One spring evening in 1913 the intelligentsia of pre-war Paris gathered at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées to see & hear a sensational new ballet. The ballet, put on by famed Russian Impresario Serge Diaghilev, was something to see: Diaghilev's idea of how primitive man got ritually excited, come springtime. The accompanying music, a boisterous, tom-tomming, banshee-wailing symphonic hullabaloo by Music's No. 1 Bad Boy, Igor Stravinsky, had even more oomph than the ballet.
Of the music, except when it was going full blast, the audience actually heard little. For, by the time the...
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