# Why Do We Even Listen To New Music? (Article)



## MatthewWeflen (Jan 24, 2019)

This was a really fun article, titled "Why Do We Even Listen To New Music?"

It has a hilarious recounting of the premiere of Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring."



> Many members of the audience could not fathom this new music; their brains-figuratively, but to a certain extent, literally-broke. A brawl ensued, vegetables were thrown, and 40 people were ejected from the theater. It was a fiasco consonant with Stravinsky's full-bore attack on the received history of classical music, and thus, every delicate sense in the room. "One literally could not, throughout the whole performance, hear the sound of music," Gertrude Stein recalled in her memoir. The famous Italian opera composer Giacamo Puccini described the performance to the press as "sheer cacophony." The critic for the daily newspaper Le Figaro noted that it was a piece of "laborious and puerile barbarity."


https://pitchfork.com/features/article/listen-to-music/


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## Knorf (Jan 16, 2020)

Excellent article! 

"What is unheard of could define history—might as well come for the show."

Indeed!


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

So true, that article. I’m especially prone to this - I have all the time in the world in quarantine to explore new music, but what do I do? Listen to old favorites over and over...


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Uh, because some of it is actually good?


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