Rioting with Stravinsky: A particular analysis of the Rite of Spring

Music Analysis

Volumn 26, Issue 1-2, 2007, Pages 59-109

  Chua, Daniel K L ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 60949306931     PISSN: 02625245     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2249.2007.00250.x     Document Type: Article

References (160)

1. Marie Rambert, Quicksilver: An Autobiography (London: Macmillan, 1972), p. 64
2. See Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (London: Faber, 1979), pp. 46-7
3. Stravinsky and Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky, p. 46
4. Louis Vuillemin, 'Le Sacre du Printemps', Comœdia Illustré, 31 May 1913
5. reprinted in François Lesure (ed.), Anthologie de la Critique musicale: Igor Stravinsky: Le sacre du printemps: Dossier de Presse (Genève: Editions Minkoff, 1980), p. 21
6. The translation is taken from Truman C. Bullard, The First Performance of Igor Stravinsky's Sacre du Printemps (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 1971), I: p. 144
7. Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments (London: Faber and Faber, 1959), p. 143
8. Michel Georges-Michel with Stravinsky, 'Les deux "Sacre du Printemps"', Comœdia, 14 December 1920
9. reprinted in Lesure (ed.), Le sacre du printemps: Dossier de Presse, p. 53
10. Sections of this interview have been translated in Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents (London: Hutchinson, 1979), pp. 511-12
11. and Minna Lederman (ed.), Stravinsky in the Theatre (London: Peter Owen, 1951), p. 24
12. See Richard Taruskin, 'A Myth of the Twentieth Century: The Rite of Spring, the Tradition of the New, and "The Music Itself", Modernism / Modernity, 2/i (1995), pp. 1-26
13. On the Rite as a collaborative project, see Jann Pasler, 'Music and Spectacle in Petrushka and The Rite of Spring', in Jann Pasler (ed.), Confronting Stravinsky: Man, Musician, and Modernist (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 53-81
14. See Taruskin, 'A Myth of the Twentieth Century', pp. 7-14
15. See 'Letter to the Editor from Richard Taruskin' and 'Letter to the Editor in Reply to Richard Taruskin from Allen Forte', Music Analysis, 5/ii-iii (1986), pp. 313-37
16. 'Letter to the Editor from Richard Taruskin', p. 313
17. See 'Letter to the Editor from Richard Taruskin', p. 315, and 'Letter to the Editor in Reply to Richard Taruskin from Allen Forte', pp. 329 and 333
18. See Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works through Mavra (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), I: pp. 849-966
19. see also Forte's remarks on Taruskin's 'ultra conservative' historical perspective in 'Letter to the Editor in Reply to Richard Taruskin from Allen Forte', pp. 332-6
20. Despite Taruskin's allergy to authenticity elsewhere, he is obviously not immune to it himself; see 'The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past', in Richard Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 90-154
21. See Jurgen Habermas, The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, trans. Frederick Lawrence (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), p. 9
22. Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, I: p. 965
23. Authenticity is modernity's search for the absolute in the absence of its possibility. This is evident even in Stravinsky's preoccupation with the Rite during his lifetime: he was anxious to bequeath a definitive Rite of Spring to posterity, but all he achieved by constantly rewriting its history and revising the score was to undermine his own attempts to authenticate the work, spawning so many versions of the Rite that the piece does not exist as a single entity. There is not even an authoritative score of the work, let alone the authentic 'interpretation' that Stravinsky wanted his revisions and recordings to enforce. See Robert Fink, '"Rigoroso (flat = 126)": The Rite of Spring and the Forging of a Modernist Performing Style', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 52/ii (1999), pp. 299-362
24. Stravinsky admitted to the use of one folk source (the opening bassoon melody) which is more-or-less intact as a theme; he revealed this information in André Schæffner's biography Strawinsky (Paris: Éditions Rieder, 1931), p. 43, n. and plate xxi
25. Other sources found by Lawrence Morton, although treated in a cellular fashion by Stravinsky, are still recognisable. Taruskin, in trying to account for all the folk-like snippets in the sketches has to resort to a higher level of abstraction in order to connect the source to the score. See Lawrence Morton, 'Footnotes to Stravinsky Studies: "Le Sacre du Printemps"', Tempo, 128 (1979), pp. 9-16
26. and Richard Taruskin, 'Russian Folk Melodies in the Rite of Spring', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 33/iii (1980), pp. 501-43
27. See, for example, Taruskin's discussion of a source melody in Ex. 4 of his 'Russian Folk Melodies in The Rite of Spring', p. 517
28. Pieter C. van den Toorn, Stravinsky and the Rite of Spring: The Beginnings of a Musical Language (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), p. 2
29. Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music (1949), trans. by Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster (London: Sheed and Ward, 1987), pp. 135-60. Adorno regards tonality as the musical equivalent of the Hegelian Absolute, that is, as the foundation that has collapsed in twentieth-century music, making any objectively binding law in music highly problematic; instead of negotiating the difficulties, Stravinsky simply imposes an objective style as if authenticity were still possible without further reflection
30. On tonality as the Hegelian absolute see Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music, ed. Rolf Tiedemann, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), p. 21
31. Ironically, Adorno's reading of the Rite is shared by its champion, Richard Taruskin; see 'A Myth of the Twentieth Century', pp. 14-21
32. This odd pairing has also been noticed by Tamara Levitz, 'The Chosen One's Choice', in Andrew Dell'Antonio (ed.), Beyond Structural Listening? Postmodern Modes of Hearing (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004), pp. 73-80
33. For Stravinsky, the performer is not an 'interpreter' but an 'executant' who follows the instructions laid down by the composer in the score; see Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl (London: Oxford University Press, 1947), pp. 121-35; as is well known, these Norton lectures, given by Stravinsky at Harvard, were ghost-written by Pierre Souvtchinsky
34. Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, p. 145
35. and Theodor W. Adorno, 'Stravinsky: A Dialectical Portrait', in Quasi una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London: Verso, 1992), p. 149
36. Theodor W. Adorno, Sound Figures, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), p. 148
37. Robert Craft in Stravinsky (New York: St Martin, 1992), pp. 233-48, suggests from evidence in Stravinsky's annotations of a four-hand piano score in his possession that 'Stravinsky had composed the choreography at the same time as the music'
38. these annotations are published as an appendix in Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring: Sketches 1911-13 (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1969)
39. Indeed, in a letter to Max Steinberg dated 5 June 1913, Stravinsky states that 'Nijinsky's choreography was incomparable . . . everything is as I wanted'; the translation is taken from Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents, p. 102
40. For a concise discussion of these issues see Peter Hill, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 105-17
41. and Levitz, 'The Chosen One's Choice', pp. 80-4
42. See Robert Craft, '"The Rite of Spring": Genesis of a Masterpiece' and 'Commentary to the Sketches' in Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring: Sketches 1911-13, pp. xvii and 4. The opening page of the sketches displays Stravinsky's thoughts with calligraphic precision, as if the composer wanted to commence with absolute clarity; the ideas are so crystallised that most commentators believe that they were fashioned at the piano before the composer committed them to paper. The page begins with fragmentary ideas which are to be bound together as the material from the second half of the page demonstrates. Although Stravinsky conceded to Craft's suggestion that the 'Augurs' chord may not have been the first idea, since it was the composer's habit to compose from top down, the chord initiates the actual composition of the work in the sketches; the snippets above are 'random' ideas
43. Quoted from film footage of the composer at the piano in the CBS documentary Portrait of Stravinsky, directed by David Oppenheim; first broadcast 3 May 1966
44. Craft, ' "The Rite of Spring": Genesis of a Masterpiece', p. xvii
45. Stravinsky and Craft, Expositions and Developments, p. 147
46. See Jean-Jacques Nattiez, 'The Concepts of Plot and Seriation Process in Music Analysis', trans. Catherine Dale, Music Analysis, 4/i-ii (1985), pp. 107-18
47. Ernst Kurth, Harmonik und ihre Krise in Wagners 'Tristan'
48. quoted in Carl Dahlhaus, Schoenberg and the New Music, trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 126
49. Pierre Boulez, Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, trans. Stephen Walsh (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), p. 56
50. Taruskin, 'Letter to the Editor from Richard Taruskin', p. 318
51. Eric Walter White, Stravinsky: The Composer and his Works (London: Faber, 1966), p. 211
52. See Edward J. Dent, 'Le sacre du printemps', The Nation and Athenaeum, 18 June 1921
53. reprinted in Lesure (ed.), Le sacre du printemps, Dossier de Presse, p. 71
54. Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger, The Apollonian Clockwork: On Stravinsky, trans. Jeff Hamburg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 231. The authors are referring to the C/F# Pétrouchka chord
55. Constant Lambert, Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline (London: Hogarth Press, 1985), p. 91
56. See Allen Forte, The Harmonic Organization of The Rite of Spring', (New Haven, CT:Yale University Press, 1978)
57. Sections of the Rite are also discussed in Allen Forte, The Structure of Atonal Music (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1973), pp. 33, 76, 86-8 and 144-60
58. See Pieter C. van den Toorn, The Music of Igor Stravinsky (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983), pp. 48-72
59. See Richard Taruskin, 'Chernomor to Kashchei: Harmonic Sorcery
60. or, Stravinsky's "Angle"', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 38 (1985), p. 103
61. Arthur Berger, 'Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky', in Benjamin Boretz and Edward T. Cone (eds.), Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1968), p. 139
62. Letter dated 21 July 1911, quoted in Andriessen and Schonberger, The Apollonian Clockwork, p. 239
63. Debussy's influence on the Rite should not be underestimated. Stravinsky writes: 'Le Sacre owes more to Debussy than to anyone except myself; see Stravinsky and Craft, Expositions and Developments, p. 142, n. 1
64. Pieter C. van den Toorn, 'Some Characteristics of Stravinsky's Diatonic Music. Part Two', Perspectives of New Music, 15/ii (1977), p. 61
65. and Stravinsky and the Rite of Spring, p. 151
66. Robert Morgan, Twentieth-Century Music (New York: Norton, 1991), p. 97
67. Richard Taruskin, 'Chez Petrouchka: Harmony and Tonality chez Stravinsky', 19th-century Music, 10/iii (1987), p. 286
68. Van denToorn, The Music of Igor Stravinsky, pp. 106-16
69. David Lewin, 'A Formal Theory of Generalized Tonal Functions', Journal of Music Theory, 26/i (1982), pp. 41-3
70. For a summary of tonal dualism see Henry Klumpenhouwer, 'Dualistic Tonal Space and Transformation in Nineteenth-Century Musical Thought', in Thomas Christensen (ed.), The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 456-70
71. Robert Fink, 'Going Flat: Post-Hierarchical Music Theory and the Musical Surface', in Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist (eds.), Rethinking Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 121
72. Anthony Pople, Skryabin and Stravinsky: 1908-1914 (NewYork: Garland, 1989), p. 270
73. Christopher Hasty, 'Toward a Timely (or Worldly) Music Theory - Some Ideas from American Pragmatism', paper delivered at The University of Texas at Austin, 5 March 2003
74. see also Christopher Hasty, Meter as Rhythm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997)
75. Of related interest to the analysis of the particular is Jerrold Levinson's Music in the Moment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997), although his emphasis on concatenation is less relevant to Stravinsky's collage technique
76. The complex dialectical negations in Adorno's idea of the moment, explored in depth by Berthold Hoeckner in Programming the Absolute: Nineteenth-Century Music and the Hermeneutics of the Moment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), is probably too melancholic and too much entangled with German Idealism to illuminate the Stravinskian instant
77. Darius Milhaud in Entretiens avec Claude Rostand, 2nd edn (Paris: Zurfluh, 1992), pp. 48-9, suggests that the harmonies of the Rite inspired the compositional exploration and research on polytonality in the 1920s
78. Indeed, the term was already applied to the Rite at its première; an article in Le Matin described the ballet as 'résolument polyryth-mique et polytonale'; see A. D., 'Théâtre des Champs-Élysees: 1 ère Représentation du Sacre du Printemps', Le Matin, 30/10685, 30 May 1913, p. 3
79. Allen Forte, Contemporary Tone Structures (New York: Columbia Teachers College Press, 1955), p. 137
80. For similar criticism of polytonality see: Pieter C. van den Toorn, 'Some Characteristics of Stravinsky's Diatonic Music', Perspectives of New Music, 14 (1975), pp. 104-38
81. and The Music of Igor Stravinsky, pp. 63-5
82. Arthur Berger, 'Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky', pp. 123-54
83. and Benjamin Boretz, 'Metavariations: Part IV, Analytic Fallout', Perspectives of New Music, 11 (1972), p. 149
84. Or at least, in the words of Daniel Harrison, bitonality has been 'under-theorised'; see his 'Bitonality, Pentatonicism, and Diatonicism in a Work by Milhaud', in James M. Baker, David W Beach and Jonathan W Bernard (eds.), Music Theory in Concept and Practice (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1997), p. 394
85. On the early history of the idea, see Francois de Médicis, 'Darius Milhaud and the Debate on Polytonality in the French Press of the 1920s', Music & Letters, 86/iv (2005), pp. 573-91
86. Edward T Cone, 'Analysis Today', in Paul Henry Lang (ed.), Problems of Modern Music (New York: Norton, 1962), p. 43
87. Berger, 'Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky', p. 123
88. Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, pp. 35-7
89. see also William W. Austin, Music in the Twentieth Century: From Debussy through Stravinsky (London: Dent, 1966), pp. 260-1
90. Arnold Schoenberg, Structural Functions of Harmony (London: Faber, 1969), p. 194
91. see also Dahlhaus, Schoenberg and the New Music, pp. 125-7
92. CBS documentary, Portrait of Stravinsky
93. William E. Benjamin, 'Tonality without Fifths: Remarks on the First Movement of Stravinsky's Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments', In Theory Only, 2/xi-xii (1977), pp. 58-9
94. V. Kofi Agawu, Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 26-79
95. Andriessen and Schönberger, The Apollonian Clockwork, p. 57
96. André Boucourechliev, Stravinsky, trans. Martin Cooper (London: Victor Gollancz, 1987), p. 71
97. Fredric Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (London: Methuen, 1981), p. 137
98. See Brian Hyer, 'Tonality', in Christensen (ed.), The Cambridge History of Western Music Theory, pp. 748-50
99. Fink, 'Going Flat', pp. 132-3
100. Robert Moevs, review of Allen Forte, The Harmonic Organization of the 'Rite of Spring', Journal of Music Theory, 24/i (1980), p. 103
101. Pierre Lalo, 'Considerations sur "Le Sacre du Printemps'", Le Temps, 5 August 1913
102. the translation is taken from Hill, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring, p. 93
103. Similarly Adolphe Boschot, in L'Écho de Paris, 30 May 1913, suggested that to create the harmonic effect of the Rite, one merely needed to 'play on two pianos . . . transposing [the music] by a tone in one part but not the other'
104. Arnold Whittall, 'Music Analysis as a Human Science? Le Sacre du Printemps in Theory and Practice', Music Analysis, 1/i (1982), pp. 51 and 50
105. Boucourechliev, Stravinsky, p. 71
106. Whittall, 'Music Analysis as a Human Science?', pp. 46 and 50
107. Given the images and movement that inspired the composition of the Rite (see, for example, Stravinsky's letters to Roerich and Findeizen reprinted in The Rite of Spring: Sketches 1911-13, appendix, pp. 27-33), it is probable that Stravinsky conceived the tapping out of the rhythm of spring before Nijinsky choreographed it. See n. 26 on Stravinsky's involvement with the choreography
108. Boschot, L'Écho de Paris
109. Quoted in Roger Shattuck, 'The Devil's Dance: Stravinsky's Corporal Imagination', in Pasler (ed.), Confronting Stravinsky, pp. 90 and 87
110. H. Colles (unsigned), 'The Fusion of Music and Dance: "Le sacre du printemps"', The Times, 12 July 1913
111. Letter to Andre Caplet, 29 May 1913, in François Lesure and Roger Nichols (eds.), Debussy Letters, trans. Roger Nichols (London: Faber, 1987), p. 270
112. See: Lambert, Music Ho!, pp. 49-50 and 91
113. Cecil Gray, A Survey of Contemporary Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924), pp. 137-42
114. Dent, The Nation and Athenaeum
115. Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring: Sketches 1911-13, p. 36
116. Hasty, 'Toward a Timely (or Worldly) Music Theory'
117. Jacques Rivière, 'Le Sacre du Printemps', La nouvelle revue française, November 1913
118. Letter to Nicolai Roerich, Clarens, 6 March 1912; translated by Stravinsky in The Rite of Spring: Sketches 1911-13, appendix, p. 31
119. Boulez, Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, pp. 56 and 68
120. The 'Augurs of Spring' and the 'Dances of the Young Girls' form one movement. Stravinsky conceived the dances as a continuous choreographic action rather than separate pantomimes and was particularly pleased with the 'smooth jointure' between the two. See Stravinsky's letter to Roerich, 13 November 1911
121. reprinted in The Rite of Spring: Sketches 1911-13, appendix, p. 30
122. Edward T Cone, 'Stravinsky: The Progress of a Method', Perspectives of New Music, 1 (1962), pp. 18-20
123. Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) (London and New York: Verso, 1996), p. 6
124. Adorno, 'Stravinsky: A Dialectical Portrait', p. 160
125. Laclau, Emancipation(s), pp. 15-16
126. Forte, The Structure of Atonal Music, p. 76
127. Roy Travis, 'Towards a New Concept of Tonality', Journal of Music Theory, 3/ii (1959), pp. 257-84
128. Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Tradition, I: pp. 937-48
129. Alexandre Tansman, Igor Stravinsky (New York: Putnum, 1949), p. 143
130. Morgan, Twentieth-Century Music, p. 97
131. 'Contextual' is a term used by Milton Babbitt to describe music 'which defines its materials within itself, providing 'alternatives to what were once regarded as musical absolutes'; see his 'Who Cares if you Listen?', reprinted in Barney Childs and Eliot Schwartz (eds.), Contemporary Composers on Contemporary Music (New York: Holt, Reinhart and Winston, 1967), pp. 244-5
132. Igor Stravinsky, 'Ce que j'ai voulu exprimer dans Le Sacre du Printemps', Montjoie!, 8, 29 May 1913
133. The translation is by Edward B. Hill, Boston Evening Transcript, 12 February 1916
134. Roman Vlad, Stravinsky, trans. Frederick and Ann Fuller (London: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 31
135. Forte, The Harmonic Organization of 'The Rite of Spring', p. 132; the other complexes are 7-16, 7-31, 8-28, 8-23, 8-18 and 8-16
136. As Craig Ayrey writes, 'the principle of repetition on all levels . . . [allows for] the formation of a self-referential system of prolongational structures'. See his 'Berg's "Scheideweg": Analytical Issues in Op. 2/ii'
137. Music Analysis, 1/ii (1982), p. 196
138. Schæffner, Strawinsky, p. 95
139. Whittall, 'Some Recent Writings on Stravinsky', Music Analysis, 8/i-ii (1989), pp. 173-5
140. Or what Roland Barthes calls 'connotation'; see Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990), pp. 1-16
141. Elliot Antokoletz, 'Interval Cycles in Stravinsky's Early Ballets', Journal of the American Musicological Society, 39/iii (1986), p. 608
142. Dmitri Tymoczko, 'Stravinsky and the Octatonic: A Reconsideration', Music Theory Spectrum, 24/i (2002), p. 78. There is an error in the text; instead of 'harmonic minor' the original reads 'melodic minor'. However, it is clear from Tymoczko's Ex. 7 that 'harmonic minor' is intended
143. Tymoczko, 'Stravinsky and the Octatonic', pp. 80-2
144. Morton, 'Footnotes to Stravinsky Studies', p. 14. Morton's folk tune reproduced in Ex. 22b has been transposed to correspond to the pitches of the ostinato; the original starts on A
145. revised in Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, I: p. 904. Taruskin's folk tune reproduced in Ex. 22c has been transposed to correspond to the pitches of the ostinato; the original starts on C
146. Van den Toorn, Stravinsky and the Rite of Spring, pp. 144-5
147. The sketches show that Stravinsky had intended 'Spring Rounds' to follow the 'Augurs of Spring/Dance of the Young Girls', hence the 'early' appearance of the 'Spring Rounds' theme: see Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring: Sketches 1911-13, pp. 6-8
148. Vlad, Stravinsky, p. 30
149. Stravinsky, Montjoie!
150. Van den Toorn, The Music of Igor Stravinsky, p. 103. Note again the theoretical bias towards Eflat in the description
151. Rivière, La Nouvelle revue française; reprinted in Lesure (ed.), Le sacre du printemps: Dossier de Presse, pp. 43 and 39
152. Letter from Stravinsky to Nicolai Findeizen, Clarens, 2 December 1912
153. Pasler, 'Music and Spectacle', p. 81
154. This music was born with Le sacre du Printemps' (my emphasis; the translation is taken from Levitz, 'The Chosen One's Choice', p. 83)
155. See my Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
156. Le sacre du printemps: Dossier de Presse, p. 47
157. Frederick J. Smith, The Experiencing of Musical Sound: A Prelude to a Phenomenology of Music (New York: Gordon and Breach, 1979), pp. 70 and 178
158. In order to criticise Stravinsky, Adorno has to understand the Rite in terms of a passive, reactive body; however, in Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (London: Routledge, 1973), pp. 266-39, Adorno advocates the body that thinks: thinking cannot be separated from need
159. See David Sudnow, Ways of the Hands: The Organisation of Improvised Conduct (Cambridge, MA and London: MKT Press, 1993)
160. Adorno, Sound Figures, p. 148