Page 250 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained
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248 PRIMITIVISM AND MODERNISM
lthough the turn of the her peers in another frenzied ritual.
IN CONTEXT 20th century saw an Slower pieces follow—“Evocation”
A increasing fascination and “Ritual Action of the Ancestors,”
FOCUS with the exotic, no music really after which the victim dances
Primitivism prefigured the explosion of violent wildly for the onlookers until she
and modernism
primitivism that was Le Sacre du dies of exhaustion.
BEFORE printemps (The Rite of Spring). Igor
1889 Debussy is inspired to Stravinsky’s ballet portrayed a Folk origins
experiment with the “exotic” brutal scenario—a pagan ritual in Stravinsky may have been inspired
sound worlds of non-Western which a sacrificial virgin danced by Sergei Gorodetsky’s poem
musical traditions after herself to death to “propitiate the “Yarila,” in which two priestesses
hearing Javanese Gamelan god of spring.” sacrifice a young linden tree to a
at the Exposition Universelle. The work was first staged by sage. The concept was developed
Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in collaboration with Nikolai
AFTER in Paris in 1913, choreographed by Roerich, a leading artist-scholar
1923 Darius Milhaud’s ballet Vaslav Nijinsky—a performance with expertise in Russian folklore.
La Création du monde, that famously led to a riot. From its While many of the details of this
inspired by African folk plot alone, it is not difficult to see scenario have some basis in folk
mythology, premieres in Paris. why. Part one introduces a strange history, its main event is fictitious:
and primitive world in which a human sacrifice was certainly not
1949 Olivier Messiaen’s succession of rituals takes place. a feature of Slavic folk religion. The
Turangalîla-Symphonie—his These are characterized by wild savagery of Le Sacre was intended
most famous large-scale energy (as in “The Augurs of to shock and served to debunk
orchestral work—draws Spring/Dances of the Young Girls,” the romanticized notion of ancient
inspiration from Le Sacre “Ritual of Abduction,” “Spring folklore so prevalent in the arts by
du printemps. Rounds,” and “Ritual of the Rival the end of the 19th century.
Tribes”)—until the arrival of the If the brutality of the subject
Sage, who stoops to kiss the earth, matter was exaggerated for its
prompting an orgylike “Dance of shock value, the music was no less
the Earth.” In part two, as night so. Stravinsky drew a significant
falls, a sacrificial victim is chosen amount of thematic material in the
from among the “Mystic Circles of work from existing Lithuanian folk
Young Girls” and then “glorified” by tunes, but these melodies were so
Igor Stravinsky Born near St. Petersburg in 1882, France in 1920, but after the
Stravinsky’s formative influence deaths of his wife, mother, and
was Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, daughter (shortly before World
his teacher from 1902–1908— War II), Stravinsky emigrated
however, Stravinsky continually to the United States, where his
assimilated new styles. His first later works would incorporate
ballet for Diaghilev, L’Oiseau de serial technique. In spite of his
feu, catapulted him to fame at its failing health, his creative spirit
Paris premiere in 1910. His early remained strong until two years
aesthetic was in line with late before his death, in 1971.
Romanticism, as was popular in
Russia, but his musical language Other key works
developed from Experimentalism
in the 1910s into distinctive 1910–1911 Petrushka
Neoclassicism after his wartime 1922–1923 Octet
exile in Switzerland. Stravinsky 1930 Symphony of Psalms
and his family settled down in 1953–1957 Agon
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