Stravinsky Rite Of Spring Analysis

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian neoclassical composer born on June 17th, 1882. He was born near St. Petersburg, Russia. Stravinsky died of congestive heart failure on April 6th, 1971 in New York, New York. He moved many times in his lifetime, but ended up gaining citizenship in the United States. Stravinsky’s musical influence came from how successful his father was with the bass. His household was full of musical and theatrical influences. He took piano lessons and studies music history as a young boy, but later decided to study law and philosophy It was not until later on that he realized the significance of his burning passion for musical composition. He did share some of his earlier pieces with a composer he knew named Nikolay …show more content…
The controversial ballet score was premiered at Théatre des Champs-Elysées in Paris. The audience was quite mislead by the opening act Les Sylphides. Les Sylphides was an innocent and classical piece. Everything about the performance was odd and unusual. The music, costumes, and dancing were unsettling. The story of Pagan sacrifice was frightening for some audience members. Some say Diaghilev was a large influence for writing The Rite of Spring, but most of it was rooted deep in his personality. He enjoyed provoking people’s senses and seeing different kinds of reactions he can get to the music. While Stravinsky felt like a failure, Diaghilev was relishing in the uproar. He got what he wanted out of the performance. Vaslav Nijinsky, the choreographer, was told by audience members that his choreography did not embody what ballet actually was. The audience did not understand Nijinsky’s choreography. He was trying to embody the awkward movements that may have came from a primitive society. The jumping, stomping, and shaking was to show the terror the people of the society felt about the sacrifice. Some of the dancers claimed that the choreography felt unnatural to perform. Claims like this show that not only the audience was uncomfortable with the piece, but so were many of the people involved. Nijinsky tried to show the natural pull of the Earth by the way he had the dancers step. Nijinsky and Stravinsky both did not like the …show more content…
One second it would be andante and the next it would be vivace. This rapid change of tempo is was of the reasons the piece is so unnerving. The texture of the piece is thick. There were notes being thrown in all over the place. The thick texture plays a role in why the music was so unpredictable. Stravinsky was a fan of dissonance. He used it in practically all of his pieces. He was bringing modern music styles to traditional classical music. The dissonant notes can be found when the dancers began hopping and stomping on the ground as hard as they could. Some of the performers claimed that they Nijinsky wanted them to stomp so hard, they thought they could have injured themselves. The melodic range is wide. It is a mix of high and low notes throughout the entire performance. The articulation is staccato. The notes do not smoothly go into one another. They are short and choppy. The dynamics are much like the tempo. The dynamics go from piano to fortissimo. This shocked the audience’s nerves. They didn’t know what to expect from the dissonant notes, and how loud the music was going to be because it was constantly changing. There were many instruments used for the piece. They include piccolo, 3 flutes (one doubling second piccolo), alto flute, 4 oboes (one doubling second English horn), English horn, 5 clarinets, 4 bassoons (one doubling second contrabassoon), contrabassoon, 8 horns, 5 trumpets, 3 trombones, 2 tubas, two timpani, antique