Stravinsky and the Modern Ballet
Stravinsky and the Modern Ballet

Summary/Abstract: 40 years after his death, Stravinsky’s name maintains its remarkable force in the musical field of the 20th century. His ballet music represents one of the mirrors of the composer’s style, the different manners in which he uses the sound material in direct connection with a permanent searching state of mind. The relationship of the composer with the stage defines his artistic vision by the necessity of completing the musical discourse with image and movement. At the same time, these works outline a certain musical positioning among the more general tendencies of the time when they were produced. Not only “pure” ballet works, but other titles in connection with other musical genres like cantata or opera are surveyed in the study case of Stravinsky’s mastership of interweaving music and choreography.Between The Firebird and Agon, an entire history of the modern style emerges through the metamorphosis of the same composer. If the beginning of this original history was marked by the attachment to the folklore in the manner of citing folk tunes or inventing in the manner of the folk music, Stravinsky’s return to the past in neoclassical shape meant neither composition exercises, nor virtuosity demonstrations of the score writing, nor copies after famous musical „pictures”, but true originals, holding the composer’s own mark. The jumps from one style to another, from the one stylizing musical archetypes of folk origin to the resurrection of a past deposited in the imaginary museum of the universal culture do not represent ephemeral caprices, but rather the persuasive quest, the sustained effort in finding the adequate formulas for a genre with a double implication, musical and choreographic. These important evolutions in musical language required also changes in the mentalities and taste in modern era: The Rite of Spring is the perfect example of a scandal turned into a huge success. Of the same significance is the decisive role of Stravinsky’s ballet creation to the establishment of the modern choreographic performance. The whole series of the works offered the possibility of imagining some different performances that revolutionized the concept about Terpsichore’s art in the first half of the 20th century.

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