Spring Festival: Full Score for Orchestra

Author: (American) Igor Stravinsky
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-03-01
Features: Igor Stravinsky, an American composer, conductor, and pianist of Russian origin. He entered the St. Petersburg University to study law in 1901, studied composition under Rimsky-Korsakov in 1903, and began writing many famous ballet scores from 1909, gaining worldwide acclaim. During World War I, he lived in Switzerland, became a French citizen in 1920, and began settling in the United States in 1939, engaging in conducting and creative activities. He is one of the key representatives of modernist music, with his creative works generally divided into three periods: the Russian Style period, the Neoclassical period, and the Serialism period. His early works, represented by the famous ballets The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring, exhibit both a distinct Russian style and a strong primitive expressionism. His mid-period works, such as the ballet Pulcinella, the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex, the Symphony of Psalms, the opera The Rake's Progress, and some instrumental works, combine the characteristics of classical music with the language of modern music. His late works applied Webern's serial music techniques, with representative works such as the ballet Agon, the television musical Flood, and the orchestral piece The Rite of Spring. Stravinsky called his third ballet score Vesnasvyashchennaya, meaning "The Sacred Spring." The name Le Sacré du printemps, which was used for the Russian Ballet's premiere on May 29, 1913, was given by the painter Leon Bakst after the work was completed (initially plural). It became the standard title outside Russia, and the English title The Rite of Spring was derived from this name. In 1921, the Diaghilev Ballets Russes premiered The Rite of Spring in London to commemorate the post-war revival, and this was the first time the English title was used (choreographed by Leonid Massine). Stravinsky conceived of this work in 1910. From September 1911 to March 1913, he actually devoted himself to its composition. The premiere was met with chaos, and the performance was a failure (in reality, what more angered the audience was Nijinsky's controversial choreography rather than the music). After this performance, in 1914, Stravinsky, who had just turned 32, achieved a great success in his career (he later recalled this experience, saying, "Few composers have ever enjoyed such success"). Throughout his long life, Stravinsky always lied when referring to this work. In 1920, he told an interviewer that the work was initially conceived as a purely instrumental piece without a plot ('une ?uvre architectonique et non anecdótique'). In 1931, he told the author of an authoritative biography that only the melody played by the bassoon at the beginning of the score quoted a folk song. In 1959, through his musical and literary assistant Robert Craft, he again emphasized that this work contained no traditional elements and was merely a product of his intuition. "I heard it, and I wrote down what I heard," he claimed. "I was merely a vessel through which The Rite of Spring flowed." These statements and quotes have gradually become an enduring myth in 20th-century music. In fact, the ballet's script is meticulous and ethnographically precise (except for the part where a human sacrifice occurs at the climax) in depicting the "Russian pagan scene"—as the frequently hidden subtitle of the ballet suggests. The composer had carefully planned this with Russian painter and architect Nikolai Roerich (to whom Stravinsky dedicated the work) and later took notes. At least nine clearly identifiable folk melodies are included in the entire work. These were carefully selected to achieve ethnographic authenticity and align perfectly with the script. The music well represents and expands the traditions of the same time and place, much like Petrushka, this work's music is also based on an innovative use of the Rimsky-Korsakov scale. Stravinsky's lies were not merely due to poor memory, nor were they just boredom and cynicism. After the revolution and the Bolshevik coup, Stravinsky wanted to sever ties with Russia. He was not only fervently eager to integrate into the mainstream of Western music but also hoped to become a leader. He was keen to distance himself from his innate provincialism and embrace an ambitious global ideology. Therefore, he emphasized that his music—and all his music—was "pure," "abstract," and "(neo)classical," without being inspired by any specific time or place. The legend of The Rite of Spring portrays it as a strong disconnection from the "past," but in reality, it is also the greatest celebration of two "pasts"—the distant past of its themes and the more recent past of its style. Between the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, the fashion among Russian poets and artists was to reconstruct or imaginatively recreate ancient paganism. "In our hearts," Alexander Blok wrote in 1908, "the seismograph's needles are violently trembling." A shadow fell over all sensitive souls, and the "cruel sense of impending catastrophe" brought a realization—culture was heading for the brink, and individuals were despairingly fragmented and isolated—the later poets would call this a sensory schism. Blok drew a heavy line between the refined intellectual culture (kul'túra)—ornate, rootless, materialistic, rationalistic, and thus doomed—and the folk "spontaneous nature (stikhíya)." The tragedy of the modern person lies in his alienation from the earth. The artist's duty is to renounce "culture" and become a "spontaneous person" he "sees dreams and creates legends, unable to be separated from the earth." To regain this redemptive unity, one must imitate the attitude of art and the farmer, for the farmer still—completely unconsciously—practices the ancient religion of the earth. "In our village, girls perform 'khorovods' [ritual dances], play games, and sing their own songs: they set up ambiguous riddles, interpret dreams, and weep for the departed. Rituals, songs, khorovods, charms—all bring people closer to nature, helping them understand its nocturnal whispers, imitating its movements." Blok may have already depicted The Rite of Spring. In the stage just before the revolution, the most important mythological poet was Sergey Mitrofanovich Gorodetsky, who was born and died almost the same year as Stravinsky. In the same year he published his first poetry collection Yar' (1907), the young composer set music to two of its poems. Yar' includes a group of poems titled "Yarilo," the name of the Slavic summer sun god who ruled in the summer. In the first poem of this group, a female priest is killed by a wizard wielding an axe while a sacred lime tree trunk is carved into an idol of Yarilo. This poem not only foreshadows the theme of The Rite of Spring—the sacrifice of a girl—but also provides prototypes for two of the three solo dancers in the ballet—the chosen girl and the elderly, wisest woman. It is very likely that this poem formed part of the direct background for Stravinsky's rich "imagery" (perhaps also influenced by Alexander Serov's old opera Rogneda, which included a scene of sacrifice—Fyodor Stravinsky, Igor Stravinsky's father, often performed this opera as a bass)—in the spring of 1910, when Stravinsky was completing The Firebird: he saw a frenzied girl dancing to death before a tribal shaman, becoming a sacrifice to the sun god. Once this idea took root, Stravinsky quickly found his next collaborator, because (as he wrote in a letter to the editor of the St. Petersburg musical magazine) "If not Roerich, who else could help me? Who else could understand the entire secret of our ancestors' closeness to the earth?" Roerich was already famous for his many archaic paintings, and that year he published a sensational article "Joy in Art," which culminated in lyrical reflections on ancient times, essentially providing a ready-made ballet script. "Let us take one more look at a scene from the Stone Age, a holiday. Imagine a holiday when people celebrate the victory of the spring sun. When they travel into the woods, enjoying the fragrance of the trees: when they weave fragrant garlands from early spring branches and leaves and adorn themselves with them. When they dance joyfully, when all their wishes are fulfilled, they cheer and rejoice. Amidst them, art is born. They are very close to us. Of course, they sang. Their songs drifted over the lake, spreading across all the islands. The blazing flames flashed with yellow light. Near the flames, the crowd moved to a dark clearing. The turbulent lake of the day had now become calm and peaceful, glowing with a faint blue light. Amidst the laughter of the night, the silhouettes of glided freely across the lake." Roerich's "holiday" and Stravinsky's "sacrifice" had each formed the entire first and second parts of The Rite of Spring. In the ancient Slavic peasant religion, the reign of the god Yarilo fell between two holidays: Semik—the unfreezing festival (the seventh Tuesday after Easter, when divination rituals, fertility rituals, and death commemorations were performed)—and Kupala—the Midsummer Festival (equivalent to St. John's Day, when animals were sacrificed, young people danced through flames, and marriage [abduction of the bride] rituals were performed)—between these two. Roerich described these rituals in a medieval Kyiv chronicle, and in the 19th century, the folklorist Alexander Afanasyev's monumental work An Overview of Slavic Nature Poetry (Poeticheskiye Vozzreniya Slavyan naprirodu, 1861-64) included a chapter dedicated to "Folk Festivals." He also adapted some descriptions of Herodotus's rituals for the ancient Scythians—the ancestors of the Slavs living in what is now Russia and Central Asia of the Soviet Union—into his own creative use. In the end, he creatively applied the latest research on the supposed "Volkhvs" and their eloquent female partners. The Volkhvs were folk shamans, equivalent to shamans, who spun continuously until they entered a trance-like state close to death; the role of the old woman who directs the "youths" in the divination ritual at the beginning of the ballet was inspired by the Volkhvs. The script for The Rite of Spring began to take shape in the summer of 1910, with these titles appearing in Stravinsky and Roerich's correspondence and in notes taken after completing Petrushka a year later. He consulted Roerich at the estate of the generous patron of folk art, Maria Tenisheva princess, before finalizing it, so Maria Tenisheva princess can be called the godmother of The Rite of Spring: