With the distance of one hundred and ten years between us now and the premiere of Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring, it can be difficult to understand what the fuss was all about.
Such was the apparent level of scandal at the 1913 opening night on May 29th at the Champs-Elysées theatre, that at times it seems as if more is written about that than the actual music.
Several things need to be considered. Europe in 1913 was not in a good place. There was considerable unrest that ultimately resulted in the catastrophic First World War .
The other issue was that up until that fateful night, Stravinsky had composed music that was considerably less challenging for the audience, accessible by the performers and danceable by the dancers.
Firebird and Petrushka
The two major works that preceded The Rite of Spring were The Firebird (1910), and Petrushka (1911).
Firebird is a glittering, tuneful ballet that was greeted with huge success. It had appeal in bucket loads and secured the young composer a place in the history books. Stravinsky based the ballet on Russian fairy tales that he would have known would be popular. It was the start of an important and highly creative collaboration with the Ballet Russes and Sergei Diaghilev.
Petrushka depicts the tumultuous tale of three puppets summoned to life by the Charlatan at the Shrovetide Fair. It is felt by many critics to be Stravinsky’s finest ballet. It has at its heart themes that are universally attractive and compelling. The score is remarkable and with plenty of features that draw an audience in.
Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring Impact
Against this background, Stravinsky then turns the tables and composes a ballet that is so far removed from the previous two immense successes, that it is almost incomprehensible to the Parisians.
Why was The Rite of Spring such a controversial piece? After all, Stravinsky was commissioned by Diaghilev, chose to delve into Russian culture for his subject matter and created a ground-breaking score.
All of this is true, but in creating this new ballet, Stravinsky composed music that was vastly different to anything he had composed before. Instead of the textural luxuriousness of Firebird and the quirky tunefulness of Petrushka, the audience heard thumping, driven, percussive music, dissonant and disturbing.
The subject matter is also quite unsavoury looking back to a pagan Russia including human sacrifice. This was quite a departure from Stravinsky’s previous ballets.
Stories surrounding the opening night abound. Some suggest a riot, some that the impact was met by a stunned audience who voted with their feet.
The musicians in the orchestra certainly struggled with Stravinsky’s demands and the dancers despite hours of rehearsals could not master the mannered steps for the ballet alongside Stravinsky’s complex rhythms. It was helpful to an opening night, and within ten performances, the Ballet Russes had placed the ballet into their archives.
Stravinsky’s Leap into Modernism
What you have in The Rite of Spring is Stravinsky’s first step directly and purposefully into modernism. He had dispensed with the old Romantic ideals and chosen to tread a pathway into uncharted territory.
In so doing, Stravinsky opened the route into a revolutionary new kind of music and a new type of dance. Like so many composers who have made similar quantum leaps, Stravinsky’s achievements in The Rite of Spring were only fully realised decades later.
On a first hearing, the score presents itself as chaotic. This is especially true when comparing it to Stravinsky’s earlier scores. The thing is that it isn’t true. What is happening is that Stravinsky has adopted a new way of composing that hit the audience hard as they were probably anticipating a ballet just as the previous two.
Stravinsky creates a gigantic structure for his equally gigantic orchestral forces. What you hear is an arch form that cements the score together. Melodies, comprehensively borrowed from a volume of Lithuanian Folk Melodies, become fractured, motivic and crushed against meticulously constructed pillars of harmony.
The rhythmic focus as you would expect is paramount but such are the complexities of the rhythms Stravinsky creates that they seem to have no underlying pulse. Underneath the complexities there is a distinct pulse that underpins each section however it takes patience and no small degree of musical comprehension to feel it.
For the dancers and musicians alike, this was beyond their comfort zones and meant that the opening performance was almost as muddled as the audience was.
Understanding Stravinsky’s Vision
Whilst the general Parisian public was for the most part bamboozled by Stravinsky’s new ballet, others perhaps more in tune with the composer’s intentions were not. Maurice Ravel reportedly grasped immediately what Stravinsky was aiming to achieve with The Rite of Spring. Alongside this, we should not ignore the vital choreography created by Nijinsky.
You can probably picture the beleaguered dancers confused by the music, in pagan costumes and expected to dance in such an unnatural manner that they could not cope.
Nijinsky made it plain that he expected the dancers to land flatly following a leap and he insisted on turning their toes inwards. Fortunately, maybe for the valiant dancers, the reception to their efforts was praised at the expense of Stravinsky’s insignificant score.
Naturally, the innovations created through the demands of the dance raised the bar. It showed the waiting world what could be achieved if one chose to move away from traditional approaches to choreography and embrace the possible.
The Enduring Impact
What we have then is a piece of music, choreography and a narrative that threw out the rule book, broke with tradition and challenged everyone involved. Since that fateful premiere in 1913, the world has moved on through two World Wars and significant cultural change.
The Rite of Spring has come to be a central part of the orchestral repertoire rather than a work to be feared. As a ballet, The Rite of Spring has undergone numerous different staging, some more successful than others but each recognising the immensity of the geniuses behind the original concept.
All the more remarkable perhaps is the fact that new audiences are experiencing Stravinsky’s music for the first time and greeting it with awe and delight. Somehow, for me at least, The Rite Of Spring never tires. At each hearing, there’s something new, and here maybe is the heart of the matter.