Stravinsky: Ballet Music from 1910-1940
a. Choose one example from the music you have studied and write a detailed description of use of instruments or voices. Could be one work or a selection of short pieces from the same time. In your answer explain:
i. the instruments and or voices used
ii. the reasons why you think they were chosen for the work
iii. The ways in which they are used, including and special performing or recording techniques employed.
iv. How the use of instruments and/or voices in this work compares to their use in other similar works you have studied.
b. Discuss the issues arising in preparing a live performance of this work. What audience, venue and performers would be ideal for its presentation? Illustrate your answer by including references to live or recorded performances.
In the Rite of spring the score was written for a full orchestra with the extremes of the piccolo, the alto flute and the Cor Anglais. Stravinsky uses large sections, this is mainly brass orientated with eight horns and four trumpets, also in woodwind there are four oboes and three flutes. Though there extremes of instrumentation there are also extremes in dynamics e.g. in the fourth bar from the ending the texture and dynamics are very thick but this dies out in the third bar from the end to a piano semi quaver run by the flutes. The last note of the piece is then triple forte.
The score was written for these instruments to make a lasting, twentieth century impression on the audience. The big orchestra was used for the tutti and contrapuntal parts of the piece, an example of this is in the first eight bars of Evocation of the ancestors. The extra instruments such as the alto flute were used to add different tones and colors to the piece.
In Stravinsky's early ballets many accidentals, accents and acciacatura's are used to add interest to the piece. In this particular piece the techniques used within the brass, wo...