CLASSICAL CLANGERS
Don’t play it again? Marion McMullen looks at classical music that has caused discord
LAST Night Of The Proms favourites Land Of Hope And Glory and Rule Britannia sparked a row this week because of the perceived association the traditional anthems have with colonialism and slavery. The BBC has confirmed orchestral versions without vocals will be performed at the famous concert on September 12.
THE Rite Of Spring, by Igor Stravinsky, pictured below, caused a riot when it opened in Paris in 1913. The ballet featured a pagan sacrifice and Stravinsky’s music was described as savage. The composer said the trouble began after the overture, “when the curtain opened on the group of knockkneed and long-braided lolitas jumping up and down”.
BACH’S choral orchestral work, the St John Passion, has led to protests and accusations of it being antiSemitic. The phrase “the Jews” is repeated 70 times in the 110-minute work. There was a student protest at Swarthmore College in America in 1995, and a rabbi picketed a performance at the Oregon Bach Festival in 2000.
TYPEWRITERS, a foghorn, sirens and clanking milk bottles featured in eccentric composer Erik Satie’s ballet, Parade, in 1917. Picasso designed the sets and costume and writer Jean Cocteau came up with the scenario, but the piece divided the audience in Paris. Some threw oranges at the stage and there was a riot outside the concert hall.
THE audience began leaving during the 1926 performance, in Cologne, of The Miraculous Mandarin by Béla Bartók. The ballet, about three tramps who use a girl to lure victims for them to rob, was also banned for a while on moral grounds.
IT WAS not Claude Debussy’s music for Prélude à l’après midi d’un faune (The Afternoon Of A Faun) that was the problem in 1912, but dancer Vaslav Nijinsky’s sexualised performance. The piece was both booed and applauded on the opening night, with one critic calling the choreography “filthy”.
RICHARD STRAUSS’S opera Salome was banned in Vienna until 1918 because of its infamous Dance Of The Seven Veils (inset, performed here by famous spy Mata Hari). The work was also banned in London until 1907, and performances in America were cancelled the same year.
NEW Yorkers showed their dislike for Four Organs by Steve Reich, below, in 1970, with boos and yells, while one elderly woman banged the stage with her shoe, saying, “Stop, stop, I confess.” The piece was written for four Hammond organs and maracas.
JOHN CAGE baffled critics when he brought out 4’33” in 1952. The entire piece is silent and it confused the audience when it was first performed. Cage said afterwards: “They missed the point.”
MARK ANTHONY TURNAGE’S opera Anna Nicole, about the former Playboy model, below left, who married an 89-year-old billionaire, provoked controversy when it was performed at London’s Royal Opera House in 2011. It received mixed reviews and friends and family of the TV personality, who died in 2007, described it as “cruel”.