Page 251 - (DK) The Classical Music Book - Big Ideas Simply Explained

MODERN 1900–1950 249

See also: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune 228–231 ■ Ives’s Symphony No. 4 254–255 ■ Parade 256–257 ■
Ionisation 268–269

between the first two melodies—
the opening bassoon melody uses
a mode containing only the white
notes of the piano, but after around
40 seconds it is juxtaposed against
a new melody in a completely
unrelated mode (containing mostly
black notes). The accompaniment
bears little relation to either mode
but draws freely upon all the
notes. The effect in many ways
feels more dissonant than if
the piece was completely atonal,
because of the clashing of two
musical methods.

Percussive techniques
All other features are rendered
the more barbaric by Stravinsky’s
Dancers of the Ballets Russes pose example of this is the opening to orchestration. He calls upon huge
in costume for the first performance of the “Augurs of Spring,” in which a forces—large string, wind, and
Le Sacre du printemps at the Théâtre repeated chord is heavily accented brass sections are joined by a huge
des Champs-Élysées, Paris, in 1913.
in what seem to be arbitrary places battery of percussion instruments.
but are actually determined by a His tendency toward extremes is
reworked as to make the finished mathematical pattern imperceptible explicit from the opening bassoon
product uniquely his. While some to the listener. melody, pitched uncomfortably high
of the folk tunes Stravinsky used Stravinsky’s rhythms often in its register. Even more striking is
already contained irregularities of take the form of ostinatos (short, the “percussive” manner in which
phrase length, rhythm, or meter, repeating patterns), made the more he writes for the whole orchestra,
he greatly exaggerated these compelling by the perpetual driving especially the strings, who are
irregularities and introduced many pulse often underlying them, often called upon to play ❯❯
new ones, often fragmenting his usually at too fast a speed to be
melodies into units of unequal called a beat. “Glorification of the
length, mixed up and repeated in Chosen One,” for example, is mostly
seemingly unpredictable ways. driven by persistent eighth-note
movement, yet in the wildest
Irregularity and brutality sections of the “Sacrificial Dance,” [Le Sacre] had the effect of an
The savagery of Stravinsky’s work continuous 16th-note movement is explosion that so scattered the
is most strikingly realized in the the “motor” behind the music. elements of musical language
composer’s use of rhythm, where Stravinsky also uses dissonance that they could never again be
irregularity is also a defining to create a sense of savagery. While put together as before.
feature. The rhythms are frequently the folk melodies woven through the Donald Jay Grout
grouped into bars of differing piece are based on recognizable
lengths, but even when the meter scales (or “modes”), the harmony Music historian
looks regular on the page, he often tends to be dissonant—an effect
calls for notes to be stressed in often achieved by combining two
unpredictable places, to negate any modes (called “bimodality”). This
sense of order and expectation. One can be heard in the dialogue

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