Death in Springtime: The Uncanny Power of Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring”
Nicholas Roerich, Rite of Spring Kiss to the Earth Scenery sketch, 1912. State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg
“I had a fleeting vision...I saw in my imagination a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watching a young girl dance herself to death. They were sacrificing her to propitiate the god of Spring. Such was the theme of the Sacre du printemps.” — Igor Stravinsky
The sun has been shining in London for over a week. It feels like a milestone — after a long cold winter the birds are singing, the trees are tentatively unfurling their blossoms and a warmth fills the air…Spring is coming.
Perhaps you notice patterns within yourself that stir as the winter colours into spring or the summer burns into autumn. Russian avant-garde composer Igor Stravinsky captures this most masterfully in The Rite of Spring. The idea came to Stravinsky organically, an intrusive thought that burrowed into his imagination, and was encouraged by Ballets Russes impresario Sergei Diaghilev. Together they came up with a story about a group of pagan youths in Russia being taught by their elders about the need for sacrifice to bring in the Spring. At its heart is the uncomfortable truth that death and life are two sides of the same coin.
Stravinsky’s music was revolutionary. The ballet opens with an eerie call from a single bassoon, inviting a response from the other wind instruments. The effect is sweet, and nostalgic, but with a menacing undertone, cross hatched with melodic dissonance and harsh bitonal (two different keys at once) harmonies. An aggressive and unpredictable beat pulses throughout, throwing us off, disjointed by moments of hypnotic silence. Vaslav Nijinsky’s choreography was just as dissonant and erratic as the music - there was something primal and uncanny about the young dancers’ convulsive, jerky movements.
When The Rite of Spring premiered in Paris 1913, the audiences were not ready for how this work would make them feel. It was shocking. It was awesome. Riots broke out in the Théâtre de Champs-Elysées. It was the birth of an epoch-breaking masterpiece. I’ve always hated it… It’s a physical reaction; the hairs on my neck prickle, my heart races and I feel like something inside me is fighting to get out. I want to look away.
Pina Bausch company performing The Rite of Spring, 2008. Gran Teatre del Liceu Barcelona
In the winter of 2015 David Bowie’s song “Blackstar” hit me in the very same way. The song and its visuals are a nine minute fever dream, a primal contemplation of death and life, incorporating unpredictable rhythmic motifs and jazzy harmonies, and a profoundly personal work as Bowie confronts his own approaching death. Towards the end of the video a group of girls convulse and jerk in unnerving, Nijinsky-esque movements - not a coincidence, perhaps, as Bowie himself noted The Rite of Spring was one of his earliest classical music inspirations.
When I watch “Blackstar” I feel the same skin prickling terror that I get from The Rite of Spring. But why are these pieces so powerful? Death is everywhere in popular culture, in fiction and in film, and does not have such a visceral effect. Perhaps it is that Bowie, Nijinsky and Stravinsky highlight the fragility of the human body, stripping it of romance or facade, and bringing us into direct conversation with the brutality of the natural world and the inevitability of our own mortality.
The very thing that makes me recoil from this piece — my unrestrainedly emotional response — is the very thing that makes it a masterpiece. If you want to try it for yourself, listen to the Berlin Philharmonic and Herbert von Karajan recording from 1964.
After Nicholas Roerich (1913), Female Costume for the Rite of Spring, reprise at the L’Opéra de Paris, 1991