The score that Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) composed for the ballet »Le Sacre du Printemps« (The Rite of Spring) is often said to signal the birth of »modern music«. This is a questionable statement. Certainly »Le Sacre« is in many ways a seminal work, one that was and is highly influential and still with the power to startle. Yet Western Classical Music has developed over several centuries and maybe it is all too easy to forget the giant steps taken in musical evolution by such creations as Beethoven's »Eroica Symphony« (first heard in 1805), Berlioz's »Symphonie fantastique« (1830) and Wagner's music-drama »Tristan und Isolde« (1859). There are plenty of instances of music that has been bewildering to its first listeners that is now accepted as a »classic« and »popular«. In the case of 20th century music, which may still be defined as »modern«, there are works that have anticipated the undoubtedly seismic upheavals of musical possibilities and diversions of the last century. The previously mentioned »Tristan«; some of Liszt's »late« works for solo piano (he died in 1886); Debussy's »Prйlude а l'aprиs-midi d'un faune« (1894); and Schoenberg's »Five Pieces for Orchestra« (1909). All have played their part in taking music »forward«, often to a hostile reception.

Certainly the Schoenberg example divided its first audience. »Le Sacre du Printemps« went further: the first night, on 29 May 1913 in Thйвtre des Champs-Йlysйes, caused a riot! It was all as the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) had hoped for! His «Ballet Russe« seasons in Paris unveiled Ravel's »Daphnis et Chloй« and Debussy's »Jeux«; and Diaghilev also collaborated with Stravinsky on »The Firebird« (1910) and »Petrushka« (1911). It was in the summer of 1911 that Stravinsky had first thought of a scenario for a new ballet, which would become »Le Sacre du Printemps«: »... the wise elders are seated in a circle watching a young girl dance herself to death; they are offering her as a sacrifice to the god of Spring.« Stravinsky sought the input of Nicolas Roerich, an expert on Russian folklore, in further devising the plot. A contract between Stravinsky and Diaghilev was signed on 8 August 1911.

Included in the audience on that infamous first night was Camille Saint-Saлns (1835-1921), a wonderful if traditional French composer; it seems that Saint-Saлns was not impressed with Stravinsky's irregular rhythms and use of dissonance, although he was less vocally critical than many in the audience. The decibels caused by the spectators' reaction were not totally hostile to the music, for supporters of Stravinsky had become heated in argument with detractors - to the extent that fights broke out and the police needed to be called! But it was not only Stravinsky's music that caused displeasure to the first-night patrons; it was also Nijinsky's choreography, matching as it did the »primitive« sounds that emanated from the orchestra pit.

It may be too that Stravinsky's music (which shared the bill with »Les sylphides« - »The Rite« followed this ballet based on Chopin's piano music) was not as finely executed as ideal. Stravinsky's demands on the musicians was, for the time, considerable and caused bafflement among them at rehearsals. Pierre Monteux (1875-1964), although posterity has deemed him an esteemed reputation, admitted later in his life that he was not naturally drawn to »Le Sacre du Printemps«. (Despite this he recorded the work three times and performed it as a concert-work on numerous occasions.) One can only imagine that Monteux, as the conductor of the Ballet Russe (he also led the premieres of »Daphnis et Chloй«, »Petrushka« and »Jeux«) would have done a thoroughly professional job in trying to ensure that Stravinsky's boundary-breaking score was realised as accurately as possible.

The notation itself gave Stravinsky a problem; he knew how he wanted the music to go but was not always able to write it down. Following the premiere - a succиs de scandale that delighted Diaghilev but was very disappointing for Stravinsky - the composer revised some of the rhythms of the score, trying to make it easier to play and to conduct, although not enough to avoid continuing puzzlement for orchestras (as two recordings from 1929, one conducted by the composer and one by Monteux, demonstrate). (This recording from Jonathan Nott uses the »Re-engraved edition 1967«.) Stylistically, »Le Sacre du Printemps« signalled a change of style its composer; Stravinsky remarked that the starting point for »The Rite« was »the Russian violent spring, [which] was like the whole earth cracking.« For all »The Rite's« »history« it is now many decades since the work became a showpiece for virtuoso orchestras (and also music that no self-respecting youth orchestra would think twice about programming).

Subtitled »Pictures from Pagan Russia in two Parts«, »Le Sacre du Printemps« begins with a phrase played on a solo bassoon in an ear-striking (and, then, difficult to play) high register. This is a melody from Lithuania. Stravinsky's music, however »shocking« it may have seemed when new, includes reference to Russian folk tunes, and is based on tonal procedures - there are though abrasive clashes of key and a potent sense of barbarism (established through the most sophisticated of compositional means). The music is not all grinding rhythms and earth-shaking fortissimos. The awakening of new plant life is intimated in the »Introduction - The Augurs of Spring«, intertwining woodwind and brass »roots« pushing upwards through the earth. Melody is an important constituent throughout »The Rite«, so too atmosphere - the opening of »Part Two« is hushed, sensuous even. The work as a whole, now an orchestral showpiece, but at its inception music that sharply divided opinion and had far-reaching implications and influence, takes its cue from ancient times to establish an invincible sense of pagan rite, symbolism and ritual. As Stravinsky said: »I am the vessel through which The Rite' passed.«

Born in Russia to a father who was a bass singer with the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg, the young Igor Stravinsky studied music with Rimsky-Korsakov and was influenced by forebears such as Glazunov and Tchaikovsky (the latter's music Stravinsky conducted and some of his piano pieces formed the basis of the ballet score »Le Baiser de la fйe«, (The Fairy's Kiss, from 1928). But Stravinsky was as stylistically eclectic as he was nomadic - he took French citizenship in 1934 and American in 1945. »Symphony in three movements« was completed in this latter year (the end of World War II) and is dedicated to the New York Philharmonic Symphony Society; Stravinsky himself conducted the premiere with the New York Philharmonic in January 1946.

Sometimes referred to as a »War Symphony« - the composer said that he had viewed newsreels of »scorched-earth tactics in China« and goose-stepping Nazis. Furthermore, the middle movement of the Symphony, marked Andante, contains at its mid-point, and as a contrast to the coolly elegant if rhythmically chiselled outer sections, mystically ethereal music that seems to have been drafted for the 1943 Hollywood film, »The Song of Bernadette«, but it was not used in this context. (»Le Sacre du Printemps« had appeared in Walt Disney's film of »Fantasia«; Stravinsky was not happy with Stokowski's arrangement of it.) Yet, away from extra-musical stimuli, Symphony in three movements is a concise and incisive master¬piece that can be fully appreciated in abstract, »pure music« terms. The opening movement is without a written tempo mark, save for »crotchet = 160«, and explodes into aggressive life - yet Stravinsky's clarity of thought and contrapuntal ingenuity is everywhere evident. A piano plays an important part in this opening movement, a harp in the second, the two instruments coming together in the finale. It seems that Stravinsky was entertaining ideas of writing a concerto for orchestra (or maybe a piano concerto); but there is no doubt that the finished work is a »real« symphony - clear-sighted and developmental (»Le Sacre du Printemps«, while cumulative, is more a series of related »actions«), thematic ideas, argument and commentary shared across orchestral solos within complex and lucid tuttis. The finale, like the first movement, is effectively taut and vivid; the closing bars, whether inspired by the Allies' victory or not, is syncopated and emphatic.

Colin Anderson