In 1909 Igor Stravinsky, a budding composer just striking out for himself, got what can be called his big break – thanks to the laziness of the composer Anatoly Lyadov. Impresario Sergey Diaghilev of the famed Ballets Russes in Paris had commissioned Lyadov to write a ballet on the Firebird theme from Russian folklore. When Diaghilev heard that after three months Lyadov had only gone as far as to buy the lined paper, he withdrew the commission and gave it to Stravinsky instead.

Stravinsky was a student of Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Glazunov, the standard bearers of Russian musical conservatism and nationalism, and the resultant Ballet, The Firebird, was a true Rimsky-style work. It catapulted Stravinsky to instant fame and led to a string of commissions from Diaghilev.

In 1913, however, Stravinsky completely broke with tradition in the ballet Le sacre du printemps. Its premiere created a riot in the audience, with whistles, catcalls, fistfights, a true “war over art” in the words of one critic. The composer literally had to escape from the theater through a bathroom window.

The impetus for the work was the romanticized vision of the rituals of pagan Russia, depicting a ceremony in which wise elders sit in a circle around a girl who dances herself to death as a sacrifice to the god of spring. Stravinsky worked with the painter Nikolay Röhrich (1874-1947), an acknowledged specialist in the pagan history of ancient Russia, who helped work out the scenario.

To its first audience, everything was wrong: the pounding, syncopated rhythms in dissonant tone clusters, the absence of traditional tonal harmony, the fragmented melodies, the “primitive” non-balletic movements of the dancers and, certainly, the disturbing sensuality of the work as a whole.

The choreography of Vaslav Nijinsky upset the first audience as much as Stravinsky’s score. The dancers were obliged to throw out a lifetime of training in grace and élan, to dance flat-footed rather than on point, and to count the jerky, constantly changing meters.

Ironically, Stravinsky's enormously complex score portrays the primeval rituals of a primitive tribe. The music of each section evolves organically, often piling on new melodic motives and rhythms in keeping with the dramatic thrust of the dance. However, few people have ever seen the Rite of Spring performed as a ballet; rather, it remains a strongly evocative concert work that is most often enjoyed without any reference to the original scenario.

Part I, The Adoration of the Earth, opens with a melancholy Introduction on the bassoon followed by the other woodwinds, leading directly to the “Dance of the Adolescent Girls,” a stomping, pulsing rhythm and savage dissonances, accompanied by a static, ostinato figure. A horn melody accompanied by the flutes leads up to the “Game of Abduction,” horn calls suggesting a grotesque hunt. A flute trill leads to the “Spring Rounds Dance” with its chant-like theme.

In the “Game of the Rival Tribes,” a fragmentary theme dominates the mock battle, in the middle of which the horns and the huge percussion section abruptly herald the “Entrance of the Sages”. The four slow mystical bars the of “Adoration of the Earth” are followed by the combined dance of all the tribes in the wild “Dance of the Earth.”

Part II, The Sacrifice, opens with mysterious chords on the woodwinds and strings, leading directly to the “Mystic Circle of the Adolescent Girls,” a delicate, hesitant dance of the girls waiting for the moment of selection of the Chosen One. “The Glorification of the Chosen One” is a wild celebration, almost pure rhythm. A sudden dramatic crescendo on the timpani introduces the “Evocation of the Ancestors.” “The Ancestors’ Ritual Dance” then begins with a gentle, haunting rhythm, slowly building up to a massive crescendo before plunging into the “Sacrificial Dance of the Chosen One.” The suicidal sacrifice begins in slow bursts of syncopated rhythm, picking up in speed and rhythmic intricacy until the Chosen One dances herself to exhaustion and death. Interestingly, although Stravinsky does build up his orchestral forces to depict the dance, the ending is more like the escape of the virgin's final breath.

The complexity of the score, especially the interplay of cross rhythms, has always been a challenge to conductors. In 1943 Stravinsky reorchestrated and simplified some of the sections, especially the final one. When conductor Georg Solti asked him why, the composer retorted ”because I cannot conduct the original anymore.”

Program notes by:

Joseph & Elizabeth Kahn

Wordpros@ mindspring.com

www.wordprosmusic.com