MASTERWORKS CONCERT V: Rite of Spring

In Paris, on 29 May 1913, the audience at a ballet rioted; men in the audience challenged each other to duels; socialites slapped one another; people screamed and laughed; house lights flashed on and off. This was all within the first few moments of the second work on the evening’s program. Yet the orchestra played until the end of the 30-minute ballet. More importantly, music was forever changed.

Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) is remembered not only because of it riotous opening night, but also because it single-handedly altered the course of Western music. Because of works like Le Sacre, Stravinsky remains the most influential, most controversial, and most important composer        (if perhaps not the most beloved) of 20th century composers.

The essence of Stravinsky’s early compositional style was rhythmic exploration. Using asymmetrical patterns and compound meters, the composer broke down traditional balanced phrasing. The pulse of the music was often unwavering, but unevenly accented and articulated. 

Just as The Rite of Spring in a sense predicted or at least foreshadowed the chaos of World War I, so did Stravinsky’s compositional style after the War reflect the time. The end of World War I moved Stravinsky’s music into a pared-down style. With works such as L’Historie du Soldat, Tango, Ragtime, Pulcinella, and his oratorio Oedipus Rex, Stravinsky’s neo-classical period first seemed like an element of parody, but scholars have found in it a tendency toward “objectification,” like a Cubist collage with everyday objects painted by Picasso. 

Educated at St. Petersburg’s University in criminal law and legal philosophy, this son of a prominent opera singer carved out his own unique path in music. After privately studying with composer Rimsky-Korsakov (who advised Stravinsky against becoming a composer), Stravinsky began collaborating with ballet impresario, Serge Diaghilev. Between 1910 and 1913, Stravinsky initially composed the ballets The Firebird and Petrushka which immediately ushered him to the forefront of music lovers, musicians, and audiences in general. It was, however, the score to The Rite of Spring, that made him the controversial crown prince of the avant-garde.

Even the anticipation of the premiere of The Rite of Spring tantalized the world something was brewing. Newspapers referred to “stammerings of a semi-savage humanity” and “frenetic human clusters wrenched incessantly by the most astonishing polyrhythm to come from the mind of a musician.” A press release from the new Théâtre des Champs-Élysées promised “a new thrill which will surely raise passionate discussions, but which will leave all true artists with an unforgettable impression.”

Stravinsky had “fleeting visions” for what would unknowingly become the largest scandal if all of music in 1910 as he was finishing the score to The Firebird. “I imagined a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watching a young girl dancer herself to death. They were sacrificing her to the god of spring,” Stravinsky recalled. Before he wrote a note of music, he began to evolve the concept with Russian painter, archeologist, and folklore expert Nikolai Roerich (who designed the sets and costumes for the premiere). Stravinsky then began to compose in Clarens, Switzerland in the fall of 1911 -- in a small room at an upright, somewhat muted piano where he created the famous relentless pounding chords. The famous conductor Pierre Monteux who led the premiere performance remembers hearing Stravinsky play the score on the piano, saying: “Before he got very far, I was convinced he was raving mad.”

Even though the orchestra needed 17 rehearsals before working with the dancers, and rehearsals for the ballet itself lasted six months (as dancers had enormous difficulties with the music’s uncountable rhythms), all of it went on without incident. The Rite of Spring (or just Le sacre as some prefer to say) has no traditional plot but more of a choreographic sequence. Like Stravinsky’s previous two ballet successes, The Rite of Spring is rooted in Russian folklore, and it represents pagan Russia, conveying the mystery and emergence of the creative power of Spring. Stravinsky divided the 30-minute ballet sequence into two parts: “The Adoration of the Earth” and “The Great Sacrifice.” The two sections are described by Stravinsky and Roerich and reference the different subtitles of the sequences:

PART I: The Adoration of the Earth

The awakening of nature, the scratching, gnawing, wiggling of birds and beasts (Introduction). The Spring celebration. It takes place in the hills. The pipers pipe and young men tell fortunes (Augurs of Spring), the old woman enters. She knows the mystery of nature and how to predict the future. Young girls with painted faces come in from the river in single file. They dance the Spring Dance. Games start (Ritual of Abduction) and Spring Khorovod (Spring Rounds), the people divide into two groups opposing each other (Ritual of the Rival Tribes). The procession of wise old men (Procession of The Sage) follows. The oldest and wisest interrupts the spring games, which comes to a stop. The people pause, trembling before the great action. The old men bless the earth. The Kiss of the Earth (The Sage) follows and the people dance passionately on the earth, sanctifying it and becoming one with it (Dance of the Earth)

PART II: The Great Sacrifice

At night the virgins hold mysterious games, walking in circles (Mystic Circles of the Young Girls). One of the virgins honors her, the Chosen One, with a martial dance (Glorification of The Chosen One). They invoke the ancestors (Evocation of The Ancestors) and entrust the Chosen One to the old wise men (Ritual Action of The Ancestors). She sacrifices herself in the presence of the old men in the great hold dance, the great sacrifice (Sacrificial Dance). 

While millions of have certainly experienced Fantasia – Disney’s 1941 interpretation of Stravinsky’s score to The Rite of Spring, the work has nothing to do with prehistoric creatures evolving from primordial slime. It does, however, evoke a newly found primitivism complete with harmonic dissonances and incessant rhythms bending melodies until the entire concept of Western music explodes into a savaged frenzy. 

By many accounts, the audience’s outrage was more about the dance than then music itself. “I have never again been that angry,” wrote Stravinsky. “The music was so familiar to me; I loved it, and I could not understand why people who had not heard it wanted to protest so quickly.” At the first concert performance (without the choreography) a year after the premiere, the audience erupted with excitement and carried Stravinsky as a hero throughout the theatre and into the streets. Today it remains an iconic concert piece that is still equally as captivating, visceral, and at times, disturbing – grasping our physical and psychological attention. It remains one of the decisive turning points in all of music where everything from symphonic music to rock and roll are explained in their relationship to Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. American legendary composer Aaron Copland said in 1951 that The Rite of Spring is “the foremost orchestral achievement of the 20th century,” and Time Magazine proclaimed in 1998 that “there is not a composer who lived during Stravinsky’s time or is alive today who has not been touched and sometimes transformed by The Rite of Spring.” Irrespective of our reaction to The Rite of Spring, we certainly realize the power of life, the power of creativity, and the vitality we have when we truly experience something evocative.

“Music is the sole domain in which humans realize the present. I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.” – Igor Stravinski.