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100 years on: Igor Stravinsky on The Rite of Spring Robert Craft Published: 19 June 2013 I t is scarcely believable that The Rite of Spring, and before it The Firebird and Petrushka, were written by a composer still in his twenties, and that this was only slightly more than a decade after the death of Johannes Brahms. The unanticipated creation of Petrushka (1911), written in seven months, intervened between the conception and the composition of The Rite, which Igor Stravinsky had envisioned while completing Firebird in 1910. The theophanic experience likely dates from December 1909, when Alexandre Benois and Nikolai Roerich persuaded the composer of the merit of Mikalojus Ciurlioniss paintings. At their urging Stravinsky visited the St Petersburg exhibition of the Lithuanian artists temperas. Roerich, himself a painter, ethnographer and authority on pre-Christian rituals of Slavic Russian tribes, had compiled a book on Ciurlionis. Mesmerized by the paintings, Stravinsky purchased one, the Sonata of the Pyramids (1908). Bernard Berenson classified Ciurlionis simply as an abstractionist, which is of no help in understanding his use of strange forms, geometric conglomerations, quasirealistic trees, and, primarily, the sense of skyward movement. In July 1961 Stravinsky wrote to a Lithuanian art critic, emphasizing the difficulty in conveying the originality of the art: It is not easy to describe a picture of this flight of growing-upwards extending rows of pyramids toward the horizon, the subject of this powerful work. Perhaps in the upward thrusting Stravinsky felt an affinity with his musical germinations at the time. But, then, only a few years before his marriage in 1906 he was still contemplating whether to become a painter or a composer. His early landscapes are technically accomplished in many aspects and distinguished by the richness of his palette. Certainly Ciurlioniss work influenced the Rite, and surely it is not mere chance that the first bars of the ballet are almost a note-for-note transcription of a popular Lithuanian folk song. From the sustained opening note (The Sun), the whole of the Introduction to the Rite could be interpreted as musical symbolism for the reawakening of life. Other instruments join in, singly or in small groups, all suggesting, without imitating, the bursting of buds and the beginning of plant life; Homo sapiens does not appear until the second piece, the Augurs of Spring. Stravinsky has told the world that the most joyous event of every year was the thunderous cracking of the ice in the Neva River, and the Rite remains the mightiest tribute in music to the return of spring. No composer before him had portrayed an ancient ritual, starting with the Sun God and ending with human sacrifice, a chosen virgin dancing herself to death. Stravinsky selected Roerich as his collaborator because he was the only painter with extensive knowledge of pagan Russia as well. At the premiere of the Rite, Roerich was harshly denigrated by Jean Cocteau as a mediocre artist whose decor weakens the innovative nature of the ballet. Other critics derided Roerichs scenery as lacking the dissonances characteristic of the music: The clouds drift like slow waves, and the line of the hills gently slope. Roerichs stylized costumes show no sign of the brutal quality suggested by the music. Stravinsky remained loyal to Roerich nevertheless, giving equal recognition to him in the same bold font on the first page of the four-hand score published in 1921. (It may not be out of place to mention that before Leopold Stokowski presented the ballet for the first time in New York he consulted with Stravinsky in Paris, greatly pleasing him with the declaration that: We are not aiming to make this production essentially Russian hence no Roerich because we felt the ideas and feeling it expresses are universal. Stravinsky used to claim that the Rite was intended to send Russia and especially its music teachers to hell.) Alas! Poor Roerich. Stravinsky knew well this fellow of obvious talents and infinite chicanery, but ignored his dubious American escapades. Roerich remained a figure of mystery, an exotic, regarded with suspicion by the Americans, the British, the Soviets, and even the Indians, all of

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whom believed him to be a political agent for the other side. Until 1939 he continued to correspond with Stravinsky from Nagar, the Himalayan village in the Kulu Valley, India, where the painter died in 1947. In the composers youth, Roerich had been a guru to him. The most riveting letters in Stravinskys life were dispatched to Roerich during the composition of Part One of the Rite. They explode with the electricity of the composers energy, confirming that he visualized his creation. Every idea gleams in his inner eye as well as in his ear. The Rite is essentially a pictorial history in music from beginning to end. The image of God, as expressed in the primitivism of pagan Russia, is at the core of this vision. On September 26, 1911, he wrote to Nikolai Konstantinovich: The image of God, as expressed in the primitivism of pagan Russia, is at the core of this vision I have already begun to compose and have sketched the Introduction for dudki (reed pipes) and the Divination with Twigs, in a state of passion and excitement. The music is coming out very fresh and new. The picture of the old woman in a squirrel fur sticks in my mind. She is constantly before my eyes as I compose . . . . I see her running in front of the group, stopping them sometimes and interrupting the rhythmic flow . . . . I have connected a smooth jointure [from the maidens to the young men] with which I am very pleased the Dance of the Maidens and the Divination with Twigs. Six months later he announced, A few words about our child: A week ago I completed the First Tableau, the orchestration as well as the music . . . . The tempi being all madly fast, this has meant an immense amount of writing. But it seems to me that I have penetrated the secret of The Rite of Spring and that musicians will feel it. In November 1912, when the entire work was completed, he wrote to the editor of the Russian Musical Gazette describing the secret night games of the young virgins on the sacred hill. One of them is consecrated for the sacrificial offering. She enters a stone labyrinth while the other maidens glorify her in a wild, martial dance . . . . The Great Offering, which is the title of the Second Part, ends with the death of the Chosen One, witnessed by the old wise men . . . . I want the whole of my work to give the feeling of the closeness between men and the earth, the closeness between the lives of men and the soil, and I sought to do this through a lapidary rhythm. Listening with Stravinsky to his recording of the Rite forty years later, I heard many more of his visualizations. He became particularly intent at the entry of the Sage, the oldest and wisest of the five aged fathers of the tribe. At the point where the music of the full orchestra suddenly stops at its loudest (Dantes intona, an excruciating 130 decibels), and the other elders surround the Sage, Stravinsky cupped his ear, the better to hear the melody in the contrabassoon and the balance and any vagaries of pitch of the sustaining quiet chord in the upper bassoons. He also explained that the higher staccato notes of the timpani and muted bass suggest the knocking together of the knees of The oldest and wisest, who must be helped to his kneeling position. When the same bassoons enter in the Evocation of the Ancestors near the end of the piece, he said, Voil les cinq vieillards. Their brief solo dance is slightly livelier, but they repeat the same few notes. A brief explanation of the convoluted chronology of the Rites composition might be helpful. In 1909 Sergei Diaghilev, impressed by the glittering orchestrations of the young musician, commissioned Stravinsky to compose Firebird. In June 1910 this became the Ballets Russes first worldwide success, and the impresario quickly accepted Vesna Svyashchennaya, which Lon Bakst later christened Le Sacre du Printemps, as the companys next production. Stravinsky returned from the Paris Firebird to his summer home in Ukraine, but already by September he

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had moved to Lausanne, primarily to provide his tubercular wife with the most favourable conditions for the imminent birth of their third child. When Diaghilev and Nijinsky went there in order to hear what the composer had written of the new ballet, Stravinsky startled them by playing the first two tableaux of Petrushka instead. From the beginning of this audition, an exalted Nijinsky began inventing gestures, dance steps, and bodily movements for this ballets puppet hero. At the end, all three concurred that the Sacre would have to be postponed for this spirited new creation. A few weeks later Diaghilev telegraphed to Stravinsky, now next door in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, informing him that the new home of the Ballets Russes would be Monte Carlo as Paris had become too expensive, and begging him to hurry with the Third Tableau. Suddenly Stravinsky was stricken with a violent bout of nicotine poisoning, and progress on the ballet was delayed by several weeks. But by April 1911, Stravinsky moved to Rome with the Ballets Russes to complete Petrushka. Not only was its music new and all modern, but in it his dramatic genius became apparent. The idea of the puppet, the Straw Man with living, human feelings, and his continuation as an apparition, were purely Stravinskys. Nijinskys enactment of the puppet became a legendary event in theatre history, and his performances as a mime surpassed even his fouetts and saltatory feats. When the ballet was presented in Paris in early June, the world understood that Stravinskys stature as a composer and his other talents exceeded all predictions. Here a digression is in order concerning Stravinskys friendship with Maurice Ravel, fellow member of Les Apaches, a group of largely gay artists and intellectuals who had taken their name from a Parisian gang of hooligans. The two composer friends were in correspondence before they met in Paris at a rehearsal of Firebird and developed a unique relationship, admiring each other fully and without a trace of jealousy. They talked about musical ideas, and their mutual esteem was genuine. If they disagreed, it would be on some question of instrumentation, in which science Stravinsky acknowledged the mastery of his confrre and later admitted having learned much about wind instruments and their combinations from Bolero, but also LHeure Espagnole. They both composed for Ida Rubinsteins ballet company, Le Baiser de la Fe and Bolero respectively. During the Biarritz period, Stravinsky spent afternoons the last one in August 1924 with Ravel in his Saint-Jean-de-Luz hideaway. In 1928 they shared a concert for the reopening of the refurbished Salle Pleyel, Stravinsky conducting Firebird and Ravel La Valse. Although already ill at the time, Ravel attended the Paris premiere of Symphony of Psalms conducted by Stravinsky in February 1931. During Ravels protracted dying, a result of an automobile accident, Stravinsky visited him regularly in the hospital and, after the death, saw the body before it was placed in the coffin, reporting that he lay on the table draped in black with a white turban around his head the trepanning dressed in a black suit and wearing white gloves, the face with an expression of great majesty. Stravinsky was present at the funeral, and on the morning after the death contributed an obituary to the Journal de Paris: France loses one of her greatest musicians, one whose value is recognized throughout the world. He now belongs to history, assured of a place of glory in the domain of music, a place that he conquered with courage and unfaltering conviction. At one of the Firebird rehearsals, Ravel introduced the Russian to his pupil, the epicene Maurice Delage, who became Stravinskys lover as well as the surrogate parent for his young children during the composers frequent absences. These sojourns in Berlin, Budapest, Breslau, Vienna and elsewhere were in response to Diaghilevs order that Stravinsky supervise the corps de ballet, which was in desperate need of coaching for the forthcoming Rite of Spring premiere. During its composition, Delage was intimate in Stravinskys life, even sharing his home in Clarens; a letter from him informs the unidentified recipient that Delage is with me every day. His affection for Stravinsky differed from Ravels. Delages letters to Stravinsky are embellished with kisses and hugs. When Delage refers to Stravinsky being in the arms of that fiend Diaghilev, the reader may understand it literally and wonder about those early years when Diaghilev treated Stravinsky as a minion on the way up. The Delage connection terminated with

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the Rite and Stravinskys resumption of both his family life in Switzerland and his hyperactive heterosexual philandering. All the same, Delage was a major figure during the composition of the Rite. He presented Stravinsky with an anthology of Japanese poetry from which he took the texts for Three Japanese Lyrics. Delage translated the lyrics into French, placing the Cyrillic and Japanese above the notes of the vocal part of the piano score (which he copied). The Frenchman also taught Stravinsky some Japanese characters, and in the Danse Sacrale sketchbook Stravinsky experimented with writing Japanese in order to form a logo for himself in vertical form. This was evidently achieved in the late spring of 1913, though the first two and possibly three songs were composed in January of that year. To return to The Rite of Spring and the essential question concerning the choreographic libretto, Stravinsky consistently denied the existence of one, apparently having forgotten that he had written a complete and very exacting analysis of the rhythmic structure and ample comments on the stage action for Nijinsky. Roerich had also written one, but it was lost, and Stravinsky, with Diaghilevs agreement, rejected Fokines attempt as stodgy. The one Stravinsky himself wrote was done at the last minute at Diaghilevs request when it became obvious that Nijinsky was incapable of creating one. As Stravinsky eventually recalled: The four-hand piano score containing my markings for Nijinsky has recently come to light . . . . Its interim owner, between Diaghilevs death and my adventitious recovery of it at a London auction, June 13, 1967, was the dancer Anton Dolin. This choreographic libretto was written in great haste only two weeks beforehand because Nijinsky had failed to invent any guidelines of his own, but it was not followed at the premiere This choreographic libretto was written in great haste only two weeks beforehand because Nijinsky had failed to invent any guidelines of his own, but it was not followed at the premiere. The great dancer had taken his corps de ballet to Jacques Dalcroze for help, but nothing came of this effort either, and Diaghilev had feared the Paris premiere would have to be cancelled. The impresario begged Stravinsky, who was still busy composing, to write out in plain longhand his own conception of the scenario under each bar of the entire work, but he did so in a faint lead pencil whose script nearly vanished with time. After glancing at the score again in Hollywood, Stravinsky declared it illegible. Some weeks later Stravinsky asked me to take down what he was able to translate with the help of various sizes of magnifying glass. I sat next to him on a couch, filling a notebook with his translations, as well as his asides to me, which attempted to explain the problems he was trying to solve: I have no idea how I could have expected Nijinsky to fulfill these directions. Some of the translation includes examples in music notation, rhythms but no pitches, and these are still not incorporated into the available published orchestra score. Stravinskys directions for the choreographer would require the musical training of every member of the dance troupe to be on the same level as the best orchestral players. The numbers in brackets, which refer to the numbered sections of the score, are for rehearsals and will prove useful to anyone wishing to place the text in the music. Many of the instructions are highly amusing as well as utterly impossible to carry out. I have also included Stravinskys asides to me. At [18] in The Augurs of Spring, Stravinskys text says that Both groups begin here: The first group turns around; the groups move away from the centre of the stage where they have been until this point, bobbing up and down in one place. The turnaround is a 360-degree twirl in place. From bars three to eight after [18]: Accents as before for the two groups. This refers to the beginning of the dance, where the choreographic accents are the tonic accents of the bars, not those in the music. At the end of this first dance, Stravinsky writes Here they fall to the

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floor, and the Ritual of Abduction begins. This is a cataclysmic change, since the tempo is much faster and also switches from two-beat to three-beat bars. The dancers are divided into two large groups of men. The women also separate and the two groups face each other in opposition. At [40] (the 4/8 and the 5/8): Cut these two measures in half. Stravinsky illustrates his words with musical notation, remarking to me, I have no idea how I expected Nijinsky to bring out this difficult emphasis. At [42], the women begin to jump, eight measures, and you can count the next six bars in 6/4. At six bars before [44], the text directs the dancers to Count as 2/4 bars. Stravinsky adds brackets to clarify the section, then changes his mind and cancels the whole instruction, replacing it by a simplification: From here, trampling with each eighth-note. Do not try to count the bars. The roles of men and women are delineated by the traditional instrumental means, by accentuation, and by the change of rhythmic devices. Thus the men at [46] are indicated by timpani and bass notes, while the women scurry away with repeated high woodwinds whose rhythms repeat the same eighth notes in unequal bars. The text at [47] says Accent by the men and indicates that from [47] is allotted to soloists. Here the association of instruments with genders switches to strings for women. At eleven bars before [48] male soloists are indicated, and at ten before [48] female. The tranquil folk tune for flutes and clarinets between [48] and [49] provides a gentle interlude for the Spring Rounds, which begin with the text informing us that the rhythm at [49] is to be emphasized as the tonic accent with its eighth-note anacrusis. In the section beginning one bar before [54], five different phrases are distinguished. This is most interesting because the dance phrasings are independent of the musical metres. The first group of dancers represents the rhythm, but the rhythms of the other groups are too complex to describe. At seven and six bars before [54], the second group is assigned to a phrase of four quarters, the third group to a phrase of two quarters. The metrical accent on the bass E-flat is not the beginning of the choreographic phrase, but the B-flat. This discovery indicates that Stravinsky conceived of the dancers as a contrapuntal element of equal importance to the orchestral music. The dance referred to is the one in E-flat minor (notably with key signature), and its tempo is one of the slowest in the ballet. Although vertically dense, the music is otherwise simple and transparent, but, alas, we cannot hear and see it with the dance, according to Stravinskys description. At [56], Stravinskys repetition of the little flute and clarinet interlude means that the tribe is established. At the beginning of the Ritual of the Rival Tribes the music tells us that drums and the lower brass instruments playing forte represent the men, not only here but in the four measures before \[59\], which returns to brass and bass instruments. From the upbeat to [60] the women counting in fours are associated with the oboe and clarinet, while the men counting in twos are associated with the English horn. From the measures before [62], the text directs that From here everything is danced in 3/4, but Stravinsky confided to me I have no recollection of what this means. The Procession of the Sage is at the end of this dance, during which the orchestra is reinforced by the four Wagner tubas. At [71]: A halt, after which they all run to the tribe, the square of the tribal compound. In the last measure of this four-measure semi-silence, Stravinsky notes that Everyone stands still, but during the last measure, on the beautiful pianissimo chord of the solo strings, perhaps the holiest moment in the entire piece, the composer says They all change posture. The Dance of the Earth, for many people the most exciting of all of the dances, is played at an extremely fast tempo. Stravinsky writes at the head of the page: Rhythm is all. When there is rhythm there is music. His instructions emphasize that the first beat of every measure is accented choreographically, hence the dancing is with the bass accompaniment, not the tutti chords. At [75] The count for the dancers is 5/4, and each unit must be accented on the first quarter. This

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phrasing is described by pencil brackets. The eight horns play triplets, and to emphasize this Stravinsky introduces trumpet figures of sixteenth notes, together with timpani and the upper string section. Recondite listeners will recognize that the upper bass line in the last four bars of the Dance of the Earth, which concludes the first half of the work, is a repetition of the same hexachord of the famous musical canon in Titians Bacchanal. The painter borrowed this figure from Adriaan Willaert, the composer from Bruges who happened at the time (1527) to be the maestro di cappella at St Marks in Venice and was apparently a friend of the great painter. Actually, the six-note figure is simply the whole-tone hexachord scale that had been abandoned since the Middle Ages and the theory of Aristoxenus. The first and longest part of the second half of the ballet, the Mystic Circles of the Young Girls, Stravinsky left to Nijinsky, since the music is slow, simple and quiet. Stravinsky directs the dancers movements: At [99] the women start to walk in the same bell-swinging rhythm; at one bar before [101] they stop, and move again at [101]; at one bar before [102], they stop again. At one place in the Ritual Action of the Ancestors, the composer inserts a canon in musical notation to illustrate the choreographic rhythm. This is not in the music, another deprivation in a non-ballet presentation. The composers directions for the choreography of the Danse Sacrale are intricate beyond the scope of this summary. Moreover, Stravinsky begins with a puzzle: One bar before [149]: the dancers must hear fifty-five quarters, then in sevens. (At this point Stravinsky turned to me, exclaiming, This is not an exact rendering of the Russian for the reason that I cannot decipher all of it.) The composer also bewilders us in this last dance with the comment that In the bar before [153], the Chosen Ones beat pattern is not the same as the music, nor are her phrase patterns, two bars of 7/8 and one of 6/8 three times repeated. At two bars before [162] the Chosen One again dances in 7/8, but at [174] the rhythm of the choreography is much too complex for verbal description. The directions to the Chosen One in the last three bars are explicit beyond what any future ballerina could hope to execute. The place of every jump, pause, and arm or head movement is precisely indicated. At one bar before [176]: From here the accents are seven times at six quarters. And at three bars before [184], on the first eighth until here, five jumps: from here, accents four times each on six quarters and one accent in position. The dancer falls down three bars before [201], and at two bars before she falls again on the second sixteenth. (Try doing that.) Stravinskys comment in the last bar is enlightening: The corps de ballet approaches, running to her. Many concert audiences are critical of the final chord, to the point of condemning it as unworthy of the masterpiece as a whole, but obviously Stravinsky envisioned a stampede from the entire stage audience and realized that in all of this hullabaloo a final chord was necessary, if only to complete the piece. George Balanchine, even, was mistaken in declaring that the Rite is not a ballet on the grounds that choreography cannot produce images to accompany Stravinskys music, but from his choreographic libretto, it is obvious that Stravinsky himself was the only possible choreographer. One hopes that before the next centenary arrives, his ballet will be realized according to his visions. Has old age exposed signs of weakness in the Rite? The answer is a whispered Yes, whispered because they are outweighed by the ironclad coherence of its construction, the freshness of the instrumentation, the continuing excitement of rhythms that have been pirated worldwide without success, and a rhythmic invention and vitality which no other composer has been able to equal. The dissonant harmonies are not more euphonic over time; indeed, they have outlived the emancipation of the dissonance by Arnold Schoenberg. The emancipation has in fact become a

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deprivation, since the inability to distinguish consonance and dissonance has become a disadvantage of the twelve-tone system. Obviously the beginning of Part Two lacks the taut feeling of Part One; Stravinsky was at his greatest when under most pressure, and the long break between the composition of the two halves was detrimental. The music from [97] to [101] is, at least for this listener, somewhat ennuyeuse. But the vitality recovers, and the intensification from there to the end increases. In the spring of 1965 Stravinsky agreed to participate in a film documentary for CBS Television. The climax was to be a visit to his studio in the Clarens boarding house in which, in 1911, he had composed much of Part One of The Rite. He opposed this vigorously, feeling no nostalgia for the residence and his earlier life there, but the filming took place anyway. On the return to New York, CBS ruled that the sound quality, the dim lighting and the poor recording of Stravinskys voice were unacceptable. The scene would have to be re-enacted in the composers Hollywood home. Here he comported himself amicably with the interviewers, but his assessments were lacking in salesmanship. He complained that even the most acute admirers of the score never mentioned the transposition to C-sharp major in the last dance, of which he was very proud, thinking it one of the scores true inspirations. He also mentioned the many obvious errors in the latest publication of the score (the one with Derains La Danse on the cover). Off-camera, he complained that the muted trumpet duet is one bar too long, remarked that the strings at [144] should be the same as at [145], and that the low strings at [173] should be dtach. Moving to his piano, Stravinsky opened a copy of The Rite and played a few passages. Suddenly, in the Augurs of Spring, he stopped playing to criticize the music, remarking that the really innovative element is the accents, and the upper parts are good enough and the bass is acceptable, but I could have found something more interesting in the middle. His final remark, as he flicked through the rest of the score, is unforgettable: There are good things in this, but also many pages that do not interest me at all. This is the man who on the first day I met him said, Music is the greatest means we have of digesting time. Robert Craft is a composer, conductor, musician and author. He is a recipient of the Grand Prix du Disque, as well as the Edison Prize for his recordings of music by Varse and Stravinsky. His most recent book, Stravinsky: Discoveries and memories, was published last month.