This essay will explore the compositional method and the harmonic innovations that Stravinsky used in his ballet “The Rite of Spring.” In order to capture all the ideas the essay will have three parts; the first part will be linked to the observation for the piece as a whole, the second part will be an analysis of the strategically features with examples from the score and the third part will be a cogent summary of the analysis that will imply the interpretation of the piece.
“The Rite of Spring” by Igor Stravinsky was premiered in 29 May 1913 at the Theatre de Champ-Elysees in Paris. The piece was a commission from Sergei Diaghilev, the impresario of the Ballet Russes. Diaghilev commissioned two other ballets before this to Stravinsky but “The Rite of Spring” was the one that give birth many controversies being the last step in the construction of musical modernism.
“The Rite of Spring” is divided in two parts; the first part is called “Adoration of the Earth” and the second part is “The Sacrifice.” The story presents the pagan ritual on celebration the arriving of spring and the climax of this ballet is the slaughtering of a young girl. Stravinsky had a vision with “a solemn pagan rite: wise elders, seated in circle, watching a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring.” (The Guardian)
The use of repetition to replace harmonic progression and the use of the harsh sounds were a part from the compositions methods used by Stravinsky to build this piece. The technique used could be detailed as loud and hard understanding music, lack of melody, lack of harmony, lack of regular rhythm and instruments muffled by mutes and also here can talk about the dissonance cluster of notes that were hammering over and over until he felt that a change was called.
Compositional method and harmonic innovation used in “The Rite of Spring”
The method of composition that Stravinsky used in his ballet was to arrange layer small cell of music that which will be juxtaposed or alternated but not developing the motives as so far the composers use to do it. Each cell represented a rhythmic or a melodic motive derived from a folk melody. Often the musical fragments were formed from a few to four notes which further to constructed the melody were repeated or reoriented to create ostinato embellished to create melodic material or stacked to generate chords.
The material used was in generally composed from complete folk melodies from published collection but those melodies could barely be heard or recognized because Stravinsky chopped and reorganized them. The composer created his own vocabulary when it was working with the music incorporating long streams of octatonic chords rearranged in superimpositions that mean they were played simultaneously and chunks of diatonic material. The octatonic chords were built form the octatonic scale that was used before him from other composers of that time but he redefined it, and used it in another context.
The pattern used from the octatonic scale was H/ W/ H/ W/ H/ W/ H/ W/ that meant tone and halftone, and this pattern contributed on the atonal quality of the harmony, but Stravinsky didn’t stop here with the sonorities experiments going further on construction conventional chord, but not into a customary way. This could be explained on the chord that they didn’t follow the standard progression. Because of the tonal musical melodious sonorities had already been exhausted, 20th century composers were left for trying new music only with atonal music that hasn’t gone too far in terms of developing a song so composers began to focus on the stunning use of the rhythm and developing musical cells.
"Pierre Boulez once described The Rite as a piece in which a "vertical chromaticism" stood opposed to a "horizontal diatonicism." By this he meant that while the vertical alignment is often chromatic, the individual parts are in themselves often simple and diatonic." (Igor’s Rite) Analysis with strategically features with examples from the score
The harmony used by Stravinsky in “Rite of spring” is more liberal but also has traditional resources that were revitalized by the new ways in which Stravinsky experimented with the harmonies. He used quite unfamiliar harmonic succession for the ear that was accustomed with traditional harmony but from his experiments had resulted pandiatonicism and bitonality. The most powerful example of bitonality can be found in the “Dance of the Youth and Maidens” on the opening chord were we have a rhythmic and harmonic superimpositions. The chords that are linked together can be seen in the examples below and thru a more detailed analysis we can see that E flat dominant chord superimposed with the F flat major chord and this have a strained quality to the music.
The piece has also other examples that followed the pattern of bitonality in the score as the following: the dance “The Augurs of Spring” were we have a superimpose E flat dominant seventh with a F flat major chord, and the beginning of “Sacred Dance” where we have the mix of G minor dominant seventh with the German augmented sixth which represents a more complex expression of the same principles.
It was said that this chord was the original inspiration The Rite of Spring. The repeated chords were followed by a primitive asymmetrical rhythmic accent and The New Grove Dictionary of Music claimed that this chord was the germ cell for the entire composition. Stravinsky also used the technique of shadowing the basic melody with other lines that were moving in parallel motion which resulted into a harmonic progression that was a succession which didn’t followed a calculated order. Another form of use of Stravinsky’s shadowing techniques we have in the example below were the melodic lines are parallel with the melodic lines for a major third below and a perfect fifth above. This helped for thickening the texture which was a new method and sounded absurd for the orthodox harmony principles.
We have another example of harmonic ambiguity which is presented on the Dance chord were D pitch was the predominant role but can also be separated into two components: we have the augmented German sixth that is the tone and pitches of the VII that is the dominant seventh on D.
We have another derivation of the structure that involves crushing together distinctive harmonic functions because the idea of fusion was early introduced into “The Rite of Spring.” We have here two chords that are formed one form E flat and the second on C sharp that fusion together. Even is this chord could be quite natural each subtly made him individualized from the others.
Stravinsky was put in a difficult situation when it came the time to write this master piece because the process of creative composition presented and infinite number of possibilities for compositional combinations so he tried to limit himself by creating musical boundaries. He worked with seven notes and with the weak and strong accents and made with them solid and concrete block of musical motives which offered him a field to work better.
Interpretation of the piece with the help of the cogent summary
It is said that Stravinsky used his pictorial imagines when he was conceiving the sketches for The Rite of Spring and that he meant to involve his highly visual manner in the composition process. It could be the power of perception that influenced the way Stravinsky saw the music in his imagination. Many sketches highlighted the headings that corresponded with the ongoing action of the ballet and there are often starting points for the actions related to the dancing.
The music was fresh and new and presented some innovations that probably came from Stravinsky imaginations of the wild pagan dancers. He tried to play with the rhymes also by creating a choreographic rhythm more than a musical rhythm, and so this could be an explanation of the strange rhythm and accents that Stravinsky used in the piece, rhythm that had never been conceived from Western world. This explanation could also turn the music into a static abstract degeneration with the lack of melodic development and the irregular rhythm but it wasn’t the case in here.
In conclusion “The Rite of Spring” by Igor Stravinsky was a work that represented a turning point in the history of music with its simple but very specific rhythm, with the unprecedented way of developing the music structure and with the way on how Stravinsky handled the harmonic fields and how it played with it. For all the reason above, this piece becomes a masterpiece in the history of art and in the way of conceiving music with new compositional technique explained above and it still remains even today controversial work which is played in all corner of the world.
Works cited:
Hensher, P. “The Rite of Spring- a rude awakening.”The Guardian. 12 April 2013. Web. 13 November 2014. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/stage/2013/apr/12/rite-of-spring-rude-awakening
Benjamin, G. “How Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring has shaped 100 years of music.” The Guardian. 29 May 2013. Web. 13 November 2014. Available at http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/may/29/stravinsky-rite-of-spring
Cacioppo, C. “Harmonic Behavior in The Rite of Spring.” Symposium. 1 October 1992. Web. 13 November 2014. Available at http://symposium.music.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2094:harmonic-behavior-in-the-rite-of-spring&Itemid=124
“Analysis of The Rite of Spring” Igor’s Rite. 15 June 2009. Web. 13 November 2014. Available at http://igorsrite.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/analysis-of-rite-of-spring.html
Tyers B. “Igor Stravinsky and His Influence on 20th Century Popular Music.” Guitar Downunder. 1994. Web. 13 November 2014. Available at http://www.guitardownunder.com/stravinsky.html
