The Rite of Spring, Pictures from Pagan Russia in two Parts

Part 1:    The Adoration of the Earth

Introduction – Auguries of Spring – Dances of the Young Girls – Game of Capture – Round-dances of Spring – Games of the Rival Tribes – Procession of the Sage – Adoration of the Earth – The Sage – Dance of the Earth

Part 2: The Sacrifice

Introduction – Mysterious Circles of the Young Girls – Glorification of the Chosen One – Evocation of the Ancestors – Ritual Action of the Ancestors – Sacrificial Dance of the Chosen One

The first performance of The Rite of Spring – by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, with choreography by Nijnsky and Pierre Monteux conducting, at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris on 29 May 1913 – was one of the formative events of 20th century music. The near-riot it provoked in the auditorium certainly helped in establishing the notoriety of the work but had nothing fundamental to do with the overwhelming influence it was to have on other composers for generations to come. It was a new sound intoxicatingly free of metrical regularity and with scarcely any precedent. Bartók had anticipated it, in terms of primitive rhythms and aggressive harmonies, in his Allegro Barbaro in 1911 and Mussorgsky had made use of Russian folk song in ways similar to some of those adopted in The Rite. But that does not explain where, only two years after Petrushka, this radically innovatory music came from. Stravinsky himself couldn’t explain it. “I heard and wrote what I heard. I am the vessel through which The Rite passed.”

The original inspiration for The Rite came to Stravinsky, he said, when he was still working on The Firebird.    “I saw in imagination a solemn pagan rite: wise elders, seated in a circle, watching a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring.”    He shared his idea with Nicolas Roerich, an authority on the rituals of the ancient Slavs, and together they drew up what is not so much a ballet scenario as a series of pagan scenes. Roerich – who, incidentally, claimed the whole concept as his own – also designed the backcloths and some of the costumes, the latter based on authentic examples. Whatever the positive qualities in the staging at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, however, the work proved far more successful in a concert performance conducted by Monteux at the Casino de Paris several months later. At last, without Nijinsky’s remorselessly stamping choreography, the investment in an uncommonly large orchestra – which, the composer confessed,    would not have been so extravagant without Diaghilev’s encouragement– had paid off, at least in artistic terms.

The ballet is divided into two parts, The Adoration of the Earth and The Sacrifice, each preceded by an Introduction before the curtain rises. The Introduction to Part 1, described by the composer as “swarm of spring pipes,” is scored essentially for wind, beginning high on a solitary bassoon with the melody of a Lithuanian folk song – not, incidentally, the only folk material Stravinsky used in the work, in spite of his claim to the contrary. The bassoon is joined by an increasingly complex texture of melodic lines in frequently dissonant contrapuntal relationship. The pizzicato semiquavers on violins at the end of the Introduction lead directly into the quaver ostinato that runs virtually throughout Auguries of Spring, its rhythmic emphases continually shifting until the entry of a solo horn with the first of several wind tunes which accumulate an ever more frenetic exuberance.

A change of tempo to Presto marks the beginning of The Game of Capture – a breathless chase propelled by timpani and a variety of urgent signals on woodwind, trombones, and horns.    A quiet trill on flutes leads into Round-dances of Spring which begins peacefully enough with a folk-like melody on E flat and bass clarinets. But it is then weighed down by the heavy rhythms of the strings and a short but intimidating theme on woodwind and horns which proceeds to a crushing fortissimo on the whole orchestra. It is only after a recall of material from The Game of Capture that the clarinet melody returns (now on E flat clarinet and alto flute). Games of the Rival Tribes opposes two themes, the first introduced by warlike horns, the second by incantatory oboes and clarinets. It is interrupted at its height by the entry of the Procession of the Sage, its four-note theme carried by four horns through a crowd of contrapuntal activity on woodwind and brass. After a sudden silence the Adoration of the Earth begins, the Sage briefly kissing the ground to the awed sound of double bassoons, timpani and two muted double basses. From another silence The Dance of the Earth, the fiercest episode in the whole of Part 1, erupts in seething animation.   

The Introduction to Part 2 is a magically sustained episode of suspense and muted sonorities. The strings are reduced to small ensembles or solo lines to introduce the shapely melody, taken up by three horns near the end, that is to become the main theme of the nocturnal Mysterious Circles of the Young Girls. It is from them that the sacrificial maiden will be chosen, an event signalled by a sudden crescendo and the eleven pounding string chords leading into Glorification of the Chosen One and the first outbreak of savagery in Part 2. The Evocation of the Ancestors is a ritual fanfare, a ceremonial appeal issued mainly by wind. Its effect is demonstrated by the downward plunge of the four bassoons into the Ritual Action of the Ancestors, a terrifying mixture of eerily slithering woodwind and bellowing brass, the latter mercilessly proclaiming a theme heard earlier on muted trumpets. The rhythms of the Sacrificial Dance of the Chosen One are so disjointed that, although he could play them, the composer could not at first write them down. Under the extreme stress of their convulsions the organism of the sacrificial victim finally collapses.