Rhythm’s ‘Rite’
This week marks the centennial of a famous riot in Paris on May 29, 1913. Was the cause of this riot political unrest, governmental abuses, or class warfare? No. It was a ballet! Igor Stravinsky’s ballet, The Rite of Spring, premiered in the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, literally igniting a physical riot in the crowd, as well as an aesthetic riot in the twentieth century music world.
How could a ballet have had such tremendous and far-reaching effects? To answer this question we must explore the man, the music, and the modification of musical aesthetics.
A Man With a Motive: Igor Stravinsky and Neo-Primitivism
Russian-born Stravinsky (1882-1971) was well trained musically in childhood. His father, a professional opera singer, exposed him to prominent musicians and composers. His teacher, Nicolay Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908), trained him to mine Russian folk music for artistic material. However, by his third ballet, The Rite of Spring (1913), Stravinsky had altered this practice in expressing a popular philosophy musically: neo-primitivism.
Neo-primitivism was the artistic child of philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). He believed that natural man, who he identified as the “noble savage,” was superior to civilized man. In fact he taught that education, rather than freeing and improving man, actually dehumanized and inhibited him.
Rousseau’s thought found artistic expression nearly a century later. The French artist Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) became so enamored with the noble savage concept that he left his family, moved to Tahiti, and began painting “savages.” Following Francis Schaeffer’s model of progression, we find Rousseau’s noble savage making its next appearance in music [1]. And Stravinsky was just the man for the hour.
In adapting Rousseau’s noble savage to music, Stravinsky rejected traditional, Western musical forms. For more than 1,000 years, these forms had been based on reason ruling instinct. Composers, therefore, used musical forms to communicate complex reasoning through rational melodies and treatments. Sensuality and physical desire was to be governed by reason and form. As Ken Meyers so succinctly states, “People were taught that one should reasonably control one’s bodily impulses, that one should order one’s life by the reflection of the mind, not by the instincts of the body” (emphasis his) [2].
However, Stravinsky took leave of this aesthetic. Though well-versed in his homeland’s folk music through Rimksey-Korsakov’s influence, he began adjusting his artistic music to the primitive idioms of instinct and sensuality. Although his second ballet Petrushka (1911) had shown signs of this development, no one was ready for what came next.
The Music: The Rite of Spring
The audience of The Rite of Spring’s Parisian debut witnessed the defiant entrance of twentieth century music. Stravinsky collaborated with two others, Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1920), and Vaslav Nijinsky (1888-1950) to usher Rousseau’s “noble savage” directly into the twentieth century. Though Parisians aren’t known for artistic squeamishness, even they were utterly flabbergasted by the final product.
a. The Plot
The The Rite of Spring’s plot centers on a fictional, primitive ritual. The ballet opens with a springtime dance of young adolescents from a primitive Russian village. From this group the elder chooses a sacrifice for the sun god. Though glorified by the village, she must satisfy the gods’ demands by dancing herself to death. It is a weak but visceral plot portrayed as forcefully as possible.
b. The Music
Stravinsky’s score was revolutionary in many ways. First, the actual orchestration was unusual, requiring very heavy brass and percussion sections. This is because the music is not built on the customary string section, but on the rhythm section. The rhythm thus becomes the music’s determinate ingredient rather than the melody or the harmony.
Second, the rhythm is uniquely complex. Stravinsky accents the music so that he destroys any feeling of metrical regularity. The Norton Anthology of Western Music states: “The music is cleverly conceived for ballet: the dancers can continue to count four-measure phrases while the spectator-listener is utterly disoriented metrically and rhythmically” [3]. The effect is truly disorienting and militates against rational listening. In fact the propulsive, driving rhythm demands an instinctual and sensual appreciation from the listener, rather than an intellectual and reflective one.
Third, in addition to the odd orchestration and disorienting rhythms, Stravinsky adds an extremely broad tonal pallet. Eschewing any set key structure or mode, he sets the melodic snippets directly against the harmonization. This creates drastic dissonances and sonorities that grate on the ear, but when carried by the pulsating, insistent rhythm become internalized by the listener. As if this wasn’t enough, these musical concepts were conveyed visually also.
c. The Ballet
Ballet is the act of subjecting dance to rigorous, organizational forms and demands that cause it to transcend the act of movement and become art. The body works in conjunction with music to convey the composer’s message. Here too the body and the instincts thereof had been controlled by reason and order.
Again forsaking the traditional form, Nijinsky intended to reproduce every note of Stravinsky’s primitive score on the floor [4]. Already having a reputation for stretching the limits of accepted choreography, he was the perfect person for the task at hand. His choreography of Claude Debussy’s (1862-1918) Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun (1894) and personal portrayal of the faun had already caused problems in Paris, being widely decried by critics as lascivious [5].
Nijinsky was tireless and ingenious in designing unorthodox and shocking movements that disavowed the graceful character of classical ballet and accurately portrayed Stravinsky’s score. The movements are disjointed, awkward, and propulsive. The entire body becomes a slave to the rhythm.
d. The Premier
The night of the premier was a disaster. Within minutes Camille Saint-Saens rose from his seat and left, spouting bitter remarks about the music. Others joined in, making cat calls to the ballerinas and cursing Stravinsky, Diaghilev, and Nijinsky. The crowd soon became completely uncontrolled.
The ruckus grew so loud that the music could no longer be heard. Nijinsky was forced to stand on a chair just off stage and shout the beat to the dancers. On the whole, everyone had a horrible time. But The Rite of Spring affected more than just that small, Parisian crowd.
The World on Its Head: Melody and Harmony Now Subject to Rhythm
Of all that happened, The Rite of Spring’s most important result was the revolution of rhythm. Before this piece, melody and harmony had ruled rhythm in western musical aesthetics. This is because art is a reflection of morality and has an inherent moral quality [6]. It communicates our moral beliefs. For music the relationship of melody, harmony, and rhythm communicates our understanding of man and his relationship to God: rational, relational, or instinctual. Certainly each of these qualities are significant components of the human person, but the rational and relational components should govern the instinctual.
Melody conveys rational phrases and concepts, while harmony conveys relational musical progressions and cadences. On the other hand, rhythm conveys the beat, marking out time viscerally and instinctually. With Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, melody and harmony took a back seat to rhythm. Rhythm became the new master.
When melody and harmony became subject to rhythm, extended and complex melodic concepts and developments became nearly impossible. Instead, melodic material consisted of clipped short pieces of thought, unrelated to each other and the piece as a whole. The only connection lay in the propulsion of the rhythm. And no longer was harmony limited to a mode or key, since the necessity of a relational progression and cadence had disappeared.
Thus, in many ways The Rite of Spring was the precursor to much contemporary music, such as Rock-and-Roll and Pop Music. These have simply presented Rousseau’s concept of the “noble savage” and Stravinsky’s rhythmically-controlled aesthetic to the masses.
When we listen to music that is rhythmically oriented, it tends to discourage reflection, self-control, sober-mindedness, and rationality, encouraging instead reactivity, self-gratification, and instinct. A quick look into the Pauline epistles shows us that these traits are incompatible with the Christian life (Rom. 12:1-2, Gal. 5:16-25, Eph. 4:17-24, 4:31-5:21, Col. 3:1-17).
As Christians our music should be delightful to the ear. But more importantly, it should be spiritually edifying in content and form. We shouldn’t concern ourselves with simply the words. The attitudes and ideals the musical form encourages are important, because form affects listeners as much as the content, if not much more.
Conclusion
Stravinsky is a fascinating person whose influence undoubtedly reaches to our day. The Rite of Spring clearly illustrates that musical forms have a purpose. They convey ideas in themselves, even without words. Therefore, they matter. Because the effect of musical form is much more subtle than its words, it is potentially more dangerous.
As Christians, this must lead us to ask: “What does my music say, not only in its words, but in its form?” The form of our music should reflect the proper order of a biblical relationship with God: rational, relational, and lastly instinctual.
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[1] The Schaeffer model postulates that cultural trends generally advance in this order: Philosophy, Visual Art, Music, General Culture, Theology. Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1982), 28.
[2] Ken Meyers, All God’s Children and Blue Suede Shoes (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Publishers, 1989), 144.
[3] Claude V. Palisca, ed., Norton Anthology of Western Music: Volume 2 Classic to Modern, Fourth Edition (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2001), 134.
[4] Barbara Russano Hanning, Concise History of Western Music, Second Edition (New York: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 2002), 510.
[5] “The ballet was starkly original in its sensuous atmosphere and sexually suggestive movements, and in portraying the faun’s visions of ethereal nymphs.” Ibid.
[6] This understanding of the relationship of art and morality is well discussed and defended in both Jonathan Edwards’ Dissertation on the Nature of True Virtue found in The Works of Jonathan Edwards Vol. 1 (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004 reprint of the 1834 British edition), and Donald A. Stauffer’s chapter, “Poetry is Significant” found in his book, The Nature of Poetry (New York: W.W. Norton and Co. Inc., 1946).
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