Listening to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring gives me the impression of being in the grip of a kind of external, objective process. In this way, it succeeds in creating a musical representation of ritualistic compulsion. For the most part, Stravinsky does this through the rhythmic dimension. Here Stravinsky systematically violates our expectations, in such a way as to force the listener to take a more passive relationship to the music.

The emphatic insistence of the ever-unpredictable beat commands the listener’s attention and organizes the development of the music. Especially in the second part, everything else in the music seems transitory and secondary. The absence of a single tonal center intensifies the music’s reliance on rhythmic development. Hence its sense of totality and of submission, which lend themselves so well to the music’s task of representing ritualistically sanctioned violence.