All in a chord IV: Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring

Hewett, I. (2017) All in a chord IV: Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring. [Broadcast]

Abstract

Music is never created in isolation - it's conceived in relation to what's going on around a composer in terms of personal and historical events, new technologies, new ideas and artistic endeavours in other fields. In this series, Ivan Hewett is looking at five very different chords which amply demonstrate the concept that harmony is a reflection of history. Each programme is a bite size portion of rich musical and historical investigation - and each chord has had far reaching influence on other music and is emblematic of its era. 4) STRAVINSKY THE RITE OF SPRING (broadcast 12 January and 30 August 2017 on BBC Radio 4). Contributors: music historian Gerard McBurney and literary historian Valentine Cunningham. Stravinsky wrote his ballet The Rite of Spring for the 1913 Paris season of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company with choreography by Nijinsky. The ballet famously caused a riot at its premiere, largely because of the dance and the music - but partly also because the sense of clash that we hear in this famous chord was, in some senses, a reflection of tensions in the air.

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