But the songwriter and guitarist Doug Martsch turned biliousness into something grand and redemptive: one pealing riff after another, with guitars creating monumental backdrops for his sometimes bluesy, sometimes meteoric lead guitar.
Stripped of the monumental Bakst backdrop that usually frames it (too large, too unaffordable for 1930s Rambert) and performed by a wonderfully alert cast, this Faune has an entrancing intimacy.
I mean the sadness of those monumental members against the backdrop of this vast and desolate continent".
But jazz is much more than a collection of "great men" (Ellington, Goodman, Parker, Armstrong) participating in seminal events against a backdrop of monumental societal forces.
Against a backdrop of monumental debt – €320bn, or 180% of GDP, the accumulation of decades of profligacy – fatalism is fast replacing pessimism on the streets.
Right now, the setting — large rooms with intricately carved Victorian woodwork, an elaborate fireplace and a glass-ceilinged winter garden — is the backdrop for two monumental paintings and a bronze sculpture by the Danish artist Per Kirkeby.
The painting is now in the Louvre (sent there by Napoleon after he sacked Venice in 1797) but the computer-generated replica that's been hung in its place is unexpectedly convincing, and it's this monumental piece that formed the backdrop and inspiration for Jeyasingh's 30-minute dance.
Modern versions of monumental worker murals serve as backdrops for six-foot wooden models of staplers, soda fountains and 1920's telephones.
But history would ultimately record the event itself as a mere backdrop to a single, monumental speech - one in which the passionate minister-orator stood in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial and compelled a nation to examine its conscience and, at long last, take action.
