VV(18): The night of the performance ...

[Dave Monroe]

"The night of the performance arrived." (V., Ch. 14, Sec. ii, p. 412)

So much I still want to get to, so little time I've had this past week, but, 
having the opportunity to do so tonight, I figure I should at least get this 
one out.  First off, from the maestro himself, Igor Stravinsky, in Igor 
Stravinsky: An Autobiography (New York: W.W. Norton, 1962 [1936]), "One: 
Development of the Composer," pp. 1-86 ...

"As for the actual performance, I am not in a position to judge, as 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." (p. 47)

Cf. ...

"Before the first act was barely under way, there came catcalls and uncouth 
gestures from the anti-Porcepic faction.  Friends, already calling 
themselves Porcepiquistes, sought to suppress them.  Also present in the 
audience was a third force who merely wanted quiet enough to enjoy the 
performance and naturally enough tried to silence, prevent or mediate all 
disputes.  A three-way wrangle developed.  By intermission it had 
degenerated into near chaos.
   "Itague and Satin screamed at each other in the wings, neither able to 
hear the other for the noise in the audience.  Porecpic sat by himself in a 
corner ..." (V., pp. 412-3)

And continuing from Stravinsky ...

"During the whole performance I was at Nijinsky's side in the wings.  He was 
standing on a chair, screaming 'sixteen, seventeen, eighteen'--they had 
their own method of counting to keep time.  Naturally the poor dancers could 
hear nothing by reason of the row in the auditorium and the sound of their 
own dance steps.  I had to hold Nijinksy by his clothes, for he was furious, 
and ready to dash on to the stage at any moment and create a scandal.  
Diaghileff kept ordering the electricians to turn the lights on or off, 
hoping in that way to put a stop to the noise.  That is all I can remember 
about the first performance.  Oddly enough, at the dress rehearsal, to which 
we had, as usual, invited ... the most cultured members of society, 
everything had gone off peacefully, and I was very far from expecting such 
an outburst." (p. 47)


Barbara W. Tuchman, The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 
1890-1914 (New York: Macmillan, 1966), Ch. 6, "'Neroism is in the Air'" pp. 
289-347, however, provides a particularly succinct distillation of various 
extant accounts ...

"Its theme was elemental, the rejuvenation of earth in spring.  The form was 
a celebration of pagan rites in which a sacrificial maiden dances herself to 
death to renew the life of the soil....  He opened not with a bang, as 
Strauss had advised, but with a slow trembling of woodwinds as if to suggest 
the physical mystery of budding.  As the curtain rose on tribal games and 
dances, the music became vibrant and frenetic with primeval rhythms, the 
chant of trumpets, the driving beat of machinery, jazz metres and pitiless 
drums never before used with such power and abandon.  It rose in intensity 
and excitement to a blazing climax and all the promise of a new age.  It was 
the Twentieth Century incarnate.  It reached at one stride a peak of modern 
music that was to dominate later generations...." (pp. 342-3)

"The premiere conducted by Monteux on May 28, 1913, created almost a riot in 
the theatre.  The abandonment of understood harmony, melody and structure 
seemed musical anarchy." (p. 343)

Cf. ...

"... the last portion, Sacrifice of the Virgin, a powerful, slow-building 
seven-minute crescendo which seemed at its end to've explored the furthest 
possible reaches of dissonance, tonal color and ... 'orchestral barbarity'" 
(V., p. 413)

"Porcepic's music was now almost deafening: all tonal location had been 
lost, notes screamed out simultaneous and random like fragments of a bomb" 
(V., p. 414)

But to continue from Tuchman ...

"People felt they were hearing a blasphemous attempt to destroy music as an 
art and responded with howls and catcalls and derisive laughter.  
Counter-demonstrators bellowed defiance.  One young man became so excited he 
began to beat rhythmically with his fists on the head of an American in the 
audience whose emotion was so great that 'I did not feel the blows for some 
time.'  A beautifully gowned lady in a box stood up and slapped the face of 
a man hissing in an adjoining box.  Saint-Saens rose and indignantly left 
the hall; Ravel shouted, 'Genius!'  The dancers could not hear the music 
above the uproar and Nijinsky ... stood in the wings, pounding out the 
rhythm with his fist and shouting in despair, 'Ras, Dwa, Tri!'  Monteux 
threw desperate glances to Diaghilev who signed to him to keep on playing 
and shouted to the audience to let the piece be heard.  'Listen first, hiss 
afterwards!' screamed Gabriel Astruc, the French manager, in a rage.  When 
it was over the audience streamed out to continue their battle in the cafe 
and the critics to carry it to the press ...." (p. 343)

And see Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the 
Modern Age (New York: Mariner, 2000 [1989]), Ch. I, "Paris," pp. 9-54, for a 
detailed account of various accounts of that fateful first performance of Le 
Sacre du printemps, it contexts, and its aftermath, but see esp. "May 29, 
1913," pp. 10-16.  I'll be returning to Eksteins, as well as other sources, 
in a moment, but ...


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