The Rite of Spring of the evening Stravinsky had asserted that "Monteux, almost alone among conductors, never cheapened "Rite" or looked for his own glory in it, and he continued to play it all his life with the greatest fidelity". Commentators have often described "The Rite"s music in vivid terms; Paul Rosenfeld, in 1920, wrote of it "pound[ing] with the rhythm of engines, whirls and spirals like screws and fly-wheels, grinds and shrieks like laboring metal". In a more recent analysis, "The New York Times" critic Donal Henahan refers to "great crunching, snarling chords from the brass and thundering thumps from the timpani". The
The Rite of Spring the disturbances, while deplorable, were merely "a rowdy debate" between two ill-mannered factions. Emile Raudin, of "Les Marges", who had barely heard the music, wrote: "Couldn't we ask M. Astruc ... to set aside one performance for well-intentioned spectators? ... We could at least propose to evict the female element". The composer Alfredo Casella thought that the demonstrations were aimed at Nijinsky's choreography rather than at the music, a view shared by the critic Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi, who wrote: "The idea was excellent, but was not successfully carried out". Calvocoressi failed to observe any direct hostility to the composer—unlike, he said,