Original and new performances of Stravinsky’s Firebird, Petroushka and Rite of Spring

Vesa Matteo Piludu

University of Helsinki

Department of Art Research, Semiotics

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (1882 –1971)Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский

Music scores commissioned by impresario Sergei Diaghilev and performed in the ballets of the dance company Ballets Russes (Russian Ballets) of Paris

L'Oiseau de feu or The Firebird (1910)

Petrushka or Petroushka (1911/1947)

Le Sacre du printemps or The Rite of Spring (1913)

All this Ballet were considered innovative and avant-garde, even if they were based on traditional Russian folktales (Firebird), folk traditions as Russian folk puppet theatre (Petrushka) or artists’ visionary ideas about Russian ancient paganism (Rite)

It was typical of the period doing avant-garde based on folklore or distant cultures (the so-called primitivism)

Juri Lotman’s theory and Stravinsky’s ballets

Difference between the symbol (signifier) and the meaning of the symbol (significans)

Certain symbols have an enormous capacity of resistance (conservativism or memory of symbols: folklore legends)

Book: Universe of the Mind

The same symbol can have different meanings in different cultural contests (cultural relativism, horizontal)

If the cultural contest changes, the interpretation and the meaning of the symbol could change (symbolic dynamic, vertical): same signifier, different significant

In the case of Stravinsky he used symbols and myths from Russian folklore to produce avant-garde music and ballets: the symbols could be traditional, but their meaning is completely different from the one they had in the rural Russian oral culture

Performances in ballet

The score of the composer (musical) The performance of the director of orchestra (musical) The performance of the musicians (musical)

Dancer’s casting and role selection (visual) The costumer’s work (visual) The set designer (visual) The choreography (visual) The stage performance of the dancers (visual)

Un-artistic performances: Reaction of the public (mainly oral, sometimes written) The articles of critics and journalists (written) Reaction of impresarios (oral, written, production of new ballets)

Dialogic relations

As there are so many performers with different artistic background contrast are typical in the ballets’ production

The ballet is a result of a complex dialogic relation between music performers (composers, directors) and visual performers (dancers, choreographers, set an customs designers)

Sometimes the relations are fit in harmony, sometimes there are serious conflicts or polemics

Stravinsky and Ballets Russes’ performances

Stravinsky was extremely interested in all the elements of the Ballets Russes’ performances, including the visual one: choreography, costumes, dance

In his autobiography of 1936, he is continuously giving accounts of his ideas about different performances of the ballets

The Firebird, 1910

Based on a typical Russian folktale

Folkloric plot / Avant-garde music

Imaginative orchestration, use of the 12/8 meter

Choreographer: Mikhail Fokine

Dancers: Nijinsky, Pavlova, Karsavina

Relation Stravinsky – Fokine - Nijinsky

“Fokine created the choreography section by section, as the music was handed to him”

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 27)

“Nijinsky … he spoke little … a very backward youth, whose intelligence was very undeveloped for his age.”

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 28)

Stravinsky about the Firebird’s casting and dancers

“The casting was not what I intended. Pavlova … had seemed to me infinitively better suited to the role of the fairy bird than Karsavina … for whom I had intended the part of the captive princess.”

“Thought circumstances had decided otherwise than I planned, I had no cause for complaint, since Karsavina’s rendering of the bird’s part was perfect.”

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 29)

Stravinsky about the Firebird’s choreography

“The choreography of this ballet always seemed to me to be complicated and overburdened with plastic details, so that the artist felt, and still feel ever now, great difficulty in coordinating their steps and gestures with the music, and this often led to an unpleasant discordance between the movements of the dance and the imperative demands that measures of music demands.”

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 30)

Stravinsky about the musical direction

It gives me much pleasure to pay grateful tribute to the mastery with which the eminent Gabriel Pierné conducted my music

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 30)

Petrushka, 1911

Score: Stravinsky composed the music during the winter of 1910–11

Impresario: Sergei Diaghilev

Company: Ballets Russes

Premiered in Paris at the Théâtre du Chatelet on June 13, 1911

Premiere’s conductor: Pierre Monteux

Choreography by Mikhail Fokine

sets and costumes by Alexandre Benois

The title dancer’s role was danced by Vaslav Nijinsky

The score of Petrushka

The work is characterized by the so-called Petrushka chord (consisting of C major and F♯ major triads played together), a bitonality device heralding the appearance of the main character.

In 1913, the Vienna Philharmonic initially refused to play the score, deriding Petrushka as schmutzige Musik ("dirty music")

Sets and costumes for Petrushka's production, designed by Alexandre Benois

The Petrushka’ idea

”I had in my mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggios.”

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 31)

Stravinsky’s opinion on the execution of Petrushka

“Pierre Monteux … was able to achieve a very clean and finished execution of my score. I ask no more of a conductor, for any other attitude on his part immediately turns to interpretation, a thing I have horror of … traduttore-traditore; this is an absurdity in music, and for the interpreter it is a source of vanity inevitably leading to the most ridiculous megalomania”

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 29)

Stravinsky’s opinion about Petrushka’s choreography and dance

I should like at this point to pay heartfelt homage to Vaslav Nijinsky’s unsurpassed rendering of the role of Petrushka. The perfection with which he became the very incarnation of this character was all more remarkable because the purely saltatory work in which he usually excelled was in this case definitively dominated by dramatic action, music, and gesture.

But it was a pity that the movement of the crowd had been neglected. I mean that they were left to the arbitrary improvisation of the performers instead of being choreographically regulated in accordance with the clearly definite exigencies of music.

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 34-35)

Stravinsky’s ballets as modern tradition

All the Stravinsky’s ballets are now performed by numerous modern dance companies. What was avant-garde became a kind of modern tradition.

Rarely these ballets are performed in the same way as the original ones

Often the interpretations contains radical changes and we can talk about new ballets based on the original ballets

We can say that the Stravinsky’s ballets are like jazz standards: there is a basic theme, but large improvisations are allowed

In contemporary dance, the public isn’t waiting for fidelity, is searching for something new, surprising or even shocking

Accordionist James Crabb and Geir Draugsvoll

Duos for Classical Accordions: Stravinsky and Mussorgsky

1997 Emi Classic

The CD contains the fours parts of Stravinsky’s Petrushka second version’s (1947) score

The duo played also in the Sofia Gubaildulina’s CD Silenzio

Finnish dancer and choreographer Tero Saarinen decided to cooperate with Crabb and Draugsvoll

“It was a matter of luck … In a French music store I found the CD with the accordion version of Petrushka. The first time that I listened the CD I was extremely surprised. Crabb and Draugsvoll adapted the Petrushka’s piano version for accordions and, even if the result was fresh and original, it was also extremely loyal to t the original work. And the universality and popularity of the accordion’s sound was perfect for the structure of the drama I wanted to build up!”

Teero Saarinen, 2007

Extract from an interview used for the Finnish article Crabb & Draugsvoll harmonikkaduon uudet haasteet Tero Saarisen Petroushka-tulkinnassa by Vesa Matteo Piludu and Anna Partanen, published in Hanuri 3/2007. Free tranlation by Vesa Matteo Piludu

Accordionists on the ballet stage

Crabb and Draugsvoll told me in an interview that the work done with Saarinen was completely different from the typical classical accordionists’ one.

The choreographer put the two musicians on the stage and gave them also a visual and theatrical role in the ballet

Saarinen said them to wear a weird hut, to move dramatically when they played music and even to play standing on the seats… things simply unthinkable in a classical accordion concert, full of conservative rules about the “serious” way in which the instrument should be played on the stage

Crabb and Draugsvoll loved the experience, because they found themselves freed from the classical music performance’s restrictions

Stravinsky and Nijinsky

“That scandal was in nowise due to the so-called novelty of the performance, but to a gesture, too audacious and too intimate, which Nijinsky made, doubtless thinking that anything as permissible with an erotic subject.”

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 36)

Nijinsky was a faun importuning nymphs.

“I must say her and how that the idea of working with Nijinsky filled me with misgiving, notwithstanding our friendliness and my great admiration for his talent as dancer and mime. His ignorance of the most elementary notions of music was flagrant. The poor boy knew nothing of music. He could neither read it nor play any instrument ... This lacunae were so serious that his plastic vision, often of great beauty, could not compensate for them”

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 40)

Crabb and Draugsvolltook the role of the magician

In the original 1911 Petruska version at the beginning of the ballet there was a magician who woke up with a whistle tree wood puppets: Petrushka, Ballerina and the violent Moor.

Petrusgka is a character of Russian puppet theatre, originally based on the Italian Pulcinella, a mask and a puppet that become popular in Europe with different names (Mr. Punch, Polchinelle)

In the Saarinen’s version Crabb and Draugsvoll, on the stage, took the role of the magician, playing at the same time the accordion score of Stravinsky's Petrushka

Interaction between musicians and dancers

The dancer’s stile reminds the grotesque movement of puppet theatre and the customs in the Saarinen’s version are colorful as the original Russian Ballet’s one

The musicians interact many times with the dancers: they “torture” them changing rhythm, tonality, stile

The accordionists “acts” not only the role of the magician, but also as the puppet theatre Maestro, the master who move the puppets with strings.

The death of Petruska

In all the ballet, there is a dance struggle between Petrushka and Moor for the love of Ballerina, who is clearly divided and prey of chronic indecision

Finally Petrushka is killed

End in the original version: Petrushka’s ghost

During the night, the Magician carry Petrushka’s limp body.

But Petrushka’s ghost appears

The magician is terrorized to see ghost of Petrushka and runs away

the audience wonders what is "real" and what is not

Saarinen's end: no ghost

The accordionists tried to wake up the puppet playing music, but there is no way: Petruska died and there is no way to wake up him

There is no ghost apparition

Saarinen’s interpretation:a critic to competitive ideology

Petrushka’s story is suitable for a social critic

in our society all of as are “unsure” as Petrushka, Ballerina, the Moor

We live as psychopaths, thinking that in every corner there is a competitor, “someone who could be better than us”

The excess of competition bring us to struggles that end in any case badly, with the elimination of one competitor (in this case Petrushka)

When the competition has such a dramatic end, there is no winner: all the characters, including the Moor and Ballerina, are loosers

Saarinen see in the new Finnish and European ultra-competition social ideology a danger for the whole social system and his Petrushka is a way to denounce, in an artistic way, how harmful the obsession for competition could be

The Rite of Spring, 1913

imaginary ancient Russia

It has the subtitle "Pictures from Pagan Russia" (French: Tableaux de la Russie païenne)

Colourful idea of violent and cruel pagan Russia: a girl dance herself to death for her community, in order to fulfil a sacrifice to the god of Spring in order to gain his benevolence

No reference to recent or living folklore: the Russian peasants’ spring rites didn’t include any sacrifice in the XIX century

Reference to a tragic romantic vision of a distant past (XIX century’s and early XX century’s myths)

Intensely rhythmic score, sometimes based on some extract of folk music

Rite’s vision

”In St. Petersburg … I had a fleeting vision which came to me as complete surprise, my mind at the moment being full of other thing. I saw in imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watched a young girl dance herself to death. They where sacrificing her to propitiate the god of spring … I must confess that that vision made a deep impression on me, and as I at once described it to my friend, Nicholas Roerich, he being a painter who had specialized in pagan subjects. He welcomed my inspiration with enthusiasm, and became my collaborator in this creation.”

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 31)

Nicholas Roerich's 1913 set design for Part I: Adoration of the Earth.

Performers at the prémiere of Rite of Spring

29th May of 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées of Paris

Set design and costumes by archaeologist and painter Nicholas Roerich

Original choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky

Prémiere’s music conducted by Pierre Monteux

Score of Rite

Stravinsky used asymmetrical rhythms, dissonance, polyrhythms, polytonality, layering of ostinati (persistently repeated ideas)

Opening of the final section, the "Sacrificial Dance“:

The scandal of the prémiere

The strong rhythm The “primitive” and rude setting The violence of the theme The link dance/sexuality/fertility/death The “unhappy end” The Vaslav Nijinsky's radical departure from classical ballet’s clichés (body components curled inward not opened outward, body pulled

down not lifted up, steps heavy not light, focus on grotesqueness not elegance)

shocked completely the audience accustomed to the conventions of classical ballet

The booing started at the very start of the performance Loud arguments between “denigrators” and “supporters”

degenerated in shouts and riots The police was able to restore the order, but not completely

The scandal

I left the auditorium at the first bars of the prelude, which had at once evoked derisive laughter. I was disgusted. These demonstrations, at first isolated, soon became general, provoking counter-demonstrations and very quickly developing into a terrific uproar.

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 47)

Different reactions

Stravinsky fled from the Theatre, crying

Diaghilev affirmed that the scandal was "just what I wanted!"

Stravinsky and Nijinsky

”I should archive nothing until I taught him the very rudiments of music: values – semibreve, minim, crochet, quaver, etc. – bars, rhythm, tempo and so on. He had the greatest difficulty in remembering all of this.”

Nijinsky complicated and encumbered his dances beyond all reason, thus creating difficulties for the dancers that were sometimes impossible to overcome.

It was evident that the poor boy had been saddled with a task beyond his capacity.

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 41)

On the choreography

What the choreography expressed was a very labored and barren effort rather than a plastic realization flowing simply and naturally from what the music demanded. How far it all was from what I had desired!

In composing the Sacre I had imagined the spectacular part of the performance as a series of rhythmic mass movements of the greatest simplicity which would have an instantaneous effect on the audience, with no superfluous details or complications … the only solo was to be the sacrificial dances at the end of the piece.

But there again, althought he had grasped the dramatic significance of the dance, Nijinsky was incapable of giving intelligible form to its essence, and complicated it either by clumsiness or lack of understanding.

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 48)

Steps and tempo

For is undeniable clumsy to slow down the tempo of the music in order to compose complicated steps which cannot be danced in the tempo prescribed. Many chireographer have that fault …

(Stravinsky, An Autobiography, 1990 (1936), Marion Boyard, London, page 36)

Rite in Disney’s Fantasia

The Rite of Spring was further popularized through Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940)

In Fantasia much of Part I either was omitted entirely or was moved to at the end

some years later Stravinsky labelled the “film performance” as “execrable” and declared that the animation “involved a dangerous misunderstanding”

Walt's nephew Roy E. Disney later used The Firebird in his production of Fantasia 2000

Fantasia. Walt DisneyThe Rite of Spring

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NAYA486cFm4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ocxKPPjePfM&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLFxIH1fs9M&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UgCX1OAmldc&feature=related

Rite and butoh

the controversial, violent, pagan and primitivist thematic material of the Rite of Spring, greatly influenced Hijikata and Tamano butoh

Interesting is the fact that butoh is a kind of modern dance in which isn’t necessary to follow the tempo of the music

Tero Saarinen’s Hunt

The Hunt is a solo performance of Tero Saarinen based on the Rite of Spring

Saarinen is both choreographer and dancer, interpreting the girl that will be dance herself to death

The style is an interesting mixture of western contemporary dance and Japanese butoh

At the moment of the sacrifice, the multimedia artist Marita Liula project and move photos of Saarinen itself on the body of Saarinen

There are two dances at the same time: the one of Saarinen and the movements of the digital photos

At the moment of sacrifice, the digital images shown only separated parts of Saarinen face … and finally Saarinen jump high and the lights are turned off

The meaning of Hunt

Again, Saarinen wasn’t interested in the colorful folkloric exotism loved by the Ballet Russe

He seen the multimedia sacrifice as a metaphor of what happens every day: people are sacrificing their soul and their bodies to serve a technocratic society

His protest against technocracy doesn’t include a complete refuse of technology, which could be used in a creative and even liberating artistic way, as in his dance

So the problem is how technology is used

Reaction of the public and critics

The public and critics were extremely positive towards the innovations of Saarinen

The social critics, as they were expressed in a creative and surprising way, were also well accepted

We are in a time in which the followers of ballets are searching for something more than mere executions of classics and the even the radical reinterpretations are more accepted than the most pure philological performances

Today, the public is less exited by colorful dresses and exoticism and the primitivism’s artistic attitudes sounds somewhat ridiculous, showing clichés of Russian folklore that are too distant from nowadays realities and imaginary

The new interpretations, to be loved and better understood, must include references to the contemporary cultural and social contest

Conclusions

The paradox of the contemporary Stravinsky’s ballets is that to be loyal to the ”Stravinsky’s tradition” doesn’t mean to repeat exactly all the movements of the original ballets or use the same instruments, but produce innovations in the interpretation and be loyal to the avant-garde spirit of the Ballet Russe