The Rite of Spring

It is no exaggeration to say that The Rite of Spring changed the course of 20th-century music like no other work. A number of essential issues (national identity and universalism; new approaches to melody, harmony, and rhythm; replacing conventional plot with a more abstract subject matter) are presented in this masterpiece with such power that few composers in the last 100 years have been able to avoid the challenge of facing them, in one way or another. 

It all began like just another show for the impresario Sergei Diaghilev’s Paris-based company, the Ballets Russes. Diaghilev’s magic formula, the combination of virtuoso dancing with the exotic appeal of far-away Russia had worked wonders with French audiences, particularly in The Firebird and Petrushka, which had revealed to the world the company’s young star composer, Igor Stravinsky. Following these, Diaghilev would again reunite with Stravinsky, and dancer-choreographer Vaslav Nijinsky, for a third production: The Rite of Spring. 

Stravinsky reports in his autobiography how the idea for The Rite of Spring was first revealed to him:

“One day, when I was finishing the last pages of The Firebird in St. Petersburg, I had a fleeting vision which came to me as a complete surprise, my mind at the moment being full of other things. I saw in imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watched a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring.” 

Together with painter Nicholas Roerich — who designed the ballet’s sets and costumes and held a vast knowledge of prehistoric Russia — the two created an authentic scenario. It was to be a ballet, as musicologist Richard Taruskin wrote, “devoid of plot in the conventional sense. ... [It] would not tell a story of a pagan ritual; it would be that ritual.” Stravinsky and Roerich seem to have decided together that the “Great Sacrifice” should be preceded by a celebration of the Earth, with traditional ritual games re-enacted onstage and culminating in a wild stomping dance. 

In its final form, the scenario of The Rite of Spring incorporates a number of allusions to ancient Russian folk rituals, and accordingly, the music relies heavily on ancient Russian folksongs, taken from published collections. This is important to emphasize because in later years, anxious to project a “cosmopolitan” image, Stravinsky went to great lengths to deny the presence of any original folk material in The Rite. 

Part I of the work (“The Adoration of the Earth”) begins with a bassoon solo — derived from a Lithuanian folk song — written in the instrument’s highest register that immediately creates a mysterious atmosphere. The following section, “The Augurs of Spring (Dances of the Young Girls),” is based on a rhythmic ostinato (repeating rhythmic pattern) in which the emphasis constantly shifts. The result is a highly irregular and unpredictable rhythm, over which the winds introduce their mostly symmetrical, folksong-like melodies. Following this is a series of connected scenes and dances, culminating with the “Dance of the Earth.” Over a relentless ostinato in the bass, the rest of the orchestra strikes repeated chords in irregular groupings, gradually raising the volume an “earth-shatter-ing” climax. 

In Part II (“The Sacrifice”), after a slow introduction, one of the young girls is chosen for the sacrifice. Her selection is announced by 11 drumbeats, immediately followed by her glorification in a quick movement of great rhythmic complexity. After two more short, yet dramatic scenes, the work draws to a close with the “Sacrificial Dance,” whose wild accents surpass in boldness everything heard before. The irresistible energy of this movement never lets up until its unexpected ending. 

The Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring, on May 29, 1913, has gone down as one of the great scandals in the history of music. The performance was nearly drowned out by shouted insults, catcalls, slaps in the face, and general pandemonium. (Parisian jokesters quickly dubbed the work “Le massacre du printemps,” a play on its French title, Le Sacre du printemps.) It is hard to know how much of this was due to the music or to Nijinsky’s jagged choreography. How many people in the audience reacted to the musical and artistic revolution manifest in the work? And how many were simply being swept away by the brouhaha? What is certain is that in this ballet, the sounds of a brute force attacked the calm, apparently untroubled prosperity of the Parisian Belle Époque like an army of barbarians. A year later, that Belle Époque was shattered forever by the cannons of World War I. 

After the war’s end, The Rite of Spring quickly became established in the West as a modern classic — a work whose time had truly come. (In fact, the work’s triumph had already begun before the outbreak of the war, with the Paris concert premiere led by conductor Pierre Monteux in April 1914.) Yet Russia for a long time failed to appreciate this profoundly Russian work. Indeed, the work’s vehement rejection by Russian critics precipitated the final break between Stravinsky and his native country. 

— adapted from a note by Peter Laki

Peter Laki is a musicologist and frequent lecturer on classical music. He is a visiting associate professor of music at Bard College.