# Le Sacre Du Printemps and its Volcanic Reception



## tahnak

Le Sacre du Printemps is probably the most influential composition written in the twentieth century. This ballet has caused much controversy in the world of dance and music ever since it came on the scene in 1913. It was premiered in Paris and , I feel, it was wrong on Stravinsky's part to open this ballet in Paris. It turned a French audience into an excited and frustrated irate mob. They were highly disturbed after its premier performance. It was almost in the running for sparking the First World War that was just a year's throw away.
Stravinsky worked on this ballet at his estate, Oustiloug, in Russia. He used many folk songs in this ballet; from the lot that he had compiled in his notebook. The audience jeered at the revolutionary opening measures of this ballet. Now, when we look back, it is a spark from a genius.
This is the definitive performance of this ballet by Pierre Boulez. It took place in Paris in 2002. Boulez has also given a stunning account earlier of Le Sacre with Cleveland Orchestra in 1976.


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## Bone

I've understood that Nijinsky's provocative choreography is at least partly to blame for the furor at the premier.

Love Boulez's interpretation of Stravinsky and Bartok. Seems the "French Correction" has a special affinity for the obscure details that are critical to realizing a great performance of the music of these modern masters.

My first exposure to art music - besides my fascination with Prokofiev's 3rd Piano Concerto in the movie "The Competition" - was the Cleveland/Maazel "Rite." A friend's father was the professor of piano at the local college and he was a major influence on me: it was rumored that Dr. Huxford knew every theme from just about every composition and "stump the professor" stories were legendary.


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## Tapkaara

Why was it a mistake to premiere this piece in Paris? Where should it have premiered?


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## mmsbls

I have read several accounts of the Rite's reception at its premiere, and I've always been struck by the seeming bizarre behavior exhibited. All the premieres I've attended were much more modest (usually smaller ensembles or unknown composers) so I don't know what it's like to hear a premiere of a highly anticipated work. Still it's hard for me to imagine such outrageous actions during a performance. 

Does anyone know of anything similar for premieres before 1900 or after WWII? Was there something special during that period that allowed high society people to behave that way?


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## ptr

If You read descriptions of the "foreign" ballets première's in Paris under the three first decades of the 20th century, I'd say that raunchy audience behaviour was more the common behaviour rather then where silent 'lets be done with it' acceptance as it is today!

/ptr


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## Prezification

I saw The Rite performed by the Chicago Symphony last November, and it was described at the pre-concert lecture that the bad reception was due to the fact that the audience couldn't hear the music well enough. The choreography, being based a lot on connecting with the ground, overshadowed the music and the people couldn't stand it!


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## KenOC

I've seen it suggested that the "riot" at the premiere was at least partially orchestrated by Diaghilev, Nijinsky, and Stavinsky himself. The idea was, pure and simple, notoriety. Maybe Paris was the absolute best place for the performance...


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## Lunasong

From the Guardian:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2013/feb/12/rite-of-spring-stravinsky

If the boos and hisses had been so appalling, why would Diaghilev have been as pleased as Stravinsky says he was? "After the performance," Stravinsky noted, "we were excited, disgusted, and … happy. I went with Diaghilev and Nijinsky to a restaurant. Diaghilev's only comment was, 'Exactly what I wanted.' Quite probably, he had already thought about the possibility of such a scandal when I first played him the score, months before."


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## moody

The Russian impresario ,Serge Diagilev, formed the Ballet Russes in Paris in the early 1900's.
In 1911 he appointed Pierre Monteaux as principal conductor and Monteaux premiered many works including Stravinsky's "Rite" and "Petrushka",his opera "Le Rossignol" and Ravel's "Daphnis and Chloe".
Incidentally the correct translation for the "Rite" is "Spring's Consecration".
Regarding the "Rite's" premier, Stravinsky said "---I left the auditorium after the first bars of the prelude,which had at once evoked derisive laughter. I was disgusted ,during the rest of the performance I was at Nijinsky's side in the wings.he was standing on a chair screaming---but naturally the poor dancers could hear nothing due to the row in the auditorium----I had to hold Nijinsky back as he was furious and ready to dash on stage at any moment and cause a scandal----I was very far from expecting such an outburst as the preview audience of actors,painters,musicians,writers and cultured representatives of society had peacefully accepted the work."
I would suggest that members should obtain Monteaux's 1951 RCA performance with the Bostonians which obviosly has great authority.
My own favourite is Dorati's with the Minneapolis forces,but it's all wrong and no dancer could keep up with it.


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## Vaneyes

How refreshing, a riot. Too many premieres have been fraught with yawn.


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## arpeggio

*Reconstruction by Hodson & Archer*

With the dance it is even more shocking. Millicent Hodson and Ken Archer received a commission from the Joffrey Ballet to reconstruct the original. I have a DVD of the Mariinsky Ballet performing the Hodson and Archer reconstruction. The following is a YouTube about the Joffrey performance:






YouTube links to the Joffrey performance:

Part 1 of 3 




Part 2 of 3 




Part 3 of 3 




The movie _Coco Chanel & Igor Stravinsky_ does a good job of reenacting the premier at the beginning of the film.


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## ComposerOfAvantGarde

mmsbls said:


> Does anyone know of anything similar for premieres before 1900 or after WWII? Was there something special during that period that allowed high society people to behave that way?


_Four Organs_ by Steve Reich caused a similar reaction from the audience in (I think it was) 1970. It wasn't the world première, it might have been the second or third performance.


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## moody

ComposerOfAvantGarde said:


> _Four Organs_ by Steve Reich caused a similar reaction from the audience in (I think it was) 1970. It wasn't the world première, it might have been the second or third performance.


The first few performances went down without fuss. But in 1971 there was a bad reception at the Boston Symphony.
Then in 1973 there was nearly a riot in New York's Carnegie Hall,apparently a woman walked up to the stage and repeatedly banged her head on it shouting : "Please stop ! Please stop ! I confess ! "
Do you ever get that sort of problem with your stuff ?


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## arpeggio

*Ballet Mécanique*

George Antheil's _Ballet Mécanique_ had a similar reaction when it was premiered in Paris in 1924.


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## MrCello

I have always been skeptical about the "riot" at the premiere. It seems as if everyone had to have a riot at their premiere around that time or else their pieces would gain no notoriety -even if they had to fake one.

Sounds like something that is right up Diaghilev's alley.


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## PetrB

"The Riot at the Rite" is so much confab of a number of various claques, all well-informed ahead of time there was something afoot which they would not at all like, and those groups expecting to attend and do the traditional behavioral claque member schtick, i.e. to boo, hiss, and try and shut down the performance of that which they do not like 

*Saint-Saens, retro-conservative for days, was there, knowing full well ahead of time what he was in for, but still was heard to have hissed at the opening solo passage in the upper register of the bassoon, which opens the work, "What instrument is that?" Well, so much for what may pass as a 'bon mot vrai' witticism -- or 'real riot,' eh?

The dress rehearsal, attended by an invited audience of artists, artisans and more intellectual / 'alternate' creative individuals, was well-received (there was no 'riot against') and if anything gave a false impression to the creators that the opening night may be well received. Parisians have a 'tradition' of 'rioting' over controversial works of art -- it is a sort of social fashion, if you will.

[As already mentioned, the 'hoi-polloi' audience at the premier were likely as astonished and offended at Nijinsky's modern (not classical) choreography, and a stunning lack of tights and tutus on the women  ]

Had Le Sacre premiered anywhere else, perhaps it would not have this mistaken gloss of 'so radical the audience rioted.'

The work was conceived of and then written in several locations over the course of nearly two years, two movements being drafted in Ustilug, Ukraine (September 1911). In October Stravinsky went to Clarens, Switzerland, where the majority of the composing of Le Sacre took place. Work was then set aside to complete the commissioned ballet, "Petruchka" for its slotted premiere in the 1912 season, then picked up again afterwards...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring#Creation

The 100th anniversary of the premiere of this great work is 29 May 2013. 
The music, then, is categorically a genuine 'antique,' and yet to me sounds -- after decades of familiarity -- as fresh and vigorous as it must have been when it was born. The retrospect of a later time also allows hearing the work as 'impressionist' sounding, the 'nationlist / primitivist' aesthetic very much in place, and loaded, just loaded, with myriads of actual folk song or newly invented folk song like themes.

Le Sacre, and many another early 20th century piece of art music, is now 'the new old music.'

Hey... Le Sacre du Printemps, come 29 May 2013, will be officially 'antique.' *


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## KenOC

Just finished reading "Hedy's Folly," which has quite a bit about George Antheil. At one of his avant-garde concerts (not the Ballet Mechanique) ten years after the Rite's premiere, the riot was pretty well arranged in advance. It was to be filmed for a movie. When the concert was done, the producer asked the audience to please riot again for a retake, and they obliged... :lol:


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## Vaneyes

Quasi riot or real riot, that's okay.


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## PetrB

Vaneyes said:


> Quasi riot or real riot, that's okay.


"There is no such thing as bad publicity." if this little snippet did not exist in 1913, my hunch is that the impresario Sergei Diaghilev knew the premise, and its 'value,' more than well


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## tahnak

Tapkaara said:


> Why was it a mistake to premiere this piece in Paris? Where should it have premiered?


What I meant to say that the French audience were expecting with mindsets of compositions like Delibes' Coppelia or Sylvie. The French had not even thought much about the beautiful L'Apres Midi D'un Faune by Claude Achille Debussy or his Jeux. Parisians, I think, were attacked on their senses and they reacted. St. Petersburg or Moscow was the place where this ballet could have been introduced. The Russians had the stomach for avant garde then.


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## Guest

tahnak said:


> What I meant to say that the French audience were expecting with mindsets of compositions like Delibes' Coppelia or Sylvie. The French had not even thought much about the beautiful L'Apres Midi D'un Faune by Claude Achille Debussy or his Jeux. Parisians, I think, were attacked on their senses and they reacted. St. Petersburg or Moscow was the place where this ballet could have been introduced. The Russians had the stomach for avant garde then.


So, the French concertgoer at the time hadn't the faintest idea what to expect from the Programme - they'd just turn up for anything and applaud or riot as the fancy took them?


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## Mahlerian

MacLeod said:


> So, the French concertgoer at the time hadn't the faintest idea what to expect from the Programme - they'd just turn up for anything and applaud or riot as the fancy took them?


I'd imagine the audiences were quite different, but this review was published the same day as the Rite premiere.

_______________

Yesterday's concert merits our attention for historic reasons. It was indeed on May 28, 1913, at about ten o'clock in the evening that musical cubism made its appearance in the fair city of Paris. By singular irony of fate, it was in the venerable hall of the Conservatoire, the temple of all tradition, that this revelation took place. The Société Musicale Indépendante presented a concert there offering to its habitués the first performance of three piano pieces [Op. 11] by Arnold Schoenberg. This composer hails from Vienna, preceded by an intriguing reputation. Every performance of one of his works in Austria and Germany has provoked disorders, police intervention, transportation of the wounded to the hospital and of the dead bodies to the morgue. At the sound of the last chord the listeners would come to blows, and music lovers strewn on the floor would be picked up in bunches. So we awaited with impatience the first contact of this explosive art with French sensibilities, and the organizers had provided stretchers and mobilized ambulance drivers to clear the hall after the deflagration. But all expectations were deceived. The pianist E. R Schmitz, who was assigned the task of igniting the fuse, could accomplish his dangerous exercise in perfect silence. True, there were some uncomfortable smiles, some anguished sighs, some stifled groans, but no scandal erupted. Arnold Schoenberg would not believe it! The French public has resigned itself to the fact that music eludes it and has renounced public protests. . . . And we are appalled by the speed with which musical conceptions replace each other, overtake each other and destroy each other. Composers like Debussy and Ravel could not preserve for more than a year or two their revolutionary label and they are already relegated to the retrograde group even before they have succeeded in making themselves comprehensible to the crowd! It is, alas, in music that new stars rapidly become old moons!


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## itywltmt

Happy 100th anniversary!
http://itywltmt.blogspot.ca/2013/05/montage-107-this-day-in-music.html


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