Ballet (music) of Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" after the composer's death. In many cases ballets were still short scenes within operas, to enable scenery or costume changes. Perhaps the best-known example of ballet music that is part of an opera is the "Dance of the Hours" from Amilcare Ponchielli's opera "La Gioconda" (1876). There was a violent change in mood when Igor Stravinsky's ballet "The Rite of Spring" (1913) was performed. The music was modernist and dissonant, and the movements were highly stylized. In 1924 George Antheil wrote "Ballet Mécanique," which was actually for a film of moving objects, not for dancers, but
The Rite of Spring of musical language that they could never again be put together as before". The academic and critic Jan Smaczny, echoing Bernstein, calls it one of the 20th century's most influential compositions, providing "endless stimulation for performers and listeners". According to Kelly the 1913 premiere might be considered "the most important single moment in the history of 20th century music", and its repercussions continue to reverberate in the 21st century. Ross has described "The Rite" as a prophetic work, presaging the "second avant-garde" era in classical composition—music of the body rather than of the mind, in which "[m]elodies would follow the