Stravinsky’s masterpiece “The Rite of Spring” may be the most revolutionary piece of orchestral music ever written. It was the year 1913, and the manager of the famous ballet company “Ballets Russes”, Sergei Diaghilev, comissioned a new ballet from a then virtually unknown composer: Igor Stravinsky. This was his third ballet for the Ballets Russes, the first two being “The Firebird” (1910) and “Petrushka” (1911).
The Rite of Spring is about a pagan ritual, in which a virgin girl dances herself to death as a sacrifice to the goddess of Spring. The first thing that strikes us when we listen to this piece is its rawness and its earthiness, unlike any other piece of music ever before or since. Stravinsky perfectly encapsulates the sounds and the textures of primitive creatures and lands, while maintaining an utter and total control of orchestral technique while still being able to innovative musical elements such as new harmonies (plychords, chords composed by 5ths and 4ths, etc.), melodies, instrumentation and rythm. Indeed Stravinsky himself said “I had a dream, a fleeting vision of a pagan rite, in which a young girl dances herself to death”, “I was not guided by any specific (compositional) system. It is what I hear, and I write what I hear”.
Indeed, Stravinsky’s great work sounded so revolutionary and so avant-garde to the general public in 1913 that during its premiere, there was a riot in the concert hall. Fortunately, Stravinsky’s work was quickly acknowledged as a work of genius, and is still regarded as so to this day.
In this example, we can hear the whole string section (violins, violas, cellos and double-basses) playing a polychord (a chord composed of two different chords), composed of an E major chord and an E flat Major chord, and the accents are reinforced by a huge horn section consisting of 8 french horns. This chord is repeated a total of 59 times throughout this section.