The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps)

The bassoon opens alone, high in its range, with a short melody that turns around C. Other wind instruments then enter one by one, each with a phrase of its own.

Stravinsky wrote to the painter Nicholas Roerich on 26 September 1911, while composing the Augurs of Spring: “The picture of the old woman in a squirrel fur sticks in my mind.” He pictured her running before the dancers, stopping them and breaking into their rhythm.

The strings repeat a chord that combines F♭ major with an E♭ dominant seventh. Horns accent selected notes. The bars are written in 2/4, and the accents fall at irregular points within them.

Presto. The violins play running figures, the high winds play short bursts and the horns hold notes underneath. Each phrase is short, and the next one cuts it off.

The E♭ clarinet and the bass clarinet play the same tune in octaves beneath trills in the flutes. The strings then enter, marked Sostenuto e pesante, with a heavy, even tread for the round dance.

The orchestra recorded the work in the ballroom of Brooklyn’s St George Hotel on 5 and 6 January 1960, with the composer conducting. The music had first been heard with Nijinsky’s choreography for the ballet.

Trombones and tubas play a heavy phrase. Faster figures follow in the upper register. Five bars into rehearsal figure 57 the two sound together, the low phrase continuing beneath the rapid upper parts.

The tubas repeat their tune while the horns play a different pattern. Bassoons and low strings keep moving underneath. The phrases are of unequal length, so the points where they coincide shift as the procession continues.

The Sage bends to kiss the earth. Bassoons and contrabassoon play over timpani and a low bass, and the strings hold a chord.

The bass drum starts the next dance. Winds and strings rise, and the full orchestra plays repeated figures. The marking is Prestissimo, and the dance follows the brief stillness of the Sage.

The marking is Largo. Flutes and clarinets play soft repeated chords while the oboes hold long notes, and horns and muted trumpets join them over divided strings. The ballet scenario sets the second part at night.

In Nicholas Roerich’s imagined ancient world, the elders wear bearskins and the girls are gathered into a circle. One girl remains in the middle. The elders watch her final dance.

At figure 91, Andante con moto, six solo violas play the melody together, each on a different note. Two solo cellos add high harmonics. Stravinsky marks the violas molto cantabile ma non forte.

On 17 November 1912, at the Châtelard Hotel in Clarens, Stravinsky wrote in his sketchbook: “with an unbearable toothache I finished the music of the Sacre”.

Eleven repeated chords interrupt the circling, with strings, timpani and bass drum striking together. The Vivo follows, a fast dance in bars of changing length, opening with 5/8 and 9/8. The chosen girl stands at the centre while the others acclaim her fate.

Bass clarinets and low brass play the invocation, and high winds and brass follow with hard, repeated chords. The phrases are blunt and short.

Horns, plucked strings and soft percussion play a repeating figure. Above it, the cor anglais plays a short phrase. The accompaniment continues beneath the solo.

On 5 April 1914 Pierre Monteux conducted The Rite of Spring in concert at the Casino de Paris. Afterwards admirers carried Stravinsky on their shoulders, less than a year after the uproar at the ballet’s première.

The last dance begins with short, sharp chords. Cellos and basses play pizzicato beneath them. Rests separate the chords, and the next one enters before a regular pattern can form.

In 1943 Stravinsky revised the bars, note values and scoring of the final dance. Much of the notation was doubled in size, so that quavers became crotchets. This 1960 performance uses that revision.