Le Sacre Du Printemps ( The Rite Of Spring )

When one thinks of a ballet they hear soft rhythmic notes and see elegantly dancing ballerinas softly tip-toeing around the stage. This is also what people in early 1900’s expected to see when they planned to attend a ballet. However, a couple of motivated artists in 1913 literally planned to change the design of ballet, music and dance forever. On May 29, 1913 a ballet named The Rite of Spring premiered in Paris, France. The original title as it translates from Russian to French is; Le Sacre du Printemps, meaning the rite of spring, but the literal translation from Russian to English means “Sacred Spring”. The ballet and music were composed by Igor Stravinsky, with the help of Nicholas Roerich, who proposed the general idea behind the

For the history of Russian Classical ballet, it originated in a group of dance academies in Moscow and St Petersburg in the eighteenth century. At first the dancers were from poor backgrounds - usually from orphanages - but the Tsars were particular ballet enthusiasts and so the profile grew. However, in the nineteenth century some of the best French and Italian dancers and teachers went to Russia and ballet developed considerably more than in Western Europe where opera was preferred. It was under this climate that Russian ballet led the way in classical dance with such famous stars as Anna Pavlova, Mikhail Foskine and the legendary Nijinsky, who all trained with the Frenchman Marius Petipa at the St Petersburg Imperial Ballet.

The first of Igor Stravinsky's three famous early ballets, The Firebird is the most traditional and derivative. While The Firebird, similar to Petrushka and The Rite Of Spring, is unquestionably one of Stravinsky's masterpieces, if considered strictly historically it can be, with some justice, viewed as warmed-over Rimsky-Korsakov (the device of contrasting a folkloristic, diatonic style representing human characters, with a highly chromatic style reserved for depicting the supernatural had its most conspicuous use in Rimsky's

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky is the author of six symphonies and the finest and most popular operas in the Russian repertory. Tchaikovsky was also one of the founders of the school of Russian music. He was a brilliant composer with a creative imagination that helped his career throughout many years. He was completely attached to his art. His life and art were inseparably woven together. "I literally cannot live without working," Tchaikovsky once wrote, "for as soon as one piece of work is finished and one would wish to relax, I desire to tackle some new work without delay." The purpose of this paper is to give you a background concerning Tchaikovsky's biography, as well as to discuss his various works of

Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” and Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring “ are two of the most influential ballets to ever be recorded. Their ballets have been played and duplicated for many years. I will start this paper with a summary of each composer which will include where they are from culturally, geographically and musically. Then I talk about each ballet. Where it was written, the story behind each piece, and its reception now and its reception at the time it was published. I will also include the popularity of each ballet in other forms such as Disney. Finally, I will provide a detailed concert report of each ballet.

To begin, The Rite of Spring was composed by Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky was born in 1882 near St. Petersburg, Russia. As a Russian-born composer, his music had “a revolutionary impact on musical thought and sensibility just before and after World War I, and his compositions remained a touchstone of modernism for much of his long working life” (Taruskin; White). According to Wikipedia, he is considered one of the most important and

The title of the book, The Rites of Spring, and the plunge into the world of the Ballet Russe in the first chapter, made clear that Eksteins intended to use Stravinsky's ballet as an image for

He was so impressed by Stravinsky's promise as a composer that he invited him to join his small group of artistic assistants. For the rest of the 1909 season Diaghilev asked Stravinsky to compose various pieces of ballet music. Then, in 1910, Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to compose his new ballet, The Firebird.

Dmitri Shostakovich was born in 1906 and showed an aptitude for music at a young age. In 1919, he enrolled in the Petrograd Conservatory where his abilities mesmerized the head of the institution, Alexander Glazunov. Shostakovich was never politically naïve; he imitated his parent’s ideals who initially

He remained a clerk for three years. He hated his job but he worked feverishly at it for he worked hard at every task he was given. He continued to be drawn into the music world and he took piano and theory lessons. Finally, in 1862, he quit his job and devoted the rest of his life to music which he began by entering the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He graduated with a silver medal in 1865. After graduation he was unsure of what to do until 1866 when Nicholas Rubenstein offered him the job of professor of harmony at the newly formed Moscow Conservatory. It was here that he wrote his first serious works which included AA Festival Overture on the Danish National Hymn,@ his First Symphony in G AWinter Daydreams,@ and his first opera AThe Voyevode.@ Showing his desire for perfection he tore up the opera because he was dissatisfied with it and it wasn=t until 1949 that it was revived.5

The music of Stravinsky has always been “ahead of time” in the way of using new and different ways of presenting music. His early ballets such as Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring being a great example of his modernism and will to compose music which is both innovative and shocking. For this essay I have chosen to write about The Firebird (1910) and The Rite of Spring (1913). Firebird was Stravinsky’s first Ballet and his first composition that reached many people because of its modernism and exoticism. The Rite of Spring is still renowned for its portrayal of primitivism, a concept that was accentuated by the riot that happened at its premiere.

“The Rite of Spring” (Le Sacre du Printemps) Part I: The Adoration of the Earth by Igor Stravinsky was written was written in 1913 for the Paris dance troupe, the Ballets Russes company; the productions of Serge Diaghilev. The ballet was considered controversial and caused a small riot during the performance between the two groups; supporters and detractors.

From September of 1850 to May of 1859, Tchaikovsky attended the School of Jurisprudence. At this boarding school in St. Petersburg, he received an excellent education and further pursued his interest in music. During this time,

The Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky is another ballet that is based on a fairy tale, and was first presented to the Tsar of Russia.

Tchaikovsky excelled at composing the genre of ballet. While others struggled with this genre he had all of the right compositional skills that make the perfect opera. Unlike other composers he was not good at creating intricate thematic relationships over a long period of time. Instead, he could create one outstanding melody after the other. This was exactly what is needed for ballet. It creates one distinct scene and then moves on to the next. His short-segment style was perfect for ballet because dancing in a ballet is very tiring and usually only lasted for three minutes at a time (Wright,