IGOR STRAVINSKY’S THE RITE OF SPRING — Part One

The most lengthy segment in Fantasia. At the time of the film’s release in 1940 this “pantomime ballet” by Russian émigré Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) had been composed only 27 years earlier, making it the newest music included in the program. Probably the most controversial as well. Written for debut at the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev’s (1872-1929) Ballets Russes and subtitled “Pictures of Pagan Russia in Two Parts”, its original scenario concerns primitive ritual celebrations of springtime’s return culminating in the choice of a young girl for human sacrifice. During the ballet’s finale, this “Chosen One” dances herself to death. First premiered in the United States only ten years before Fantasia, it had been conducted by Stokowski himself in Philadelphia and then in New York City.

At the start of the Twentieth Century, balletomanes were accustomed to the dulcet tones of Leo Delibes’ (1836-1891) Coppélia (1870) and Sylvia (1876) or the melodious music of Tchaikovsky’s three great ballets, Swan Lake (1876), Sleeping Beauty (1889) and The Nutcracker (1892). Even Stravinsky’s first two stunning dance scores, The Firebird (1910) and Petrushka (1911), strayed not-too-far from the norms of this medium. The Rite of Spring, on the other hand, was an extremely drastic departure: in keeping with the primitive barbarism of its scenario, its music was powerfully violent, wildly rhythmic and wrenchingly dissonant. One nonplussed critic remarked that Stravinsky might just as well have written the entire score for the percussion section alone! And Vaslav Nijinsky’s (1889-1950) iconoclastic choreography matched it well, replacing traditional graceful pliés, jetés and pirouettes with rough knock-kneed stomping and furious gyrations.

Consequently the premiere performance on May 29, 1913, at the brand-new Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris was a riotous affair – “perhaps the greatest scandal in the history of twentieth-century music”.[1] Derisive laughter greeted the score’s introductory bassoon passage, the orchestra was pelted with anything that came to hand, loud shouting drowned out some of the music, fistfights ensued, 40 audience members had to be forcibly ejected from the theater. It was suggested that the unaccustomed choreography caused most of the tumult; but the music itself is so bold, raucous and emotionally provocative that it surely must have aroused conflicting reactions between staid wealthy dilettantes in the boxes and brazen bohemian upstarts in the general seating below.

I can definitely commiserate. I first heard this music as a lad of about twelve. I hated it! It was years before I could bring myself to give it another listen. And then surprise! I loved it! One’s ability to hear music seems to get better and better the more one listens to it and learns about it – as Disney himself discovered: “I can listen to it now,” he said, “It seems to mean a little more to me…”[2]

Much controversy erupted over Disney’s appropriation of Stravinsky’s ballet to accompany his own “A World Is Born” scenario. Strangely, no such objections were voiced over identical liberties he had taken with Tchaikovsky’s score.

…there were plans for animating Firebird soon after…Stravinsky saw Disney’s take on The Rite of Spring, liked it and gave Disney the rights to other pieces.[3]

Those other pieces were Renard and Fireworks.

According to Disney himself, “Stravinsky saw his Rite of Spring and said that that was what he had in mind all the time.”[4] Photographs show the amused composer examining storyboards and character models. Another photo of the two men together is signed by Stravinsky “from an admirer of your great achievements.”[5] However, reports surfaced nine years later suggesting that he now detested the liberties taken with his score and that Stokowski’s performance of it was “execrable”. Undoubtedly, such contradictory accounts will never get reconciled one way or the other. However, the inclusion of Stravinsky’s score in Fantasia has been credited with that ballet’s oft-performed popularity in the classical repertoire ever since.

Not only was the very choice of this music daring – an avant-garde score by the only composer on the program still living – but chronicling the evolution of life on earth as its subject matter was even more so. Case in point: the notorious “Scopes Monkey Trial” only 15 years earlier in Dayton, Tennessee, had riled up a perfect storm of controversy as two renowned orators modernist Clarence Darrow (1857-1938) and fundamentalist three-time presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925) bloviated in court over the teaching of evolution and whether or not religion should supersede science in public classrooms. This issue perseveres in some quarters to this very day! In 2010 I screened Fantasia for a local film-study audience and afterward one elderly lady objected to this segment on the grounds that it removed God from the Creation. Originally Disney intended to include additional sequences depicting the resurgence of Life in mammalian form and its pursuant evolution through humankind. This scheme was abandoned for fear that the film might get boycotted by Creationists.

---

[1] According to John Culhane in his book about Fantasia, op. cit., p.108.

[2] Culhane, John: op. cit., p. 29.

[3] Corliss, Richard: “Disney’s Fantastic Voyage”, Time Magazine, December 13, 1999, p.96.

[4] Culhane, John: op. cit., loc. cit.

[5] Gabler, Jay: “Rite of Spring: A classic ‘Fantasia’ segment, whether Stravinsky liked it or not”, classicalmpr.org, 2015.