An Amazing Creative Outburst

Four ballets by Stravinsky

Text by Max Harrison

Firebird * Petroushka * Rite of Spring * Apollo

Of these four ballets, three were written for Serge Diaghilev's Russian Ballet troupe and, though each is a major work, they were composed almost consecutively, with scarcely any other music between them. It was an amazing creative outburst, and for many people Stravinsky's reputation as one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century depends on these three scores more than on the remainder of his large output. The first performance of "The Firebird", in Paris in 1910, was, indeed, the beginning of his international renown.

It was after Diaghilev's very successful 1909 Paris season that he decided to add a ballet on the Russian folk legend of the Firebird to his company's repertoire. The story was by Michel Fokine [see the original story, which is quite different - J.F.], who also did the choreography and the music set Stravinsky some interesting problems. For example, he had to produce effective dance numbers mixed with passages in a kind of recitative style for the many passages of mime. He also needed to distinguish musically between the ballet's human and supernatural characters, and between good and evil among the latter. All this he did brilliantly, with shimmering colours and atmospheric harmony, already surpassing, with this early work, comparable music by his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov.

The ballet starts with a young prince, Ivan Tsarevich, straying into the magic garden of Kashchei, an evil, green-taloned ogre. Ivan is pursuing the dazzling Firebird, which he catches as it flutters round a tree that bears golden apples. Having taken one of its feathers, he lets it go. Next Ivan encounters no less than 13 princesses. All of them are held in thrall by Kashchei, for maidens, who wander into the magic garden are made captive and men are turned to stone. Kashchei's attendant monsters are about to petrify Ivan too, but just in time he remembers the Firebird and waves its feather. It appears at this summons and reveals that Kashchei will die of his soul, preserved in a casket in the guise of an egg, is destroyed. Ivan dully smashes the egg, the ogre dies, his magic spells are broken, all his captives go free. By this time the prince of course fallen in love with one of the princesses, and, amid general rejoicing, they are betrothed.

Given the great success which this work had when performed by Diaghilev's company, Stravinsky might well have rested content, but other ideas were already brewing. He spoke of "a fleeting vision" of a very different ballet, "a pagan ritual in which a chosen sacrificial virgin danced herself to death." This became "The Rite of Spring", one of the most drastically innovatory scores of our century, but Stravinsky was not yet ready, perhaps neither technically nor psychologically, for that task.

Instead, with "The Firebird" behind him, he sketched a work for piano and orchestra, having in mind "a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, trying the orchestra's patience with diabolical cascades of arpeggios." He soon hit on the puppet's name - Petroushka, the Slavonic Pierrot. And when Diaghilev heard the music he immediately sensed its theatrical possibilities. Hence it was decided that the piece should become a ballet. Fokine again was responsible for choreography. The music was composed during 1910-1911 and represented a considerable advance for Stravinsky in terms of "modernism".

Tableau I finds us at St Petersburg's Shrovetide Fair, where a Showman in front of a small theatre displays three puppets to the milling crowd. Petroushka, Ballerina and a Moor. The dance a Chaplinesque tragedy in which Petroushka loves the ballerina, though she prefers the gaudily dressed Moor. Petroushka attacks him, so the Showman throws them back into their compartments, where they apparently become lifeless puppets again. In Tableau II Petroushka is in his room. The Ballerina momentarily appears, but then goes to the Moor. Petroushka, in the violence of his frustration, punches a hole in the wall and falls through.

Tableau III is in the Moor's flashily decorated room, where he and the Ballerina are dancing. Petroushka rushes in but the Moor chases him off. In Tableau IV we are again in front of the theatre, form which Petroushka rushes, pursued by the Moor, who kills him. The crowd hardly seems aware of the violence and begins to drift away as the music runs down. After all, Petroushka, as the Showman says, was only a puppet, and his death signifies nothing. But then the puppet's ghost - or is it the real Petroushka? - appears above the theatre mocking the Showman, who drops the body and shuffles uneasily away.

In retrospect we can hear why Stravinsky needed to write "Petroushka" before he could tackle "The Right of Spring." Taking place in the "real world" of a faire, "Petroushka" was a halfway house between the legendary terrain of "The Firebird" and the prehistoric savagery of "The Rite." He composed this latter during 1911-1912, and, as is well known, the audience rioted at the first performance in Paris in 1913. That occasion disclosed, as few events had up till then, the challenge of modern art, the inevitable unpopularity of the true artist in the twentieth century.

One of the greatest dancers, Vaslav Nijinsky, supplied the choreography, and the story is well outlined by the titles of ballet's two halves, "The Adoration of the Earth" and "The Sacrifice". The action begins at the foot of a sacred hill where Slavonic tribes gather to celebrate the spring rites. There is an old witch who predicts the future, a marriage by capture, and round dances. The most solemn moment comes when the Wise Elder plants his sacred kiss on the newly flowering earth. During this ceremony the tribes are seized with a sort of mystic terror, leading to the "Dance of the Earth," the final section of Part I. In Part II young girls dance in circles on the sacred hill and the sacrificial victim is chosen and glorified. The elders, now clad in bearskins signifying that the bear was man's ancestor, dedicate the victim to the god of spring, and she dances herself to death.

Unlike "The Firebird" or "Petroushka," "The Rite" quotes few Russian folk songs, yet their style is evident at many points. The work's themes are indeed usually simple, and thus in productive tension with the complex and often very dissonant harmony and especially with the complications of the rhythmic treatment. These qualities are matched and in fact emphasized by the composer's extraordinarily inventive deployment of a very large orchestra, which includes much percussion. Despite its sophistication and modernity, however, Stravinsky's music has the power of summoning up from the subconscious something long hidden, a racial memory perhaps, belonging to a remote, long forgotten past. That is why the first night audience, and others since, find "The Right of Spring" so disturbing.

The remaining work here, "Apollon musagete," is from another phase of Stravinsky's life and tells of an altogether different world. In 1927 he received a commission from the Elizabeth Sprague Foundation to compose a ballet for a festival of contemporary music to be held the following year at the Library of Congress, Washington. It was specified that this work should require only six dancers and last not more than half an hour, but he was given a free choice of subject. Stravinsky had for some while been thinking of writing a ballet on an episode in Greek mythology and decided to centre it on Apollo, leader of the muses, reducing their number from nine to three. These were Terpsichore, personifying the rhythm of poetry and the eloquence of gesture as embodied in the dance, Calliope, combining poetry and rhythm, Polyhymnia, representing mime. Apollo's birth on Delos is shown, and this is succeeded by nine allegorical dances by Apollo and the three Muses. For the Washington premiere the choreography was by Adolf Bohm, for the first European production later in 1928 by George Balanchine .

As the composers had wished, the style of dancing was essentially classical, and he thought of "Apollon musagete" as a ballet blanc. Balanchine, too, later said Stravinsky's music was "white on white." Certainly it is the clarity, calm, even serenity, of that music, for strings along, which makes it seem almost infinitely remote from the excitements of the earlier ballets. The avoidance of any conflict in the scenario, indeed of any narrative, psychological or expressive intent, was further matched by monochrome costumes for the dancers and the absence of elaborate scenery on stage.

This work is hymn to reason as a foundation of beauty, and although the harmony has some dissonance it is generally simple, its effect often static, like that of choreography. The melodic language, too, derives from classical sources, and yet despite this, and the music's restraint notwithstanding, every bar of it could only have been composed by Stravinsky. This outward calm, however, should not be mistaken for passivity. The serenity of "Apollon musagete" carries deep within itself, like so much of the art of the Greeks themselves, the implication of tragic fatality.

Stravinsky page

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