Category Archive

   The base 10 anniversaries are always important.  :)  Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring debuted 100 years ago today.  Enjoy his music visualized by Stephen Malinowski and the info from Wikipedia.

Part I: The Adoration of the Earth

The opening melody is played by a solo bassoon in a very high register, which renders the instrument almost unidentifiable;^[116] gradually other woodwind instruments are sounded and are eventually joined by strings.^[117] The sound builds up before stopping suddenly, Hill says, “just as it is bursting ecstatically into bloom”. There is then a reiteration of the opening bassoon solo, now played a semitone lower.^[118]

The first dance, “Augurs of Spring”, is characterised by a repetitive stamping chord in the horns and strings, based on E-flat superimposed on an triad of E, G-sharp and B.^[119] White suggests that this bitonal combination, which Stravinsky considered the focal point of the entire work, was devised on the piano, since the constituent chords are comfortable fits for the hands on a keyboard.^[120] The rhythm of the stamping is disturbed by Stravinsky’s constant shifting of the accent, on and off the beat,^[121] before the dance ends in a collapse, as if from exhaustion.^[117] The “Ritual of Abduction” which follows is described by Hill as “the most terrifying of musical hunts”.^[122] It concludes in a series of flute trills that usher in the “Spring Rounds”, in which a slow and laborious theme gradually rises to a dissonant fortissimo, a “ghastly caricature” of the episode’s main tune.^[117]

Brass and percussion predominate as the “Ritual of the Rival Tribes” begins. A tune emerges on tenor and bass tubas, leading after much repetition to the entry of the Sage’s procession.^[117] The music then comes to a virtual halt, “bleached free of colour” (Hill),^[123] as the Sage blesses the earth. The “Dance of the Earth” then begins, bringing Part I to a close in a series of phrases of the utmost vigour which are abruptly terminated in what Hill describes as a “blunt, brutal amputation”.^[124]

Part II: The Sacrifice

Part II has a greater cohesion than its predecessor. Hill describes the music as following an arc stretching from the beginning of the Introduction to the conclusion of the final dance.^[124] Woodwind and muted trumpets are prominent throughout the Introduction, which ends with a number of rising cadences on strings and flutes. The transition into the “Mystic Circles” is almost imperceptible; the main theme of the section has been prefigured in the Introduction. A loud repeated chord, which Berger likens to a call to order, announces the moment for choosing the sacrificial victim. The “Glorification of the Chosen One” is brief and violent; in the “Evocation of the Ancestors” that follows, short phrases are interspersed with drum rolls. The “Ritual Action of the Ancestors” begins quietly, but slowly builds to a series of climaxes before subsiding suddenly into the quiet phrases that began the episode.^[117]

The final transition introduces the “Sacrificial Dance”. This is written as a more disciplined ritual than the extravagant dance that ended Part I, though it contains some wild moments, with the large percussion section of the orchestra given full voice. Stravinsky had difficulties with this section, especially with the final bars that conclude the work. The abrupt ending displeased several critics, one of whom wrote that the music “suddenly falls over on its side”. Stravinsky himself referred to the final chord disparagingly as “a noise”, but in his various attempts to amend or rewrite the section, was unable to produce a more acceptable solution.^[79]