Outline of Analysis:
Introduction - brief description of Stravinsky and his connection to culture and music.
Thesis - Stravinsky’s controversial ballet masterpiece, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring),
embodied the aesthetics and ideals of the twentieth century music and art
through his innovative application of texture of sound, bitonality, and his
alteration of standards in melody.
Body #1 - overview of texture found in the composition
Body #2 - analysis of tonal structure in the composition
Body #3 - Stravinsky's use of new standards in melody found in the composition
Conclusion - bring the paper to a closing point by summarizing Stravinsky's impact and restating the thesis.
Essay:
Igor
Stravinsky was one of the twentieth century’s most influential composers. Known
as “the musical equivalent of Pablo Picasso,” (Understanding Music by Jeremy Yudkin, page 220) he was the icon of the style of
Primitivism, and polyrhythmic and polytonal structure seen in compositions of
his era. His career spanned over the early to mid 1900’s, a time of Modernistic
innovation, musical experimentation, and a brand new period of artistic development.
Stravinsky’s controversial ballet masterpiece, Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring), embodied the aesthetics
and ideals of the twentieth century music and art through his innovative
application of texture of sound, bitonality, and his alteration of standards in
melody. To analyze Stravinsky’s design, we are going to focus on an excerpt of
Part I of the Rite, 0:00-1:30.
The
piece opens with a very bizarre and supernatural sounding solo bassoon. Within
the first twenty seconds we get a strong feeling that this piece is meant to
put the listener in a fantastical state of mind. The piece develops with a
flourish of horns and spiraling woodwinds. The
Rite of Spring is commonly connected to Walt Disney’s Fantasia, for their similarity in imagination and color that is
portrayed. The combination of the high register bassoon, the woodwinds, and the
clarinet that is introduced around 1:14, dramatically complicates the sound,
making everything cluster together in the listener’s ears and creates a sense
of overwhelming atmosphere that evokes the Rite’s
mystical presence. Stravinsky was a master at breaking the tradition of texture
in sound and this is perfectly seen in the first minute and a half of his
ballet.
Related
to his use of texture, Stravinsky used a key ideal of twentieth century musical
aesthetic, bitonality, in his composition. Tonality is defined as “the use of
scale, chords, and harmonies in music,” (Understanding Music by Jeremy Yudkin, page 215) explaining why bitonality is referred
to as “two different keys sounding at the same time” (Understanding Music by Jeremy Yudkin, page 220). Stravinsky doesn’t
hesitate to put this into play in his Rite,
as it is seen in the first 15 seconds of the piece when the horns enter. The
bassoon is playing at a piercingly high register, while the horns come in out
of nowhere on a deeper, midrange tone. This was a hugely innovational ideal of
this era because before then, instruments had rarely been pushed to those
extremes in typical orchestras. This was truly a groundbreaking feat performed
by Stravinsky.
Stravinsky
completely contorted all standards of melody found in classical music with his
introduction The Rite of Spring. The
clear line between these new ideals of melody in Primitivism and Modernism, and
the melody seen in eighteenth and nineteenth century classical compositions is
best seen in the dramatic unpredictability of melody in twentieth century
classical. Before, the melody had been streamlined, balanced, consistent, and
above all, predictable. With the installation of Modernism and Primitivism in
classical music of the twentieth century, melody was wildly whimsical and
abnormal. The leaps and jumps of rhythm and the contrasting tones, Le Sacre du Printemps paved the road for
new standards in melody.
Above
all, Igor Stravinsky was a mastermind. He wanted to strike people with his
music. He wanted to offend them and play with their ears. He wanted to put his
listeners into a different realm, even without the theatre of ballet. The Rite
of Spring supremely exemplifies twentieth century aesthetics through the
way Stravinsky shattered the standards of texture, tone, and melody in classical
music.
