Transcript for the Piece Audio version of #2: The Rite of Spring, or when Lenny met Igor

When Lenny met Igor: The Rite of Spring

It doesn't take one second into Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, Le Sacre de Printemps to realize the man was onto something completely different:

(Sacre: opening)

10:46 The bassoonist in the Rite of Spring said I can't play this ? it'll be pinched and out of tune, and cracked and Stravinsky said I know. That's exactly what I want. Don't worry about it.

That's John Heiss, a professor of composition and music theory at New England Conservatory in Boston. Speak to him of Stravinsky's instrumental imagination, and he'll tell you ...

John Heiss:
(Stravinsky's instrumental imagination) 9:22 He sure did. It's endless. He said I knew the instruments initimately, and I knew how they worked and what to do with them even before I knew what to say as a composer, I knew the instruments. He said when you grow up in Russia with Rimsky and Mussorgsky ... as your immediate ancestors you're going to know the instruments very well...

None of that would prepare anyone for the controversy that marked the work's premiere in the Salle Pleyel in Paris on May 29, 1913, but Stravinsky knew he had created something revolutionary when he scored Le Sacre.

A subtle but telling marker about this Russian revolution was the accumulation of stories surrounding different episodes in the work's history ? stories that talk about similar events while giving away different outcomes.

Consider, for example, the tale of Diaghilev, impatiently waiting for his music. John McClure, Stravinsky's record producer at Columbia, and John Heiss from the New England Conservatory both tell it. 94 years after the event, the different accounts still don't fully jibe.

First, John Heiss:

22:18 (The Rite of Spring) had the really big riot on May 29, 1913. He had had great success with Petrushka and before that with Firebird, and those are pieces that are written in a popular vein. The Rite of Spring was asking something very different. If it had had the same audience, they would have been surprised. The musicians got used to it and the dancers got used to it, but the audience was shocked out of their socks, and probably a very good model for that shock was what Diaghilev found when Stravinsky played him for the first time the two-piano reduction of the orchestra and they went to the piano and very soon they were playing ddoooo ... (bring up underlying music) And this is quite true, literally, I'm sure. I've been told it by many people. 23:16 And Diaghilev was kind of worried and he tapped Stravinsky on the shoulder while he was playing and asked does that go on a long time like that, and stravinsky looked up and smiled and said, very long, my dear.

(rewind tape sound)

So, let's rewind the music and hear what John McClure has to say: It's almost the same story:

44:55 Diaghilev talked into doing the Rite of Spring ? primitive Russia, this would be a sensation for his dance company. And Stravinsky and Rurich did sets, they used ? they put this thing together and Diaghilev had never heard it and the premiere was coming up, and Diaghilev came to visit him and said, ?Igor, play me Sacre. What is it?? So Stravinsky sat down, and right after the little slow intro and all the bassoon stuff, comes the famous section ?boom booom, etc. (45:46) and Diaghilev put up his hand and he said, Igor, tell me, my dear, does it go on a long time like so? And Stravinsky gave one of his famous, beaming smiles, yards of teeth showing, and he said, ?Till the end, my dear.? And he said Diaghilev was very quiet, for Diaghilev was a very intelligent man, and he knew I was serious.

A nice point: whoever's telling the story, Stravinsky calls Diaghilev ?my dear.? Another thing we can all agree on: critics hated The Rite of Spring. John Heiss explains:

Debussy didn't like it. He called it negro music; others, Florette Schmidt a distinguished French conservatory type of composer, very conservative, wrote that it was the cultivation of the art of the wrong note (23:49) If you could stand it, it would be like going to the dentist to have your teeth drilled.

The notoriety of Le Sacre soon reached these shores.

People were very savage about the Rite of Spring. They made this picture of him in the Globe hanging from a noose. Somebody wrote if he who could write the Rite of Spring, if I be right by right should swing, and a picture of a hangman's noose. 24:13

And lurking behind it all the undeniable fact that the audience at the Salle Pleyel in Paris had gone nuts on the night of May 29, 1913 when they first heard the piece. Again, John Heiss:

The riot couldn't have been staged, there was too much of it. It was too instantaneous; it was too uncontrolled. It was out of control ... Stravinsky and Diaghilev were afraid that they were going to be attacked and the police came and they wanted them to leave in a taxi. One story says they did leave, another story says they didn't. Both stories told by Stravinsky. The dancers could not even hear the orchestra. And what Stravinsky says he remembers most was Najinsky backstage counting out the syllables for the dancers because they couldn't hear the orchestra very well because the noise from the audience was so much louder (24:58). Louder than the Rite of Spring!

Amidst all this ruckus, even words failed. Najinsky had to count out the bar numbers in Russian.

(Heiss) He said you count in Russian by the time you get into the teens you get into numbers of seven and eight syllables, and he couldn't keep up. But Stravinsky said it was a fantastic irony to see that they only way they are going to hold together was to have somebody count in Russian when you can't count to music in Russian. The syllables are too many to count individual beats. The whole thing was a farce, a catastrophe. Made him furious. He was disgusted, appalled.

Eventually, the police arrived at the theater in force. As John Heiss recounts it:

One story says they did leave, another story says they didn't. (Heiss) Both stories told by Stravinsky.

And that?s the kicker. The thing about stories ? they can be true or not. Igor Stravinsky was very good at storytelling. John McClure heard one Stravinsky story about the composition of The Rite of Spring, and to hear him tell it, it?s God's honest truth:

28:24
You especially notice it in Firebird, and then after Firebird, the Rimsky influence sort of drops away and Petrushka is new, totally new, and of course the Rite of Spring is totally suigenerous. It comes from some other world. Here's this young upstart ? what is he? 5'2?? 5'3 ? sitting in this little rented room in Clarence, with a little upright piano all by himself, and a piano which was muffled ? his pianos were always muffled ? he didn't want anyone to hear what he was doing. Even this piano in his studio on Weatherly Drive in Hollywood, he had blankets over it (29:19) No one could hear what he was doing; he was very secretive about this. And even then, he knew, somehow, how important and amazing he was because he made a sign and put it on the door of this little tiny room that says, ?It is here that I am composing the Rite of Spring.?

In one sense, it doesn't matter whether or not Stravinsky actually hung out that shingle on the door of the little room in Clarence. Le Sacre demands these types of stories ? nothing as monumental as this composition could ever happen within the course of normal human events. Witness Diaghilev's anxiety about the seemingly endless pounding chords; witness the riot at le Salle Pleyel in Paris at the work's premiere.

So who cares if the stories don't meld ? just as long as there is someone willing to re-tell the story.

And as stories get told ? really, it's like the game of telephone you played in third grade. The facts will eventually get schmeared; the question is how much. John Heiss was a student at Columbia University when Lenny met Igor. I started asking him about one particular concert?

Heiss:
30:40 (Bernstein conducting) The Rite of Spring. Yes, this was in New York, and we heard about this about a half-hour after the time it happened. I think I know the story you're going to tell. Stravinsky came back stage and Bernstein was thrilled with the performance he had just given and he came into the green room there at Carnegie Hall and bent down and started kissing Stravinsky's feet, and Stravinsky petted Lenny's head and said, ?Very well, Lenny, but the tempos weren't right.? That story covered Manhattan Island within half-an-hour. ...

But for someone who was actually on the scene, the meeting of Lenny and Igor was anything but warm and fuzzy. John McClure:

67:30 Back in the 60s, Bernstein had just done Sacre ? I think I had recorded it with him in London, and he was doing it at Carnegie Hall with the Philharmonic, and he invited Stravinsky to come, and Stravinsky happened to be in town. 67:46 So he came to the concert and Lenny, of course, by the end of the piece, he was just floating in the air as he always was, having just composed the piece on the podium as he went along, which was how he measured the success of a performance. ?Ah, I feel I wrote that ?

And so we come back to the question of who's telling the story. Bernsteinistas note forgiveness from the composer -- ?Very well, Lenny, but the tempos weren't right.? In McClure?s telling, it was really a bit more complex.

He came back to the green room, expecting Stravinsky to say, ?Maestro, it was just wonderful, a wonderful performance,? and Stravinsky, he was back in the green room, shaking with rage. ?Give me the score.? And he took the score from Bernstein, and he says, ?Where in this score does it say ritardando? At the end of this section? Where does it say ritardando at the end of this section? Where do they come from, all these ritardandos??

Ritardando ? slowing the beat down to emphasize some feature of the music. It turned out that Bernstein had learned the piece the way so many music fans do ? by repeatedly listening to one album.

68:48 And Bernstein was totally crestfallen and at a loss for words, which is automatically a miracle, and he said, ?Oh, my god. I learned this piece from Stokowski's recording.? And he had never gotten rid of those ritards.

Stokowski's Rite of Spring, the one Disney used in Fantasia, had drilled its way into Bernstein's head, much to Stravinsky's chagrin.

How different are these performances? Here's the Mystical Circles of Young Girls from the second part of the Rite of Spring, with Igor Stravinsky leading the Columbia Symphony Orchestra...

Then there's Bernstein's recording of the same piece with the London Symphony Orchestra...

Ritardando indeed!

So, between Leonard Bernstein and Igor Stravinsky, you get two very different reads of one of the great masterpieces of the 20th century. But hey! Just don't get into the habit of listening to them simultaneously.

I'm Jackson Braider.

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