As the Seasons Change

Have you ever listened to a piece of music that struck you as so off-putting that you had to leave the room, or worse, so overstimulating that you were ready to scream? You wouldn’t be alone! As Parisian audiences flooded into the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on May 29, 1913, to hear Stravinsky’s latest ballet, they expected another rich, post-romantic fantasy like The Firebird or Petrushka. Instead, they received a mix of constantly changing time signatures and multiple harmonies happening simultaneously that resulted in an infamous riot of high society. They were the first to hear The Rite of Spring.

But the riot at The Rite is an old story, and more than one hundred years later, Stravinsky’s once edgy music is now all too familiar – whether through our own concert experiences, recordings, or Disney’s Fantasia. Even shortly after the disastrous premiere, audiences returned to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées for a repeat performance of The Rite of Spring in June, and the follow-up performance was well received. So, what happens such that what first appears a stomach-churning mess can become a timeless classic?

The answer is in the pathways from our ears to our amygdala: the fight-or-flight center of the brain. Basically, all sounds can be sorted into two categories – those that could mean danger and those that don’t. Safe sounds are taken by our ears and sent by the auditory thalamus to the primary auditory cortex for detailed analysis and eventually to the amygdala, so that you can contemplate the beauty of bird song without feeling you need to flee for your life. Meanwhile, unsafe sounds require immediate attention, and a car’s horn will need to bypass the higher thought so that you can jump out of the way in time. This is why there are two pathways in our brain from the ear to the amygdala, and our auditory thalamus acts as a kind of traffic director.

Unfortunately, our thalamus is not so good at knowing what to do with new sounds on the first listen, even if this new sound eventually becomes your favorite piece of music. So where does that high bassoon solo go that begins this most celebrated of Stravinsky’s works? Straight to the amygdala! However, if you let yourself have one more go at listening, now your thalamus knows you aren’t in danger and you can begin to analyze the sound. And it still sounds strange and overwhelming, but after listening several more times you start to hear patterns and shapes. Now you’re humming a fragment of something to yourself in the shower and … what’s this? … you may even find you like the music!

I get asked a lot how I can enjoy so many different genres of music. Now I’m no doctor (and I’ve got two music degrees to prove it), but I think there is something beautiful to learn from the premiere of The Rite of Spring. Take something you don’t like – be it organ music, Schoenberg songs, or dare I say, that dang rap music. Make yourself cozy, set your expectations of how long and often you are going to listen. Let it be okay that you don’t like something. Observe anything. But then, after you’ve given up and just can’t take it anymore, come back and do it again some other time. There is so much music in the world, why settle for enjoying less?