Elements of Causing A Scandal: Le Sacre Du Printemps

Elements of Causing A Scandal: Le Sacre Du Printemps
Name
Institution affiliation
Course
Date of Submission
Elements of Causing A Scandal: Le Sacre Du Printemps
Igor Stravinsky is known to be one of the most persuasive composers in the 20th century. Le Sacre du Printemps is the most influential among all the other works he did. It is known that his work and mostly the Le Sacre du Printemps caused a lot of debate in the world of dance and music. The premiere on May 29 1913 evening has been known as one of the revolving point in the antiquity of music and dance. It is during this time when the Stavinsky`s fresh ballet`s premiere brought a reputable French audiences in to burst into unruly and a violent mob.[Bullard, Truman C. The First Performance of Igor Stravinsky's Sacre Du Printemps. 3 vols. Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1971.]
The main performance that took place in 1913 caused such a disturbance in the theater that the choreographer, Nijinsky, had to shout the beat to the dancers who could no longer hear the orchestra.
The concert opened with Three Latin-American Dances by American-born composer, Gabriela L. Frank (b. 1973). According to the brief biography G. Shirmer publishes, "born in Berkeley, California, to a mother of mixed Peruvian/Chinese ancestry and a father of Lithuanian/Jewish descent, Frank explores her multicultural heritage most ardently through her compositions. Inspired by the works of Bela Bartók and Alberto Ginastera, Frank is something of a musical anthropologist… [and] has travelled extensively throughout South America."
A large part of the scandal was caused by the cloaks and unrevealing costumes worn by the dancers, another part by the unusual and unconventional dance itself. And certainly, Stravinsky`s scandalously modern score had its share in provoking the public ire. There were too many outstanding solos to mention them all - the percussion section, especially the tympani, and the woodwinds, notably the high piccolo clarinet were brilliant. The orchestra was huge - nine horns, five flutes, five oboes, etc. [Lesure, Francois ed. Anthology of Musical Criticism: Igor Stravinsky Le Sacre Du Printemps. Geneve: Dossier de Presse, 1980.]
The musical notch is one of the most difficult works in the whole staging and it is a testament to the excellent quality of the students of the Music Festival that Le Sacre would even be attempted. The music is hard - terribly high for horns and bassoons, chromatic scales at the bottom of the English horn range, and difficulties in counting for everyone. Anybody can make a mistake, and what epitomizes a live performance is that faults do take place. But there is one individual who could not make a mistake: the conductor Maestro José-Luis Novo was exactness itself -precise and clear, not only holding the orchestra together, but leading the music to and from the many culminations and creating a shape from the procession of episodes andtableaux.[Linor, Gustave. "Au Theatre des Champs-Elysees: Le Sacre du Printemps." Comoedia] [Linor, Gustave. "Au Theatre des Champs-Elysees: Le Sacre du Printemps." Comoedia]
At the end of all this chaos there were four or five curtain calls, in which one side gave applause and the other its disapproval. That night was so exhausting that Stravinsky became ill shortly afterwards and never saw the other performances of Le Sacre.
Stravinsky's music is harmonically adventurous, with protuberant use of dissonance for the tenacities of color and musical energy. Rhythmically, it is similarly adventurous, a number of sections having constantly changing time signatures and off-beat accents. Stravinsky used percussive dissonance, polytonality, asymmetrical rhythms, polyrhythms, layering of ostinati (persistently repeated ideas) and melodic wreckages to create compound webs of interactive lines, and is prejudiced by primitivism.[Lesure, Francois ed. Anthology of Musical Criticism: Igor Stravinsky Le Sacre Du Printemps. Geneve: Dossier de Presse, 1980.]
According to Carl van Vechten, ‘a certain part of the audience was thrilled by what it considered to be a blasphemous at...