the
listener, alongside accented notes which appear to contravene the established time
signature, whilst also using the constant repetition of one pitch to create a dense,
aggressive texture.26 During a guitar solo in Bleed, the rhythm guitars play a riff
which is not only polyrhythmic, but continually changes both melodically and
rhythmically over 31 bars; a comparison could easily be drawn with the shifting,
timpani-led Sacrificial Dance from the Rite.27 However, Meshuggah do not employ
bitonality in Bleed as Stravinsky does in Augurs, but instead use the tones generated
by their amplifiers and effects modules to create dissonance and harmonic tension.
The band also appear to pay homage to Stravinsky on 2001’s Spasm, which features a
modified version of the cor anglais melody from Augurs of Spring in 6/4,
accompanied by a riff in 7/4:

Figure 3: Opening guitar melodies in Spasm by Meshuggah

Figure 4: Cor anglais melody in Augurs of Spring

26
Wallmark.
27
Stuart XIV, ‘Bleed Guitar Pro Tab by Meshuggah’
<https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/meshuggah/bleed_guitar_pro_1250923> [Accessed 23 June
2018].

56
In both cases a root note is established and connected with dissonant intervals, which
provide a more tuneful contrast to the textural chords both melodies accompany,
without providing audiences with easily-identifiable harmonic resolutions. From these
examples it is arguable that Meshuggah are influenced by many of the techniques
pioneered by Stravinsky, particularly in the use of seemingly-chaotic rhythms and
melodic patterns. The band are one of the more unique heavy metal acts due to their
use of these elements, with many of their contemporaries preferring more
conventional song structures, melodies and rhythms. Although the group are clearly
influenced by a wide range of musical movements in addition to Stravinsky, their
repeated use of techniques he pioneered makes them a particularly notable example of
metal’s adoption of the Rite’s compositional style.
However, the group’s live concerts are almost the opposite of the Rite’s most
chaotic performances; the band plays to a click-track so that every note is perfectly
synchronised, whilst their lighting engineer also works live to create a visual
experience which directly matches the audio. The spotlights move in time to the
melody being played, even at fast tempi such as in Bleed, which uses demi-
semiquavers at 115 beats per minute for the majority of the piece’s 7-minute duration.
Although this perfectionism seems to complicate the notion of Meshuggah’s
similarity to the Rite, it can be argued that the band mirror the spirit of dissonant early
20th Century music. Whilst Stravinsky had to hammer at the piano to the extent that
he was close to ‘having a syncope’ in order to achieve his desired effect, Meshuggah
can create enormous volume and distortion by using modern sound technologies
(allowing them – delete) to easily create the visceral sounds envisaged for the Rite’s
premiere.28 They have also re-recorded one of their albums in order to take advantage
of eight-stringed guitars, which provide a darker and denser sound than seven-string
models. The visceral and primal characteristics of the Rite have essentially been
transferred into the timbral and textural aspects of Meshuggah’s work whilst
maintaining a unified rhythm, all of which is made possible by modern technology, a
force which the Rite arguably opposes with its invocation of pre-civilised Russian
paganism. Of particular note is the singer, whose scream often maintains a single
pitch throughout entire songs, but the sheer amount of distortion created by the
scream allows the sound to cover a wide harmonic range, overwhelming audiences

28
Monteux, in Hill, p. 27.

57
with noise. This aspect of Meshuggah’s style demonstrates some absorption of
Stravinsky’s techniques concerning grandiose volume and aggressive performance,
whilst altering their utilisation to the point of developing meanings independent (and
almost contradictory), but still related to, the Rite.
The primitive, unearthly narrative and imagery used in the Rite to provoke its
cosmopolitan audience is likewise both employed and altered in Meshuggah’s work.
Their aesthetic focuses, instead of the primitive, on a dystopian, technologically-
driven future, such as in tracks entitled Future Breed Machine and The Demon’s
Name is Surveillance. This can be seen to build upon other heavy metal bands’
anxieties surrounding technology, such as Megadeth’s Rust In Peace which
prominently discusses the effects of nuclear war. Similarly, Meshuggah direct the
focus of their lyrics and aesthetics particularly towards future as opposed to present
fears. Whilst some of the group’s album artworks make reference to religious imagery
(such as the cover to Koloss), other covers make reference to technological
accelerationism and the pressures of modernity upon the industrialised world’s
collective psyche. This can be compared to Roerich’s use of traditional Russian decor
and costume in the Rite; both works are attempting to bring a temporal and spatial
non-present component into industrialised liberal society, with an aim to disrupt that
society through shocking its constituents.
The band’s lyrics often rely on a multi-syllabic and complex vocabulary such
as in Rational Gaze: ‘Lacerating pains of degeneration speed through your trembling
mind / Still, in machine-like strife you gain another mile / The temporary elusive goal:
To reach the solace, to feed once more upon the synthetic reaper of loss.’29 On Future
Breed Machine the lyrics feature ‘synthetic souls, mass-produced, hammered into
shape […] symbols of perfection/Humanoids ruined by your laws, destroy erase
improve,’ which describes an industrial process as applied to biology (reflected in the
Destroy Erase Improve artwork below).30 As mentioned, the group’s singer often
delivers whole verses in one screamed pitch, which adds to the technologically-
inspired aesthetic which is also revealed in the band’s repetitive-yet-complex writing
style. By contrast, the Rite features no lyrics but instead relies on stage design and
choreography to deliver the narrative aspects of the work, which further conveys its
premodern, distant setting. By including complex, futuristic lyrics which border on

29
Meshuggah, ‘Rational Gaze’, in Nothing, (Nuclear Blast, 2002).
30
Meshuggah, ‘Future Breed Machine’, in Destroy Erase Improve (Nuclear Blast, 1995).

58
prose-poetry Meshuggah are able to confront the Rite’s original themes and instead
focus on a modern or future world in which jargon and information are
overwhelming, whilst maintaining Stravinsky’s sentiments surrounding fear of the
unknown, mortality and social destruction.

Figure 5: Meshuggah album artworks (clockwise from top right): Destroy Erase
Improve (1995), Chaosphere (1998), Koloss (2012), Nothing (2002)

Both Meshuggah and the Rite represent concepts to which contemporary

31
Noel Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, (London: Routledge, 1990), p. 207.

59
surveillance society and the loss of individual identity in an increasingly complex
world. In this way, the two works (the Rite and Meshuggah’s discography) represent
the anxieties that characterised the beginning and end of the short 20th century —
which can be summarised as sharing fear of a temporally non-present unknown. The
singer’s near-monotonous bark and the impressive synchronicity of the musicians also
add to the effect of the band as being somewhat mechanical and thus ‘pitiless’, just as
the Rite was described as lacking sympathy towards its protagonist’s fate. This
mechanical characteristic also allows the band to circumvent the issues raised by the
Rite’s reception such as later recordings or differing interpretations within
performance; the shocking thing about the band is that only five people can produce
such a massive and complex sound and reproduce this perfectly at every live
performance. This contrasts with the shock of the Rite that derived from its disregard
of musical and choreographic ‘syntax which we have been brought up to regard as
logical and inevitable.’32 As Meshuggah are not committing the same transgression –
rather, they bring such musical devices to a different audience – the disregard of
syntax is superseded by the perfectionism of the musicians within a popular music
style, and the compelling challenges of complex songwriting and heavy timbres.
This study does not wish to argue with Hill or Taruskin’s analyses that the
Rite has undergone a process of acceptance by the wider musical community, and that
in doing so some of its character has been lost. Indeed, it has underlined that thanks to
Stravinsky’s own efforts to separate the music from the imagery and choreography
which originally surrounded it, the piece has become a staple of orchestral
performances which rarely encompass the imperfect and chaotic aspects that made the
original renditions so vital. However, this study has gone further by suggesting that
the 20th century did not just normalise the piece through studious rehearsals and
removing the dancers; modern means of reproducing music has converted the Rite
into a mere fragment of the cultural landscape, subject to manipulation upon reception
just like any other piece of music. Despite the process of normalisation that befell the
work, the characteristics which gave the Rite such an impressive impact in 1913 have
lived on, and been re-imagined in a range of diverse ways, with Meshuggah being one
of the most interesting interpretations. Heavy metal music has particularly absorbed
Stravinsky’s approach to texture and performative attack, and arguably delivers the

32
Hill, p. 44.

60
vision of shocking, unbridled power that Laloy was subjected to before the Rite’s
premiere; bands such as Meshuggah have used modern technology to take this vision
into ever-louder and newer territory.

Works Cited:
‘Bleed Guitar Pro Tab by Meshuggah’
<https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/meshuggah/bleed_guitar_pro_1250923>
[Accessed 20/10/18]
Carroll, Noel, The Philosophy of Horror (London: Routledge, 1990)
Hill, Peter, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2000)
Meshuggah, Destroy Erase Improve (Nuclear Blast, 1995)
—— Nothing (Nuclear Blast, 2002)
—— Chaosphere (Nuclear Blast, 1998)
—— Koloss (Nuclear Blast, 2012)
Pennisi, Nadeen, ‘Picasso and Africa: How African Art Influenced Pablo Picasso and
His Work’
<https://www.palmbeachstate.edu/honors/Documents/Picasso_and_Africa_
How_African_Art_Influeced_Pablo_Picasso_and_His_Work_NadeenPennisi.
pdf> [Accessed 9 October 2018].
Rodley, Chris, Heavy Metal Britannia (BBC4, 2010)
‘Spasm Guitar Pro Tab by Meshuggah’
<https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/meshuggah/spasm_guitar_pro_816811>
[Accessed 20 October 2018]
Stravinsky, Igor, An Autobiography (London: Victor Gollancz, 1936)
—— The Rite of Spring, London Symphony Orchestra, cond. by Leonard Bernstein
(BBC1, 1967)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9M2oTHa3GM [Accessed 20 October
2018].
—— The Rite of Spring, Joffrey Ballet (Music Center, 1987)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF1OQkHybEQ> [Accessed 20 October
2018]
—— The Rite of Spring, Les Siècles, cond. by François-Xavier Roth (BBC1, 2013)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq1q6u3mLSM> [Accessed 20 October
2018]
—— The Rite of Spring in Full Score, (Mineola: Dover Productions, 1989)
<http://www.petruccilibrary.us/files/imglnks/music_files/PMLUS00725-
complete1.pdf> [Accessed 20 October 2018]
Stuart XIV, ‘Bleed Guitar Pro Tab by Meshuggah’
<https://tabs.ultimate-guitar.com/tab/meshuggah/bleed_guitar_pro_1250923>
[Accessed 23 June 2018].
Taruskin, Richard, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1996)
—— ‘Shocker Cools into a ‘Rite’ of Passage’, New York Times, 16 September 2012
<http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/16/arts/music/rite-of-spring-cools-into-a-
rite-of-passage.html> [Accessed 20 October 2018]

61
Wallmark, Zachary ‘Stravinsky and Heavy Metal’
<https://taruskinchallenge.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/stravinsky-and-heavy-
metal/> [Accessed 20 October 2018]

62