The Firebird, fairy-tale ballet in two scenes — Igor Stravinsky

Introduction

Scene One:

The Enchanted Garden of Kastchei – Appearance of the Firebird, pursued by Prince Ivan – Dance of the Firebird – Capture of the Firebird by Prince Ivan – Supplication of the Firebird – Appearance of the Thirteen Enchanted Princesses – The Princesses' Game with the Golden Apples (Scherzo) – Sudden Appearance of Prince Ivan – Khorovod (Round Dance) of the Princesses – Daybreak – Prince Ivan Penetrates Kastchei's Palace – Magic Carillon – Appearance of Kastchei's Monster Guardians, and Capture of Prince Ivan – Arrival of Kastchei the Immortal – Kastchei’s Dialogue with Prince Ivan – Intercession of the Princesses – Appearance of the Firebird – Dance of Kastchei's Retinue under the Firebird’s Spell – Infernal Dance of All Kastchei's Subjects – Lullaby (Firebird) –- Kastchei's Awakening – Kastchei's Death – Profound Darkness

Scene Two:

Disappearance of Kastchei's Palace and Magical Creations, Return to Life of the Petrified Knights, General Rejoicing

The whole work – the Introduction and the two Scenes, each of the latter made up of several narrative episodes of varying length – is played without a break. It lasts a little more than 45 minutes.

Stravinsky was not the first composer the Ballets Russes had in mind for The Firebird ballet. Enquiries were made with at least two of the other four Russians under consideration but the company finally decided in favour of a 27-year old former pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov. Serghei Diaghilev, the founder of Ballets Russes and the dynamic driving force behind the company might have preferred Stravinsky’s teacher for a project based on Russian folk tales – which, as his operas confirm, was a speciality of his. But, Rimsky having recently died, Diaghilev exercised his talent for taking the inspired risk. Stravinsky had done no more for the company at this stage than orchestrate a few Chopin waltzes for Les Sylphides but he was known to be thoroughly competent and it was not unreasonable to hope that he would draw on his knowledge of his late teacher’s work in similar circumstances – as, indeed, he did.

In fact, Stravinsky did more than that. Although his Firebird score does occasionally echo Rimsky – along with other Russian composers surprisingly including Scriabin – it is even more brilliantly done than Diaghilev and his choreographer Mikhail Fokine could have hoped. It is an unfailingly professional and highly colourful score which was perhaps the main factor in the resounding success of The Firebird when it was first performed in the Ballets Russes Paris season in 1910. With a characteristic combination of good luck and artistic perception Diaghilev had approached Stravinsky at a stage in his development when he was still a Russian nationalist in idiom and not yet the modernist he was progressively to become in his next two Ballets Russes scores, Petrushka in 1911 and, with notoriously explosive effect, The Rite of Spring in 1913.

Although it is not uncommon to hear the complete Firebird score in orchestral concerts, as on this occasion, it has to be said in fairness to the composer that it was not written for the concert hall: it adheres in detail to Fokine’s highly eventful scenario and accommodates his choreographic requirements not only with set dance numbers but also with mimed episodes that tend to be interesting more for a ballet audience than for a concert audience. Stravinsky’s concert suites, which largely omit the mime, have always been more far frequently performed for that reason. The second and third suites (1919 and 1946 respectively) are also more economical to perform in that they are scored for a smaller ensemble than the, in the composer’s words, “wastefully large” orchestra of the present 1910 version of the score (quadruple woodwind, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, three harps, an extensive percussion section, strings to match).

Whatever the version, the score offers a fundamental harmonic distinction between the natural and good on the one hand and the supernatural and evil on the other hand in much the same way as in Rimsky-Korsakov’s last and at that time unperformed opera The Golden Cockerel. The music associated with the human characters (Prince Ivan and the 13 enchanted princesses) and finally with the Firebird is characterised by folk song and diatonic harmonies based on the major and minor scales or natural modes. The supernatural (the apparently immortal ogre Kastchei and his guardian monsters) is represented by the augmented fourth or tritone, which occurs in neither the major nor minor scale, and by artificial scales such as those those made up of whole tones or alternating tones and semitones – which were features of the harmonic vocabulary of the more progressive Russian composers at the time and excitingly exotic for the Parisian public. The Firebird herself intercedes between the two, supernatural in origin but good in effect.

It is impossible in this context to describe the many episodes, some of them very short, listed above. But with an outline of the story in mind and some guidance on the major musical events it should be possible to experience the extraordinary genius of the young composer for orchestral colouring, characterisation, atmosphere and for integrating an enormous variety of rhythmic interest in a sustained structure beginning in eerie near silence and ending in a celebratory climax.

The story

The ballet is set in Kastchei’s palace, which is a dangerous place for mere mortals – like the 13 princesses who have succumbed to the immortal ogre’s spell or, worse still, the knights he has literally petrified by turning them to stone. In the first scene Prince Ivan enters Kastchei’s garden in pursuit of the Firebird (a magic creature unknown to ornithologists). He captures the Firebird but in response to her entreaties releases her. She allows him to take one of her feathers with the promise that it will save him whenever he is in danger. Falling in love with one of the princesses, he is determined to rescue her and her companions, only to fall into the hands of Kastchei’s guardian monsters. But before he can be petrified like the others he remembers the feather he had taken from the Firebird. As good as her word, she comes to rescue him, bewitching the monsters into an ever wilder dance and then sending them to sleep with a lullaby. She reveals to Ivan the secret of Kastchei’s immortality: he keeps his soul in a magic egg stored in a casket. Ivan smashes the egg, Kastchei immediately dies and the petrified knights are restored to life. Ivan and his chosen princess are betrothed in a scene of general rejoicing.

The music

RichardStrauss is reported to have told Stravinsky that he was wrong to begin The Firebird so quietly when he should have started with a bang to secure the audience’s attention. But nothing could be more effective in securing attention than the ominous Introduction for muted pianissimo lower strings introducing the eerie harmonies which would later be associated with the supernatural element of the story. The same atmosphere persists as Ivan enters the enchanted garden in pursuit of the Firebird until Ivan announces himself in human terms with with what Fokine described as a “beautiful Russian melody” on a solo oboe. The Scriabinesque fluttering, flickering Dance of the Firebird is as iridescent in orchestral colouring as the plumage of the bird itself, her supplication to be set free chromatically expressive on oboe and cor anglais.

The first appearance of the princesses is made by way of a number of graceful woodwind solos. Their Game with the Golden Apples turns out to be a nimble, well developed scherzo.

their Khorovod is a rondo based on a lovely folk melody also introduced by a solo oboe and going on to hint at Ivan’s dawning love for the most beautiful of them. After Daybreak, when Ivan enters the palace Kastchei’s monsters are awakened by the Magic Carillon sounding in whole tones. This marks the start of the increasingly picturesque progress – including the capture of Ivan, the intercession of the Princesses on his behalf, the arrival of the Firebird to save him – leading to the most dramatic passage in the ballet, the Infernal Dance of Kastchei’s subjects marked by its heavily percussive, furiously syncopated rhythms on brass and woodwind and its weirdly distorted fanfares tossed around the orchestra at increasing speed. Contrasting with it is the Lullaby introduced by one of the most beautifully written of all bassoon solos presented in the folk harmonies the Firebird has now earned the right to be identified with. Immediately after the Death of Kastchei, vividly depicted in arpeggios on sul ponticello strings and woodwind, the scene is plunged into darkness in a sustained pianissimo on multi-divided strings.

Light breaks in at the beginning of the much shorter Scene Two with the breathtaking entry of a solo horn introducing the expansive melody, a Russian folk song called By the Gate, which is to nourish Stravinsky’s rhythmic and harmonic imagination until the triumphant triple forte closing bars.