Of course, when he actually saw the movie, he hated it, objecting to both the setting (dinosaurs?) and, somewhat more loudly, the shuffling of his score. Unsurprisingly, though, his level of disapproval never rose to the point where he felt required to return his fee.

While it draws on many different sources (a cottage industry has sprung up finding bits of Russian folk tunes in the piece), Le Sacre truly is one of the few revolutionary pieces of music in the canon. For one thing, some 90 years after its first performance, it still sounds modern. It still sounds new, and it still has the capability to surprise.

My own love affair with the music continues to this day, even though I'm no longer four and have grown to the point where I don't try to scare people with the music. I own five different recordings of the piece (a record only challenged by the number of Rachmaninoff 3rds I acquired several years ago in a fit of temporary insanity) if you include a version scored for four hands. The gold standard, is, of course, the version conducted by Stravinsky himself; but each of the versions I own have their own strengths and weaknesses. The music itself is so complex and layered that orchestras and conductors are still exploring it, still finding new nuances and shades of color and sound in it. I've been to performances that explore the Russian roots of the piece; I've been to performances that makes it sound like it comes from outer space (for the record, I prefer the "outer space" interpretation). I don't think that there can be a single definitive performance or interpretation of this music.

I still like the Disney version, out-of-order and all; the slow march of the brontosauruses to their eventual demise in on a red-hot earth; the thrilling, mano-a-mano (if you'll excuse the mixed metaphor) battle between the desperate, heroic stegosaurus and the looming, rapacious tyrannosaur; I think back on that and I'm three years old again, in the grip of terror and excitement as that gloriously strange music washes over me yet again.

This article was originally posted over at Mimeograph.org