‘The Rite of Spring’ by Igor Stravinsky is the piece that jolted classical music into the Twentieth Century. It’s a ballet and its central theme is a human sacrifice. There’s bombastic outbursts, pounding rhythms, and a driving intensity. In this episode I share insights into the piece, I discuss orchestral virtuosity, and we discover music from ballet.

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Hi! My name’s Scott Wilson. I’m a conductor and I’m passionate about classical music. In this podcast we discover the music of one of our greatest artforms. We listen to a new piece in each episode, I share insights into the music, and over time, I’ll take you on a journey through classical music’s composers, musicians, and history. Everything’s discussed in an easily digestible way, and no prior knowledge is needed. This podcast is for you!

Today we’re listening to ‘The Rite of Spring’ by the composer Igor Stravinsky. This is the piece that - more than any other - jolted classical music into the Twentieth Century. It was written to accompany a ballet whose central theme is a human sacrifice that marks the arrival of Spring. There’s bombastic outbursts, pounding rhythms, and a driving intensity. I hope you enjoy it!

[music excerpt]

This music doesn’t sound like anything we’ve previously encountered in this podcast. In fact, when it premiered in 1913, no-one had heard music like this before. Its elemental power was shocking - and it remains so to this day. The orchestra throws itself at us:

[music excerpt]

That first chord hits us in the chest, then holds us in suspense. We have no idea what’s next, or when it’s coming. Unpredictability underpins this piece. The composer has designed it so the listener can’t anticipate what’ll follow. Tension is never released.

Let’s listen again to the beginning. You’ll hear stab-like chords from the orchestra, but also listen out for the interjections from the double basses and timpani.

[music excerpt]

This ballet is set in pagan Russia. In the first half we observe rituals that celebrate the Earth, whilst the second half is the selection of the Chosen One. The Chosen One will be sacrificed in anticipation of the arrival of Spring. The intense, angular music we’ve just heard is the beginning of the final section of the ‘Rite of Spring’, and it’s called the ‘Sacrificial Dance’. This dance, which is what we’ll listen to throughout this episode, portrays a young girl dancing herself to death to placate the gods.

The music really does convey a dance to the death. It gesticulates, in and out, and up and down: there’s an involuntary spasm-like quality to it. Listen to the sound of the beating drums - the timpani. And then hear the orchestra bounce off those timpani notes. The music convulses.

[music excerpt]

We’ve arrived at much quieter music. There’s something hypnotic about it: it’s like we’re hearing an ancient procession. To the listener, it’s unpredictable. But somehow we’re being pulled along by this primitive power.

The quieter music encourages us to listen even more carefully. But, as you’ll hear in the next excerpt, this causes loud outbursts to come as a shock. These loud outbursts sound, to me, like ghoulish laughter: we’re being terrorised! Further on, high-pitched violins scream at you until the music suffocates. And then, silence. We’re held in suspense until the timpani beats out our return to the opening music.

[music excerpt]

It’s physical music, isn’t it? I find myself being jolted by the explosions of sound from the orchestra. After a while I’m in a hyper-aware state - like a deer in headlights. I never know when the next thump from the orchestra will come!

Given that Stravinsky was writing music for a ballet, he would’ve been thinking about the music’s physicality as he composed. And Stravinsky shares this quality with all previous composers of music for ballet. In ballet, the music’s ultimate job is to be a vehicle for the choreography. But as a result, for much of ballet’s history, the music was seen as subservient to the dance: composing for ballet was a worthy craft, but not an art.

In the late nineteenth century, the composer Tchaikovsky changed this perception. His music for the ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker equaled the quality of the dance. And in fact, these pieces are so musically compelling that they are sometimes performed by orchestras in concert, without the dance. They stack up alongside the traditionally revered genres like symphonies and operas. And this is the case with Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’. It’s a piece that’s so widely admired that it’s actually performed more often without dance than with.

Ballet music written in the twentieth century can often be heard in concert, without dance. Choreographers had begun to create conditions that were more favourable for the composer than in the past. It was no longer a requirement that the music must only serve the function of accompanying the dance. Instead, ahead of everything else, music of quality and expressiveness was sought. Composers were given the freedom to write increasingly abstract and imaginative music for ballet.

Having discussed music from ballet in today’s episode, next time I’ll conclude my series of episodes discovering the different types of pieces that orchestras play by looking at Symphonic Poems. But, let’s return now to ‘The Rite of Spring’. You’ll hear tribal drums beating in the background, whilst a cacophony of other sounds surround The Chosen One as she continues her Sacrificial Dance.

[music excerpt]

I love the intensity of this music. Closing my eyes, I imagine nighttime, a stone circle, and fire shooting upwards. Drums are being beaten with huge clubs, and the people surrounding the lone dancer are chanting in some kind of gruesome frenzy. 

Stravinsky creates such vivid responses in a listener by exploiting the aural possibilities of the huge orchestra he has at his disposal. It’s the unique sounds of the instruments that bring this music to life.

So when I play this music now at the piano, keep in mind how it’ll dramatically change for the better when we hear it played by the orchestra. But the benefit of the piano is that it allows me to demonstrate how Stravinsky has constructed this music. He creates very dense and intense sounds by layering different fragments of music on top of one another.

Played by three musicians, here’s the music of the timpani and bass drum:

[music excerpt]

Soon after that begins, eight horns play this:

[music excerpt]

And then the horns, with the trumpets, make this punchy statement:

[music excerpt]

And all the time, the trombones are screeching out of the texture with this music:

[music excerpt]

So, when heard separately, the fragments are a bit unusual, but they’re relatively straightforward. Now listen to them all together. Even on the piano you can hear how dense the music becomes

[music excerpt]

Let’s listen to this played by the orchestra. In particular, listen out for the impact the orchestration - the choice of instruments - has on this music.

[music excerpt]

Music’s written to stimulate the senses. And this music is about as aurally exciting as you can get. But also, you really feel it physically. And you can imagine watching it too. In your mind’s eye you can see the powerful gestures of the timpanist beating their drums, the string players digging into their instruments with their bows, and the slide of the trombone being heaved upwards towards the player to create that growling screech which interjects throughout.

In the following music, the intensity level has been turned up a gear. It’s similar to what we’ve just heard, but now the whole orchestra is playing. The timpanist and percussionist are still drumming in the background, and the trombone continues to shout. But, there are now additional blocks of sound being layered on top of each other by the rest of the orchestra. The sound is severe and the music’s relentless.

[music excerpt]

It must be thrilling if you’re hearing this piece for the first time. It’s really the only way to hear it: you can be completely blown away by its barbaric energy. And can you imagine being there at the first performance? The premiere of ‘The Rite of Spring' is one of the most famous events in classical music history, in particular because it’s been wildly exaggerated! Most often you’ll hear that it caused a riot. But this has been disproven. Yet, it did cause a scandal. The audience fell into two opposing camps: let’s call them the artistic conservatives and the rebellious bohemians. Certainly the conservatives felt they were being mocked by the apparently ugly dance and dissonant music; whilst the rebels cheered with excitement at anything they thought represented newness. There was hissing, perhaps a punch or two and some ejections. And the performance was followed by scathingly critical reports in the press, but certainly there was no riot!

The music and the dance were, however, deliberately provocative. Stravinsky tore up the rule book of composition. For example, the melodies are, at best, unusual - we really only hear fragments of melodies. The chords don’t operate in a way that creates progress through the piece from tension to release. That premise - called harmony - had underpinned music for many generations. Rhythms and the time signatures that give music its ‘feel’ were chosen to destabilise, rather than reaffirm, a listener’s expectations. In addition, the sounds from the orchestra are extreme: there are very high and very low pitches, drastic changes in volume, and unusual combinations of instruments. The typically warm sound of an orchestra created by the string instruments, has been replaced by a strong emphasis on woodwind, brass, and percussion. In the dance, you don’t see the flowing, curved, graceful lines, and poised gestures that we associate with ballerinas. The physical language is different: it’s angular, heavy, and grounded. Hunched bodies, pointed elbows, and inwardly turned feet dominate the visual experience.

Importantly though, none of this is to say that this piece wasn’t a sincere artistic statement: it was. Change was in the air, and the composer Stravinksy, the choreographer Nijinsky, and the producer Diaghilev were at the forefront of a vision for the arts of the future. They reflected a part of an increasingly divided society. There was tension between established and innovative perspectives - whether it was the arts, technology, politics, or morality. And in its small way this piece represented the energetic and rebellious thirst for change desired by much of society.

Over the past few episodes I have been outlining what it is that makes a performance thrilling. And in ‘The Rite of Spring’ we hear the incredible collaborative virtuosity of an orchestra. It’s inspiring: over a hundred people must pull together, with the highest levels of focus, all aimed at one goal. Witnessing the mental and physical prowess of the musicians can be exhilarating for an audience member. In the performance of such a challenging piece, danger - even failure - looms large.

Listen now to this thrillingly virtuosic performance.

[music excerpt]

Though the musicians find this music demanding, Stravinsky also found composing it to be a challenge. He said that at first he knew how to play it, but not how to write it down. When you open the score, even its notation looks entirely different to any previous piece. Stravinsky was expanding the known limits of composition.

And this music also presents difficulties for the condutor. But really, it’s not the physical aspects of conducting this piece that are overwhelming, but the aural challenges. With so much detailed information - literally, instructions - in the score, it’s hard for a conductor to fully grasp the sound of this piece in their mind. For me, when preparing this piece, I’m absorbed by the aural challenges that I’ll face. There’s a lot of sound to take in.

We’re very close to the end now. See if you can predict any of the music you’re about to hear. Just when you think it gets into a recognisable rhythm, it throws you off again!

[music excerpt]

The music’s hard to grasp isn’t it?! But the attempt to do so can be exciting. And it’ll be this that I’ll discuss in the next episode. The listener’s conviction in the way they interpret the music also contributes to a thrilling performance.

We’ll listen to the same music now, but right through to the end. As you listen, consider the way this piece marks the arrival of modernism in music.

The subject of ‘The Rite of Spring’ is a sacrifice that’s made in order to release a creative surge. And that creative surge is Spring: the rebirth, the new growth, the life after hibernation. Stravinsky himself described the Russian spring as violent. He said: it was ‘the most wonderful event of every year of my childhood’, it was ‘like the whole earth [was] cracking’. This piece is Stravinsky sacrificing the compositional models of the past, drawing instead upon his desire to innovate and to write the music of the future. Perhaps only through a violent shock could the power of creativity for the century ahead be unleashed. ‘The Rite of Spring’ is Stravinsky’s - perhaps music’s - ritual of creative renewal.

[music excerpt]

That final hammer blow marks the death of The Chosen One. It’s her sacrifice that leads to the renewal of life that comes in Spring. For me, that moment explosively unleashes the period of incredible artistic creativity that happened at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. ‘The Rite of Spring’ launches us into the modern world.

Thank you for being with me for another episode of A Thousand Pictures. If you have questions or would like to make a suggestion of a piece or topic for a future episode, please get in touch via social media or email feedback@athousandpictures.com. Further information, a link to the recording featured in today’s podcast, and suggestions about what to listen to next can be found at athousandpictures.com. Or subscribe to our email list and you’ll receive this information directly to your inbox.

Today we’ve been listening to the ‘Sacrificial Dance’ from ‘The Rite of Spring’ composed by Igor Stravinsky. I recommend the recording by The Philadelphia Orchestra, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin .

And finally, please subscribe, please rate and review, and please share this podcast with others. Your support is valuable and it’s appreciated: together we can create a community which celebrates classical music! Now go and listen to this wonderful piece, and get out there and hear a performance by your local orchestra!

[music excerpt]