Austin Jaquith:

>How do you regard Le sacre as a work in history in terms of its
>significance, influence, originality, and/or its musical origins?

The most significant and original thing about it was its irregular
rhythm, involving many meter changes, and emphatic attacks.  A century
before, Beethoven had used slashing chords for emphasis, but in comparison
B's rhytms were quite regular.  I don't think anything like Sacre had
ever been written, in respect to this basic element.  Stravinsky carried
his rhythmic style into his neoclassical period; something that I think
tends to be overlooked.  Even his Baiser de la fee, with melodic origins
in Tchaikovsky, has the characteristic Stravinsky irregular beat.

I don't even hear harmonic dissonance any more, but Stravinsky was surely
influential in setting examples of that, from the time of le Sacre at
least.

I can hear Stravinskian rhythms even in works composed in our time.
I heard a work by Olly Wilson, a few years ago, that was particularly
reminiscent of Le Sacre du printemps, for instance.

Jim Tobin