Newton's laws formulate civilizational, as much as physical, energy.

The momentum of great powers is shown throughout history to be overcome only by opposing great powers.

Below is an abridged telling of three musical works during their respective periods—The Rite of Spring at the end of Romanticism, La Marseillaise at the beginning of the French Revolution, and Hatikvah on the liberation of Bergen-Belsen—revealing how the defeats of terrible forces of oppression were achieved with the aid of great music.

The Rite of Spring is a ballet about a pagan, young, and very beautiful Russian woman chosen to dance for death.

In 1913, the world was ready for war.

Restless powers could not reconcile their differences, and new weapons sang to them like sirens.

Alongside widespread human injustice and failing dogmas of governance and social stigma, a powder-keg had formed.

Massive armies arose, and art grew more aggressive.

Three Russians in Paris—the composer Igor Stravinsky, the choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, and the impresario Sergei Diaghilev—had been writing ballets.

Their recent productions at Ballets Russes, Firebird and Petrushka, were each a smashing success in their late Romantic style.

But they now craved risk and began to scheme.

On the 29th of May, 1913, in Paris, at the luxurious Théâtre des Champs-Élysées, patrons eagerly awaited their night of melody and class.

The curtains are pulled, and the music starts to play—the show has begun.

Instantly, shock.

What is typically the gentle opening of a ballet's story and sound is, instead, manic.

Not a soloist but masses of dancers whose bodies are contorted into ugly shapes, stomping strangely and jerking wildly, while fast and loud music—atonal, polyrhythmic, and percussive—revolts against musical forms.

Nothing like this had ever been seen or heard at the ballet.

"The crowd goes wild!" As in, they begin to riot.

As Le Sacre's first act is performed, which plays out the first of the ballet's two rituals—the summoning of the mystic king for whom the sacrifice is made—disorder rises to hostility both on stage and among the audience in Théâtre des Champs-Élysées.

As the pagan villagers, accompanied by haunting music—bipolar, either revolting or ghostly—perform their rite, more and more members of the audience stand up and start fighting amongst themselves when shouts toward the stage do nothing to stop the performance.

Factions form within the audience, screaming at one another over the orchestra's sound, throwing their bags and chairs, and, apparently, tearing at their clothes, spitting, and starting a small fire.

When the mystic king finally arrives on stage, the police also arrive at the theatre.

The dancers cannot hear the music, without which they cannot keep time, forcing Nijinsky to signal them from backstage.

The show goes on.

The Rite's second ritual is of the woman.

She will dance to her death.

What was wild and earthly now becomes altogether underworldly, and as the stage's lights dim for the second act, the fire in general admission is put out.

What glimmer of hope briefly sparkles—calm on and off stage—is quickly extinguished by the woman's horrific descension.

Her futile resistance to her selection, prevented by the ever-ritualizing villagers, does not last long.

Harsh and exhausting movements wear the body down—both that of the pagan woman and that of the dancer herself.

The co-ritualizing audience joins the violence, throwing more objects on stage and tightening her surrounding circle.

It is excruciating to watch and to perform.

The line between The Rite and our own has blurred away.

When the woman finishes her ritual, her limp body is raised up by the villagers, and the curtains of the theatre are drawn in conclusion of the ballet.

But the ritual of Paris is not yet over.

Catalyzed, the audience pours outside, starts more fires and fights, and for days and weeks the reaction spreads throughout the city until nothing tastes the same, so to speak.

The three men had sprung their trap.

They had hijacked minds and bodies to do the unspeakable, ended an artistic era and begun a new one, and wrought social reconstruction on an unsuspecting people.

This end to the philosophical transition marked the beginning of the geopolitical one: the next year, France would fight the Great War, the bloodiest up to that point in human history, and shortly after, the Russian Revolution would begin.

The aesthetic awareness, daring, and skill of Stravinsky, Nijinsky, Diaghilev, and the performers that night gave the world something it didn't know it wanted, but viscerally knew it needed.

Around a hundred years earlier, the French Revolution was failing.

Between mass starvation, false imprisonment, high inflation, executions, and Marie-Antoinette's penchant for excess, misery and disdain were rampant—Louis XVI's rule had reached a tipping point.

Yet while the revolutionaries possessed the will and righteousness to revolt, they were disorganized and faced an entrenched monarchy that set the military against the people in place of its apathy.

They would need to rally more hands and get them to work harder to overcome such odds.

Written in one night, La Marseillaise would start out sung in a soldier's tent, spread through the army to the revolutionaries, and become the musical workhorse for the change that was needed.

La Marseillaise

Verse 1

Allons enfants de la Patrie,
Arise, children of the Fatherland,

Le jour de gloire est arrivé !
The day of glory has arrived!

Contre nous de la tyrannie,
Against us, tyranny’s

L’étendard sanglant est levé,
Bloody banner is raised,

L’étendard sanglant est levé !
The bloody banner is raised!

Entendez-vous dans les campagnes
Do you hear in the countryside

Mugir ces féroces soldats ?
The roar of those ferocious soldiers?

Ils viennent jusque dans vos bras
They come right into your arms

Égorger vos fils, vos compagnes !
To cut the throats of your sons and your wives!

Chorus (Refrain)

Aux armes, citoyens !
To arms, citizens!

Formez vos bataillons !
Form your battalions!

Marchons, marchons !
Let us march, let us march!

Qu’un sang impur
That an impure blood

Abreuve nos sillons !
Should water our furrows!

Verse 2

Que veut cette horde d’esclaves,
What does this horde of slaves want,

De traîtres, de rois conjurés ?
Of traitors and conspiring kings?

Pour qui ces ignobles entraves,
For whom are these vile chains,

Ces fers dès longtemps préparés ?
These irons long prepared?

Français, pour nous, ah ! quel outrage !
Frenchmen, for us, ah! what outrage!

Quels transports il doit exciter !
What rage it must arouse!

C’est nous qu’on ose méditer
It is we they dare plan

De rendre à l’antique esclavage !
To return to ancient slavery!

Verse 6

Amour sacré de la Patrie,
Sacred love of the Fatherland,

Conduis, soutiens nos bras vengeurs !
Guide and support our avenging arms!

Liberté, Liberté chérie,
Liberty, cherished Liberty,

Combats avec tes défenseurs !
Fight alongside your defenders!

Sous nos drapeaux que la victoire
Under our flags may victory

Accoure à tes mâles accents !
Hurry to your manly tones!

Que tes ennemis expirants
May your dying enemies

Voient ton triomphe et notre gloire !
See your triumph and our glory!

Accompanying the lyrics, the sound of the verse is inviting and building, while the chorus is virtuous and triumphant.

It is a call to arms and a manifestation of victory.

It is an anthem of unity and of France.

La Marseillaise was sung loudly by crowds at every gathering, protest, and riot, and softly by every revolutionary who strove alone.

It was a rousing and accessible manifesto that added many hours and bodies, intensifying the cause, until eventually critical energy was reached and the revolution was won.

The next failed monarch, Napoleon, would briefly ban the song until he too was overthrown, and it was officially adopted by the Ministry of War as the national anthem of France.

Around forty years before the premiere of The Rite of Spring, a Jewish bard was drinking along the western Judean coast.

His name was Naftali Herz Imber, and he had devised a clever plan to combine his religious zeal with his love of women.

He had written a poem, Hatikvah—Tikvatenu in its fullest form—about the promise of Jewish fulfillment, a top-two favorite subject.

What he'd written was profoundly beautiful and true—and he knew it.

His plan was that whenever a beautiful woman came near, he would feign spontaneous inspiration, write out the poem as if for the first time, and proclaim that it was her beauty that inspired his genius.

His masterwork would conveniently double as an original pick-up line, powered by God.

By all accounts, it worked every time, and he never stopped wandering and getting laid.

About forty years after his death came the Holocaust.

Nazi Germany's industrial extermination of over six million Jews ran tirelessly as it waged war on the world.

Bergen-Belsen, run by Hitler's Schutzstaffel, was a brutal gassing camp that murdered over sixty thousand innocent Jews.

A month before the Allies won the war, British soldiers liberated the camp's remaining sixty thousand prisoners.

Four days after liberation, the first Sabbath ceremony on German soil in six years is openly held.

During the service, Jewish survivors sing Hatikvah, which had been censored by the British media for a decade.

Malnourishment and sickness are making new corpses throughout the congregation.

Death is quiet in the background of the recording.

The singing voices of the living echo in eternity.

תִּקְוָתֵנוּ — Tikvatenu (Full Original Poem), "Our Hope"

1

כָּל עוֹד בַּלֵּבָב פְּנִימָה,
As long as in the heart, within,

נֶפֶשׁ יְהוּדִי הוֹמִיָּה,
A Jewish soul still yearns,

וּלְפַאֲתֵי מִזְרָח קָדִימָה,
And toward the east, forward,

עַיִן לְצִיּוֹן צוֹפִיָּה;
An eye looks toward Zion;

2

עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתֵנוּ,
Our hope is not yet lost,

הַתִּקְוָה הַנּוֹשָׁנָה,
The ancient hope,

לָשׁוּב לְאֶרֶץ אֲבוֹתֵינוּ,
To return to the land of our fathers,

לָעִיר בָּהּ דָּוִד חָנָה.
To the city where David encamped.

3

עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתֵנוּ,
Our hope is not yet lost,

הַתִּקְוָה הַנּוֹשָׁנָה,
The ancient hope,

לִהְיוֹת עַם חָפְשִׁי בְּאַרְצֵנוּ,
To be a free people in our land,

אֶרֶץ צִיּוֹן וִירוּשָׁלַיִם.
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

4

כָּל עוֹד דִּמְעָה בְּעֵינֵינוּ,
As long as a tear is in our eyes,

מֵאֵבֶל יָמֵינוּ הָרַבִּים,
From the sorrow of our many days,

וּבִפְאַת מִזְרָח לִפְנֵינוּ,
And toward the east before us,

עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתֵנוּ.
Our hope is not yet lost.

5

כָּל עוֹד זִכְרוֹן עֲבָרֵנוּ,
As long as the memory of our past

חָקוּק בְּלִבֵּנוּ הַחַם,
Is engraved in our warm hearts,

וּבְנֶפֶשׁ כָּל יְהוּדֵנוּ,
And in the soul of every Jew,

עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתָם.
Their hope is not yet lost.

6

כָּל עוֹד חוֹמַת בֵּית אֵלֵנוּ,
As long as the wall of our God’s house

עוֹמֶדֶת לְעֵד בְּחָרְבָּנָהּ,
Stands as witness in its destruction,

וּבְנֶפֶשׁ כָּל יְהוּדֵנוּ,
And in the soul of every Jew,

עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתָם.
Their hope is not yet lost.

7

כָּל עוֹד עוֹד יֵשׁ דִּמְעָה זֹלֶגֶת,
As long as there is still a tear falling,

מִלֵּב אָב וּמֵעֵין בֵּן,
From a father’s heart and a child’s eye,

וּבְנֶפֶשׁ כָּל יְהוּדֵנוּ,
And in the soul of every Jew,

עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתָם.
Their hope is not yet lost.

8

כָּל עוֹד רוּחַ יִשְׂרָאֵל,
As long as the spirit of Israel

בְּקִרְבֵּנוּ עוֹד חַי וְקַיָּם,
Still lives and endures within us,

וּבְנֶפֶשׁ כָּל יְהוּדֵנוּ,
And in the soul of every Jew,

עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתָם.
Their hope is not yet lost.

9

עוֹד לֹא אָבְדָה תִּקְוָתֵנוּ,
Our hope is not yet lost,

הַתִּקְוָה הַנּוֹשָׁנָה,
The ancient hope,

לָשׁוּב לְאֶרֶץ אֲבוֹתֵינוּ,
To return to the land of our fathers,

לָעִיר בָּהּ דָּוִד חָנָה.
To the city where David encamped.