A Review In Three Paragraphs (or so)

Stravinsky was a Russian, French, and American pianist, composer, and conductor, and was one of the most influential composers of the 20^th century.  The first symphony after he moved to the United States, the “Symphony in Three Movements,” was composed using a large amount of work from scrapped movie projects he had been working on up until then: the writing took place from 1942 to 1945, and debuted in New York in 1946. The piece shall be described from the objective/descriptive, the interpretive, and the personal/evaluative views.

            When describing the song objectively, the first theme noticed were the parts that made up the overarching dramatic, dark mood in the whole piece: lots of suspense, clashing instruments, disharmonies, sudden changes from loud to soft, deep, nightly drum kicks, quick staccato notes, lots of horn activity present, and the fast paced tempo.

            The second way to describe the piece involves viewing the work through the interpretive ear-camera-lens, to find a more angry, emotional theme. I saw the emotional level permeated with thoughts and ideas of: dark, mysterious, stressful nights, like a bloody battle scene; a war full of slaughter and destruction occurring during the latest hours of the night; the gruesome, terrifying fight scene from the final battle of a movie; or the final murder of a crazed killer in an old horror movie. All of the instruments sound as if they are denying the main rhythm or tempo of the piece and playing off to their own beat, in an insane, chaotic, disjointed manner.

            The final descriptive medium for this work involves my own subjective, personal view of the piece. While I found it to be a very enthralling piece full of action and contrasting instruments and such, it has its place in old black and white movies of the earlier half of the 20^th century, and not on my modern-day vehicle’s sound-system. However, it would make the perfect edition in an antiquated silent WWII movie or in the atrium of a fancy Ritz-Carlton hotel.

            Please, take a minute or two to put my judgments and descriptions aside to listen to this piece yourself, and come up with a description of your own. Done successfully, that would make for a perfect test of thinking for yourself and believing what you believe in regardless of what others tell you.