LESSON 3: THE RITE OF SPRING: ITS CREATION, SYNOPSIS AND STUCTURE

THE RITE OF SPRING: ITS CREATION, SYNOPSIS AND STUCTURE

 

 

 Stravinsky, sketched by Picasso

  Dancers in Nicholas Roerich’s original costumes.

                       

Igor Stravinsky described The Rite of Spring as “a musical-choreographic work, representing pagan Russia … unified by a single idea: the mystery and great surge of the creative power of Spring”.

Stravinsky himself gave contradictory accounts of the creation of The Rite. In a 1920 article he stressed that the musical ideas had come first, that the pagan setting had been suggested by the music rather than the other way round. However, in his 1936 autobiography he described the origin of the work thus: “One day in 1910, ….. in St Petersburg, I had a fleeting vision … I saw in my imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watching a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of Spring. Such was the theme of the Sacre du Printemps”.

By May 1910 Stravinsky was discussing his idea with Nicholas Roerich, the foremost Russian expert on folk art and ancient rituals. Roerich had a reputation as an artist and mystic.

     

In July 1911 Stravinsky and Roerich finalised the structure of the ballet. However, the two-part pagan scenario that emerged was primarily devised by Roerich. Stravinsky later explained that the first part of the work would be called “The Kiss of the Earth”, and would consist of games and ritual dances interrupted by a procession of sages, culminating in a frenzied dance as the people embraced the spring. Part Two, “The Sacrifice”, would have a darker aspect; secret night games of maidens, leading to the choice of one for sacrifice and her eventual dance to the death before the sages. The original working title was changed to “Holy Spring”, but the work became generally known by the French translation Le Sacre du printemps, or its English equivalent The Rite of Spring, with the subtitle “Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts”.

The French titles are given in the form given in the four-part piano score published in 1913. There have been numerous variants of the English translations; those shown are from the 1967 edition of the score.

LESSON 2: 100 YEARS OF STRAVINKY'S RITE OF SPRING

Watch Igor Stravinsky explain how the Rite of Spring was composed and the reaction of the audience at its first performance.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZEsmbcwngY

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Read the article written (2^nd May 2013) by “The Guardian” celebrating 100 years of “The Rite of Spring” and summarize it (no more than 100 words).

“How Stravinsky's Rite of Spring has shaped 100 years of music” (www.theguardian.com)

The Rite of Spring was a revolutionary work for a revolutionary time. Its first performance in Paris, 100 years ago was a key moment in cultural history – a tumultuous scandal.

Written on the eve of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, the piece is the emblem of an era of great scientific, artistic and intellectual ferment. No composer since can avoid the shadow of this great icon of the 20th century, and score after score by modern masters would be unthinkable without its model.

The Rite of Spring has survived many trials in its first 100 years, not excluding the notorious premiere, during which Nijinsky's provocative choreography elicited such a volume of abuse that the music itself was frequently inaudible. Initial performances – even Stravinsky's own – of this immensely complex score were often on the edge of collapse, but the piece is now part of the international orchestral repertoire and the greatest risk it faces today, paradoxically, is routine renditions which make a work which should shock seem safe and easy.

And this score did intend to shock. Its savage violence confronted head-on the aesthetics of impressionism – then at the apogee of Parisian musical fashion – just as the razor-sharp editing between phrases subverted the smooth, seamless flow of the Germanic symphonic tradition with pitiless efficacy.

This, in a way, is cubist music – where musical materials slice into one another, interact and superimpose with the most brutal edges, thus challenging the musical perspective and logic that had dominated European ears for centuries.

Stravinsky's greatest weapon in this assault was a fundamental musical resource, low on the list of priorities for most post-Wagnerian composers: rhythm.

From start to finish The Rite of Spring exalts in a new and explosive sense of musical movement. Not the subtle interplay of periodic symmetries typical of the classical era, nor the curvaceous, subjective flexibility in the flow of time that romanticism relished.
Stravinsky's rhythms pound and batter; though highly irregular they are still pulsed – and pulsed in such a novel way that the score required innovations in musical notation to make Stravinsky's invention playable.

And in no way are these rhythms presented discreetly – on the contrary, they are frequently hammered out in unison by the gigantic orchestra that the work employs. Indeed, one of the most thrilling aspects of a good performance, even without choreography, is how it looks: few things on a concert platform can rival the display of so many musicians executing such jagged and unpredictable rhythmical shapes in perfect unison.

In order to concentrate the listener's perception on the rhythm, melodic material – most of it pinched from a book of Lithuanian folk tunes – is extremely simple, sometimes reduced to tiny repetitive patterns of a mere two or three pitches.

In tandem with this linear simplicity, the work's gigantic crunching harmonies move at the pace of glaciers, this slow harmonic movement paradoxically magnifying the overall sense of energy and drive. These edifices of sound – though disturbingly dissonant for an audience in 1913 – are chosen with impeccable refinement, and they underpin the score's complete arc with a structural surety on an almost Beethovenian level.

And, as with Beethoven at his most emphatic, percussive accents pervade the orchestration. The huge wind and brass sections steal the foreground from the habitually warmer sonority of the strings, and the percussion section dominates over everything. In particular, the spectacular writing for a pair of timpanists and the bass drum typify not only the sound of the Rite but its physical impact as well – indeed, one can feel pulled by them into a rhythmical maelstrom of an almost tribal intensity.
Some of the score's most electrifying moments come when opposed rhythmical strands are piled on top of one another. Such superimpositions amount to a musical collage, creating a form of highly organised chaos. This was the expansion of polyrhythm, one of modern music's most essential innovations, way beyond anything conceived before.

But not all in The Rite of Spring is frenzied or aggressive. In particular, the introductions to both parts betray a much more generous sense of lyricism, enveloped in a palpable sense of mystery. And who could ever forget, once heard, the plangent and eerie high unaccompanied bassoon solo with which the piece opens?

For within a handful of years, Stravinsky was pursuing an ironic, detached and elegant neoclassical aesthetic, which initially bewildered his fans as much as his detractors. Indeed many people viewed Stravinsky's evolution beyond the Rite as a betrayal of both his Slavic roots and modernistic genius, so the question can be posed in all earnestness: did Stravinsky himself survive the Rite?

Stravinsky was – like his great contemporary Picasso – a restless, protean genius. Despite the occasional attempt, he never again attained the savage, cathartic energy of the Rite nor the spectacular succès de scandale it created.

LESSON 1: IGOR STRAVINSKY - LIFE AND WORK

WATCH BALLET “THE RITE OF SPRING” – IGOR STRAVINSKY

It celebrates the 100th Anniversary. Performed on 29th May 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées dai Balletts in Paris, France by the Ballets Russes,  an itinerant ballet company based in Paris that performed between 1909 and 1929 throughout Europe.

READ ABOUT STRAVINSKY'S LIFE AND WORK AND ANSWER THE QUESTIONS BELOW.
SEND YOUR ANSWERS TO MY EMAIL: raffaelina.ferrante@gmail.com

IGOR STRAVINSKY: LIFE AND WORK

The Rite of Spring (French: Le Sacre du printemps, Russian: «Весна священная», Vesna svyashchennaya) is a ballet and orchestral concert work by the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. It was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company; the original choreography was by Vaslav Nijinsky, with stage designs and costumes by Nicholas Roerich. When first performed, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a sensation and a near-riot in the audience. It is considered to be one of the most influential musical works of the 20th century.

Stravinsky was a young, virtually unknown composer when Diaghilev recruited him to create works for the Ballets Russes. The Rite was the third such project, after the acclaimed The Firebird (1910) and Petrushka (1911).

The concept behind The Rite of Spring, developed by Roerich from Stravinsky’s outline idea, is suggested by its subtitle, “Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts”; in the scenario, after various primitive rituals celebrating the advent of spring, a young girl is chosen as a sacrificial victim and dances herself to death.

Stravinsky’s score contains many novel features for its time, including experiments in tonality, metre, rhythm, stress and dissonance. Analysts have noted in the score a significant grounding in Russian folk music, a relationship Stravinsky tended to deny. The music has influenced many of the 20th-century’s leading composers, and is one of the most recorded works in the classical repertoire.

Answer the following questions:

1.      Who was “The Rite of Spring” written by?

2.      Who was it written for?

3.      When and where was it first performed?

4.      What is the conceptual idea behind this work? What is the scenario?

5.       Research: Which other leading composers has Stravinsky influenced? 

 

Part of Nicholas Roerich’s designs for Diaghilev’s 1913 production of Le Sacre du printemps