The Classical Music Book

249

Dancers of the Ballets Russes pose

in costume for the first performance of

Le Sacre du printemps at the Théâtre

des Champs-Élysées, Paris, in 1913.

reworked as to make the finished

product uniquely his. While some

of the folk tunes Stravinsky used

already contained irregularities of

phrase length, rhythm, or meter,

he greatly exaggerated these

irregularities and introduced many

new ones, often fragmenting his

melodies into units of unequal

length, mixed up and repeated in

seemingly unpredictable ways.

Irregularity and brutality

The savagery of Stravinsky’s work

is most strikingly realized in the

composer’s use of rhythm, where

irregularity is also a defining

feature. The rhythms are frequently

grouped into bars of differing

lengths, but even when the meter

looks regular on the page, he often

calls for notes to be stressed in

unpredictable places, to negate any

sense of order and expectation. One

example of this is the opening to

the “Augurs of Spring,” in which a

repeated chord is heavily accented

in what seem to be arbitrary places

but are actually determined by a

mathematical pattern imperceptible

to the listener.

Stravinsky’s rhythms often

take the form of ostinatos (short,

repeating patterns), made the more

compelling by the perpetual driving

pulse often underlying them,

usually at too fast a speed to be

called a beat. “Glorification of the

Chosen One,” for example, is mostly

driven by persistent eighth-note

movement, yet in the wildest

sections of the “Sacrificial Dance,”

continuous 16th-note movement is

the “motor” behind the music.

Stravinsky also uses dissonance

to create a sense of savagery. While

the folk melodies woven through the

piece are based on recognizable

scales (or “modes”), the harmony

tends to be dissonant—an effect

often achieved by combining two

modes (called “bimodality”). This

can be heard in the dialogue

between the first two melodies—

the opening bassoon melody uses

a mode containing only the white

notes of the piano, but after around

40 seconds it is juxtaposed against

a new melody in a completely

unrelated mode (containing mostly

black notes). The accompaniment

bears little relation to either mode

but draws freely upon all the

notes. The effect in many ways

feels more dissonant than if

the piece was completely atonal,

because of the clashing of two

musical methods.

Percussive techniques

All other features are rendered

the more barbaric by Stravinsky’s

orchestration. He calls upon huge

forces—large string, wind, and

brass sections are joined by a huge

battery of percussion instruments.

His tendency toward extremes is

explicit from the opening bassoon

melody, pitched uncomfortably high

in its register. Even more striking is

the “percussive” manner in which

he writes for the whole orchestra,

especially the strings, who are

often called upon to play ❯❯

See also: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune 228–231 ■ Ives’s Symphony No. 4 254–255 ■ Parade 256–257 ■

Ionisation 268–269

MODERN 1900 –1950

[Le Sacre] had the effect of an

explosion that so scattered the

elements of musical language

that they could never again be

put together as before.

Donald Jay Grout

Music historian

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