FWIW here is the full passage plus citation:

-----"In art there should be interpenetration and metamorphosis. Even The
Golden Bough
 can be read in two ways: as s collection of entertaining myths, or as a
revelation of
 the vanished mind of which our mind is a continuation.    In everything in
the Sacre du
 Printemps, except in the music, one missed the sense of the present.
Whether
 Stravinsky's music be permanent or ephemeral I do not know; but it did seem
to
 transform the rhythm of the steppes into the scream of the motor horn, the
rattle of
 machinery, the grind of wheels, the beating of iron and steel, the roar of
the
 underground railway, and the other barbaric cries of modern life; and to
transform
 these despairing noises into music."

Eliot, "London Letter" (71.4) 453.
"London Letter", Dial, 71.4 (October, 1921) 452 - 455.


Cheers,
Peter
 Original Message ----- 
From: Chokh Raj
To: [log in to unmask]
Sent: Friday, May 14, 2010 7:52 AM
Subject: The Rite of Spring - Stravinsky


I was listening to Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring in the light of Eliot's
remarks on this symphony -- and I thought what a fine backdrop it provides
to our reading of The Waste Land. Here's a Youtube experience -- enjoy it. -
CR

The Rite of Spring - Stravinsky

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9uMfXh4OOx8&NR=1

"[W]hen T. S. Eliot, in 1921, first heard Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring,
he wrote that the music seemed to "transform the rhythm of the steppes into
the scream of the motor-horn, the rattle of machinery, the grind of wheels,
the beating of iron and steel, the roar of the underground railway, and the
other barbaric noises of modern life.” In other words, the most up-to-date
factory noises were audible within an evocation of pagan Russia: the
australopithecine and the man with the jackhammer inhabit exactly the same
acoustic space, make the same sort of cry. Twentieth-century music is full
of convergences of opposites".

http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/2609643/Albright_Weil.pdf?sequence=4

"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow
 Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,
 You cannot say, or guess, for you know only
 A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
 And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
 And the dry stone no sound of water."

Thanks,
 CR