Sunday, November 16, 2014

Igor Stravinsky - Le Sacre du Printemps (The Right of Spring), Part I


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.

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