_Introduction—Mysterious Circles of the Adolescents—Glorification
of the Chosen One—Evocation of the Ancestors—Ritual
of the Ancestors—The Sacrificial Dance of the
Chosen One._
_The Rite of Spring_, or more literally according to the Russian _Spring
Consecration_, scenery and costumes designed by Nicolas Roerich,
choreography by W. Nijinsky, was produced at the Théâtre des Champs
Élysées on May 29, 1913, by the Diaghilev Ballet Russe. Mr. Monteux
conducted. The chief dancers were M. Nijinsky and Mlle Piltz. The
performance, while it delighted some, incited howls of protest. The
hissing was violent, mingled with counter cheers, so that M. Astruc
ordered the lights turned up. The late Alfred Capu wrote a bitter
article published in _Le Figaro_, in which he said:
“Bluffing the idle rich of Paris through appeals to their snobbery is a
delightfully simple matter.... The process works out as follows: Take
the best society possible, composed of rich, simple-minded, idle people.
Then submit them to an intense régime of publicity. By pamphlets,
newspaper articles, lectures, personal visits and all other appeals to
their snobbery, persuade them that hitherto they have seen only vulgar
spectacles, and are at last to know what is art and beauty. Impress them
with cabalistic formulæ. They have not the slightest notion of music,
literature, painting, and dancing; still, they have heretofore seen
under these names only a rude imitation of the real thing. Finally
assure them that they are about to see real dancing and hear real music.
It will then be necessary to double the prices at the theater, so great
will be the rush of shallow worshipers at this false shrine.”
Mr. Carl Van Vechten describes the scene in his book: _Music after the
Great War_:
“I attended the first performance in Paris of Stravinsky’s anarchistic
(against the canons of academic art) ballet, _The Rite of Spring_, in
which primitive emotions are both depicted and aroused by a dependence
on barbarous rhythm in which melody and harmony, as even so late a
composer as Richard Strauss understands them, do not enter. A certain
part of the audience, thrilled by what it considered to be a blasphemous
attempt to destroy music as an art, and swept away with wrath, began
very soon after the rise of the curtain to whistle, to make cat-calls,
and to offer audible suggestions as to how the performance should
proceed. Others of us, who liked the music and felt that the principles
of free speech were at stake, bellowed defiance. It was war over art for
the rest of the evening, and the orchestra played on unheard, except
occasionally when a slight lull occurred. The figures on the stage
danced in time to music that they had to imagine they heard, and
beautifully out of rhythm with the uproar in the auditorium. I was
sitting in a box, in which I had rented one seat. Three ladies sat in
front of me, and a young man occupied the place behind me. He stood up
during the course of the ballet to enable himself to see more clearly.
The intense excitement under which he was laboring, thanks to the potent
force of the music, betrayed itself presently when he began to beat
rhythmically on the top of my head with his fists. My emotion was so
great that I did not feel the blows for some time. They were perfectly
synchronized with the beat of the music. When I did, I turned around.
His apology was sincere. We had both been carried beyond ourselves.”
There were five performances in Paris that season.
When this ballet was brought out at Drury Lane, London, on July 11,
1913, with Mr. Monteux conductor, it was thought advisable to send a
lecturer, Mr. Edwin Evans, in front of the curtain, to explain the ideas
underlying the ballet. At the end of the performance there was greater
applause than hissing.
The music of this ballet was performed for the first time in concert
form by an orchestra conducted by Mr. Monteux at one of his concerts at
the Casino de Paris in Paris on April 5, 1914, when it was
enthusiastically applauded.
And now _The Rite of Spring_ is acclaimed by many as Stravinsky’s
“greatest work.”
The orchestration is as follows: piccolo, 3 flutes (the third
interchangeable with a second piccolo), bass flute; five oboes (the
fourth interchangeable with English horn); small clarinet in E flat,
three clarinets and bass clarinet; three bassoons, two double bassoons;
eight horns (two interchangeable with tenor tubas); small trumpet in D,
three trumpets in C, bass trumpet; three trombones; two bass tubas;
kettledrums, bass drum, two antique cymbals, tam-tam, scratcher, and
strings.
JOSEPH DEEMS
TAYLOR
(Born at New York, December 22, 1885)
“THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS,” SUITE, FIVE PICTURES FROM LEWIS CARROLL,
OP. 12
Ia. Dedication
Ib. The Garden of Live Flowers
II. Jabberwocky
III. Looking-Glass Insects
IV. The White Knight
It is a pleasure to find an American composer of talent who is willing
to write music that is cheerful, not portentous; whose fancy is
delicate; who uses a large orchestra discreetly, not chiefly to make a
thunderous noise. Mr. Taylor for his inspiration went to a book that for
years has pleased children from the tender age to that of white hair; he
did not ransack the Grecian or the Scandinavian mythology; he had no
thesis, no exposition of colors; he did not attempt to portray in music
cave life and the rude rites of primitive man. Nor did he strive
painfully to be ultra-modern in the French, Italian, or German manner.
He remembered Lewis Carroll’s story. Pleasant and amusing musical
thoughts came into his head, and he expressed them musically, without
laboring after transliteration. Even his narration of the Jabberwock’s
fate is not too realistic, and in this movement the measures that may be
taken to picture the peaceful scene while the hero waited “with vorpal
sword” in hand by the Tumtum tree the approach of the fearful monster
are charged with poetic beauty. Charming also is the “Dedication.” The
whole work shows genuine fancy, a gift of expression in an individual
manner. Whether without titles the music would identify this or that
episode is not to the point. The suite is frankly programme music, but
of the better kind; natural, not pretentious; amusing, but as a man of
talent amuses first himself, then those who are privileged to be with
him.
* * *
This suite, inspired by _Through the Looking-Glass_, by Lewis Carroll
(Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 1832-98), was written in 1917-19 for flute,
oboe, clarinet, bassoon, horn, pianoforte, and strings. It was produced
in this form at a concert of the New York Chamber Music Society in New
York on February 18, 1919. The suite was then in three movements. In
September, 1921, Mr. Taylor began to revise the suite for full
orchestra. He added “The Garden of Live Flowers.” The first performance
of the revised work was by the New York Symphony Orchestra in Brooklyn,
March 10, 1923. The performance was repeated in New York the following
afternoon.
The score, dedicated “To Katharine Moore Taylor from a difficult son,”
calls for these instruments: three flutes (and piccolo), two oboes,
English horn, two clarinets, bass clarinet, two bassoons, double
bassoon, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, a set of
three kettledrums, snare drum, tambourine, cymbals, triangle,
glockenspiel, xylophone, pianoforte, and strings.
When the suite was produced by the Symphony Society of New York, the
programme contained a description by Mr. Taylor:
“The suite needs no extended analysis. It is based on Lewis Carroll’s
immortal nonsense fairy tale, _Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice
Found There_, and the five pictures it presents will, if all goes well,
be readily recognizable to lovers of the book. There are four movements,
the first being subdivided into two connected parts.”