Autograph of the first page of Le sacre de printemps

OK, the first week we did contemporary marching band music from Romania, then Evan wrote about weird electronica by Russians (some of them in Russia!)… Now let’s do Stravinsky’s RITE OF SPRING.

You owe it to yourself to listen to just the first SIX minutes, “Les augures printaniers” and “Jeu de rapt.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UJOaGIhG7A&t=6s

WILD, no? Every bassoonist dreams of playing those first notes in concert… It doesn’t even sound like a bass bassoon! It could be a flute! And this song totally confirms my hatred of clarinets (which, fascinatingly, were invented by…. like… my great great great grandfather!).

Couple things you should know about RoS:

• Probably the most influential music during the twentieth century. The music historian Donald Jay Grout:

  The Sacre is undoubtedly the most famous composition of the early 20th century ... it had the effect of an explosion that so scattered the elements of musical language that they could never again be put together as before.

• It’s all very confusing here, but, basically… “Le sacre de printemps” was written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company. This was a pretty common thing, still is… Think of Les ballets Russes (”The Russian Ballet Troupe”) as a touring band, and for many seasons, they performed in Paris. That’s why the titles of everything are French.

• Diaghilev was born in Perm, Russia, in 1872, but got most of his education in the imperial capital of the Russian Empire, St. Petersburg. I don’t know tons about Diaghilev, but I assume he was fluent in French, probably spoke it at home with his parents, which was totally common. Fascinatingly and so importantly, his cousin was Dmitri Filosofov, the person who did more than anyone to popularize mysticism in Russia. That means his aunt, Dmitri’s mom, was the writer and feminist Anna Filosofova. And, because the world is crazy, Modest Mussorgsky (the really famous composer) was a frequent guest in Diaghilev’s house while Diaghilev was growing up. Crazy.

• Stravinsky, whose family was Polish, was born not far from St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1882. So, younger than Diaghilev, but not too much younger. Igor’s dad was a famous opera star who performed his entire career in Kiev, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire). Igor was a trained lawyer, but got into music, which makes sense: His best friend was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the Russian composer. Crazy.

• Originally, the music was the score to a ballet performance, although now it’s mostly played as a work of orchestral music — Bernstein conducted it a lot.

• Without too much exaggeration, it’s right to think that Diaghilev created what you now think of as ballet. Before him, ballet was more like modern dance is now. After him, it’s all tutus and ballet slippers. Right? And ballet with Diaghilev was always MORE than just ballet… it was a rite, a religious experience, in German one says Gesamtkunstwerk, an immersive experience of art. Probably he burned incense during the production. The guy was totally a mystic…

• Amazingly, Nicholas Roerich did the costumes and designed the set. Roerich was a weird, incredibly talented Russian painter… only he wasn’t exactly Russian, he was half Baltic German (I think actually Prussian, but I don’t know for sure) and half Russian. Again, this was quite common, because Russia was an empire.

• So you had a Russian from Perm (Diaghilev) who hired a Pole (Stravinsky) to write the music for a “ballet” designed by a German (Roerich) which was performed in Paris. It’s even more complicated than that…. Let’s start with the dancers………..

• There’s a lot of controversy over how the initial audiences responded to “Le sacre…” Some people say the audiences rioted because the music was too weird. Some say that the audiences rioted because the music wasn’t weird enough. I’m here to say that the music is super weird, but remember that Satie and Debussy were composing during the first decade of the 20th century. Anyway, I’m sure both versions are accurate: The music is SUPER weird and probably irked a lot of people who loved “the good old music, the way it was in the nineteenth century! Where’s Debussy?” And, in the audiences, I’m certain there were people who said, “Why can’t you be more like Satie?”

• Satie was totally pirate. From Wikipedia:

  Satie never married, and his home for most of his adult life was a single small room, first in Montmartre and, from 1898 to his death, in Arcueil, a suburb of Paris. He adopted various images over the years, including a period in quasi-priestly dress, another in which he always wore identically coloured velvet suits, and is known for his last persona, in neat bourgeois costume, with bowler hat , wing collar, and umbrella. He was a lifelong heavy drinker, and died of cirrhosis  of the liver at the age of 59.

I’m sure Satie attended les ballets Russes, and probably threw things at the stage after RoS. He worked with Cocteau (the French poet and filmmaker) and Diaghilev in 1917 on Parade… Picasso was the set designer! Imagine!