Le Sucre' After 50 Years

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30154, 11 June 1963, Page 9

Le Sucre' After 50 Years

On May 29, 1913, in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, Paris, occurred one of the most famous uproars in musical history—the first performance of Stravinsky’s ballet. “The Rite of Spring,” conducted by Pierre Monteux. Fifty years later, to the day, Monteux, now aged 88, performed the almost incredible feat of directing the London Symphony Orchestra in the same immensely taxing score, with the 81-year-old composer in the audience.

“The fracas that attended the first public performance of the Rite of Spring must be one of the most often described scandals of musical history.” says the music critic of “The Times.” The beautifully - dressed lady who leant over and slapped ‘he face of the young mam hissing in the box next door; he gentleman who gave vent to his intense excitement by bearing the rhythm with his fists on the head in front of him, that of Carl van Vechen. who in his turn was too excited to notice at first; the Comtesse de Pour tales declaring as she indignantly brandished her fan that it was the first time in 60 years that anyone had dared to make a fool of her; the composer Florent Schmitt shouting to the ‘St. Germain bitches’ to shut up; Monteux glancing desperately up at Diaghilev in his box, to see whether he should stop or go on in the face of such odds: Stravinsky himself dashing behind the scenes in a furious rage and preventing poor Nijinsky, who was standing on a chair in the wings shouting numbers to the dancers, from leaping on to the stage—all these vignettes have their secure place in a legend which might well be entitled, with a glance at Thurber, ‘The Night the Dam Broke.’ Entertainment Wanted

“Because that, surely. is what happened. The fashionable first-night audience of Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes was not, of course, a representative group of musiclovers. It probably considered itself to be, m an antique phrase, ‘the cream of society’—even if, as Prous: suggests. the cream had already begun to go sour. But musically speaking the objectors, who seem to have been in the majority, represented the attitude that music, and more especially ballet music, is and should be an entertainment and no more.

“Prepared as some of them might be. in the name of eul-

‘ure arad humanitarian ideals, to be bored by Beethoven, they had no intention whatever of being attacked by a young Russian called Stravinsky. After all, had they not paid for their tickets? “But this social aspect of the resistance to ‘The Rite of Spring’ was not the whole story On the broad front the battle for the composer’s right of free speech had been won long before: ‘society’ had tacitly renounced its right to call the tune, and only the fortuitous confrontation of a young genius with an audience that was for the most part more interested in stage spectacle than in music could explain the sense of outrage at this first performance. It was significant that when the work was given its first con<cert performance a year later the audience—a very different audience this time—acclaimed it. “The sense of social shock, then, was already anachronistic on May 29, 1913. Nor was the barbaric nature of the subject—‘Scenes from pagan Russia’—enough to cause so strong a reaction, either fbr or against. Barbarism was perfectly acceptable (indeed it had been for the past three centuries of ballet history) so long as it could be treated as merely decorative; the Polovtsi Dances in ‘Prince Igor’ always brought the house down.

“Sex, too, was equally acceptable to Diaghilev’s audiences as long as it could be presented as a kind of draw-ing-room accomplishment, as :n Fokine’s ‘Cleopatra’ and ‘Scheherazade.’ though Nijinsky’s 'L’Apres-midi d’un Fa-une’ gave some offence That, however, was merelv a matter of the Faun's final nose being too overtly erotic for some taeles, and ‘The Rite of Spring' struck far deeper than that. Origin In A Dream

“For here the eroticism was part and parcel of the music itself—not an unspecific sensuousness as in Debussy’s ecore, but ‘the force tha‘ h rough the green fuse drives the flower.’ the awakening in nature and man of the urge towards rebirth and generation, consummated symbolically in the saerific-

ial death of a virgin. Any attempt to intellectualise the subject-matter as ‘danced anthropology’ is nullified by Stravinsky’s own account of its origin, a dream in which he saw ‘the circle of elders watching a girl, their sacrifice to the god of spring, dance herself to death.’ Sexual aggression was expressed in this music with a clarity uniparalleled before or, in spite of several attempts. since. No wonder its first appearance provoked a storm, and no wonder either that it is so completely accepted by the consciously enlightened audiences of today. More Healthy Response?

“Which of them understand it the better? There is something just a little shocking, one might think, about the way in which this great score is sometimes turned into a conductor’s war-horse, a sort of Ride of the Valkyries de nos jours. Certainly audiences, to judge by the rapturous applause that breaks out immediately after (sometimes even before) the final chord, are immensely excited by it, but to judge by some of the inadequate performances that receive ovations it seems that they are responding rather to the noise than to the music—just like that first audience 50 years ago. in fact, though the response is different in kind. Is exhilaration a more healthy response than shock?” asks the critic. “Perhaps; but awe would be more appropriate than either —awe in the face of the music and of the man who wrote it with ‘only my ear to help him' ” At the Albert Hall, Monteux gave a “magisterial” account of the score—the original version was specially obtained for the occasion—“with absolutely none of the meaningless virtuosity which some conductors inflict upon it. ‘Monteux .• . has never cheapened “Le Sacre” or looked for his own glory in it’ - it is own tribute, and last night he was there to endorse it with his presence It was a moving experience to watch these octogenarian partners in a 50-year-old crime receiving their ovation for it together,” said “The Times” critic