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?
