“Rigoroso (Kighth Note = 126)" Modernist Performing Style "The Rite of Spring" and the Forging of a Robert Fink Journal of the American Musicological Society, Vol. 52, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), 299-362, Stable URL: http://links,jstor.org/sic?sici=0003-0139% 28199922%2952%3A2%3C299%3A%22%28N%3D 1%22%3E2,0.CO%3B2-6 Journal of the American Musicological Society is currently published by University of California Press. ‘Your use of the ISTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use, available at hhup:/www.jstororg/about/terms.huml. JSTOR’s Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at hhup:/www jstor.org/journals‘ucal hum, Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the sereen or printed page of such transmission, JSTOR is an independent not-for-profit organization dedicated to creating and preserving a digital archive of scholarly journals. For more information regarding JSTOR, please contact support @jstor.org. hupulwww jstor.org/ Thu Fan 27 01:12:19 2005“Rigoroso (.) = 126)”: The Rite of Spring and the Forging of a Modernist Performing Style ROBERT FINK re we ready to stat talking about an “authentic” Rite of Spring? In the ‘world of dance, such a Rite—talked about for over twenty years—was achieved a decade ago. OF course, for dance historians The Rite of Spring is not Igor Stravinsky’s concert evergreen, but the steps and stage ac- tion of Vaslav Nijinsky’s ballet as danced in the Theétre des Champs-Elysées (on 29 May 1913. The “lost” original staging of the Rite has been the subject of perhaps the most extensive and careful historical reconstruction ever at tempted in the world of classical dance; dance historian Millicent Hodson and her husband Kenneth Archer together spent well over two decades tracking down remnants of Nicholas Rocrich’s sets and costumes, and the even more fleeting traces of Nijinsky’s choreography.! Hodson and Archer collected the existing physical evidence, interviewed surviving members of the Ballets russes, and assembled unpublished eyewitness sketches and descriptions. By 1987 they had succeeded in reconstructing almost all of Roerich’s decor and. about 80 percent of Nijinsky’s movements. When the Jofirey Ballet began to stage the reconstructed Nijinsky Rite to general astonishment and mixed 1 Hodson has recently published her resonsraston; se Mice Hodson, Nin’ Crime Agnins Grace: Recansrucsion Scare of the Original Cureagrapy fir “Te Sacre du Prinempe? (Stuyvesant, NX: Pendragon Pres, 1996). For details ofthe sarc se alo Millcnt Hodson, “Nijinty’s Choreographie Method: Visual Sources ftom Roetich foe Le Sacre de Printemps” Dance Rearch Journal 18, n0.2 (1986-87): 7-16; Milicent Hodson, “Puzzles choréo- sgraphiques: Reconstitution du Sacre de Nijnsky,” in Le Sacre du Printemp de Nin, ed Fsenne Souras eal. (Pars: Editions Cicero, 1990), 45-74; and Joan Acocela and Lynn Garafla, “Rites of Spring.” Balle Review 20, no. 2 (1992). Fora disening view, sce Robert (Caf, “The Rita Seventy Fv,” in his Savin (New Yor: St. Martin's 1992), 233-88, This negate review of the 1987 Joly prodaction alleges fw in Hodson’ choreographic recon struction ofthe 1913 Rite backing up its argument by reproducing in fase the complex choreographic annoations in Seats’ copy ofthe four hand plano sore (a source no val ale to Hodson, snc i asin Craft's peronal posession und recent). But jump om those ‘ote tothe concason that “Srvinsky had composed the choreography athe same ie athe ns” (p. 243] seems to stretch the documentary evidence too fir (oma fe Ameri Masia Sey 1999, 5,082) [895th Anen Msg Soe. Ase 088-013999/5202 40038200,300 Journal of the American Musicological Society reviews, the revisionist impact ofthis achievement on the historiography of ‘modern dance was made clear? When Modern Music Becomes Early Music Restaging Nijinsky’s Rite was a triumph of what musicologists would recog- nize as historically informed performance: sets, costumes, and choreography ‘were a close to those of the 1913 premiere as decades of painstaking scholar- ship could guarantee. But the 1987 performances also showed that Hodson, Archer, and the Jofitey had a strange collective blind spot—or, more precisely, a deaf ear—when it came to reconstructing the sonic aspects ofthat premicre ‘with similar care. Nowhere in Hodson’s accounts of her long search for the “authentic” Rite does she demonstrate the slightest concern for establishing. a definitive text for the music that accompanied Nijinsky’s choreography; nor does she seem aware that a present-day conductor might interpret such a text quite differently than Pierre Monteux did in 1913. Afterall, the music of the Rite, though mostly unheard that fateful night, had at least been written down, and the score was later published, revised, and performed numerous times by the composer before his death in 1971. One might easly assume that Stravinsky's music, unlike the scenery and choreography of his unfortunate collaborators, had been unproblematially preserved. Iti evident from broad- cast performances of the Joffrey production that the conductor was simply allowed to use his standard score of the Rite, and that he performed it in a standard, late twentieth-century manner. But infact, as the painstaking detective work of Louis Cyr has shown, the score that Monteux used in 1913, which I will discuss in some detail below, difiers considerably from the standard texts in use today. One would hardly want the many corrected misprints reimposed, nor would it matter much to the overall spectacle if the conductor went back to Stravinsky’s original bar rings of the score’s most complex rhythmic passages. Even the fact that the 1913 autograph fall score used at the premiere preserves some discarded— and strikingly different—orchestrations of key moments in the Rite might well be of interest only to musicological purist.’ 2, The rconsmacion was broadcast in 1989 as “The Search fo Nijnsky's Rite of Spring,” produced by Judy Kinkergand Thomas Grimm for WNET//New York This broadcast hae no been made commercially walabe 3. The key source sly of the Rit sill unsurpassed, is Louis Cyr, "Le Sacred prinsomps— Petite histoire d'un grande pariton,” in Saini: Eudes rmeigages, ed. Fanos Lesre (Paris Bdons Jean Caude Lanés, 1982), 89-148. For ashorer acount of some ofthe vans sce Cyr, “Wrsing The Rite igh,” in Confronting Seavinyr Mam, Murcia ad Moder, Jann Par (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Pres, 1986), 157-73, Of couse, ‘the rebarrngs are of paramount intrest the thoes of rhythmic sroctre (ace Piter . van sden Toor, “Stavinsky Re-barred,” Muse Anais 7 (1988) 165-95). As forthe changes in"The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 301 (On the other hand, going back to the original performing materials would have helped answer the one basic musical question that scems absolutely citi cal if one is to recapture Nijinsky’s choreographic conception, so inextricably tied to the Rite's complex patterns of beats: What tempos did the conductor take that night? Did he adhere to the metronome marks that we know from later printed scores? Perhaps even more crucial, to what extent did he indulge in expressive modifications of those tempos? That no one worried about any ‘of these questions is clear from the brisk, unyielding tempos of the 1987 per- formances, a path of least resistance through late twentieth-century orchestral routine that often destroyed the effect of the Jofirey’s meticulous reconstruc tions. (One can hardly fault Hodson for assuming that the issue of vintage-1913 tempos was moot. Afterall, she had the score. Recreating the details of a par- ticular performance of a famous musical work enshrined in a printed text seems—at least at fist glance—a completely different type of problem than reimagining a “lost” ballet from scraps of costume, sketchbook drawings, and fleeting memory traces. Hodson had several authoritative printed editions of Stravinsky’s Rite in which the composer consistently specified the same, precise metronome markings for each dance, She also had the composer's fa- ‘mous and oft-repeated dictum that a performer had absolutely no liberty to ‘make tempo modifications in his music for expressive or theatrical effect—a stance backed up by his “authoritative” 1960 recording of the work, a sonic document of unyielding, metronomic precision. Case close ‘And so it would have been, ifthe composer had had his way. Of course iF ‘Stravinsky had truly had his way, Nijinsky’s choreography for the Rite would by now be nothing more than’a melancholy footnote. Ironically, the fast, light, and bouncy playing that accompanied this reconstruction of the Rige as ballet comes out of a performing tradition—explictly sanctioned by the composer—that takes as its stating point the erasure of the very chorcogra- phy Hodson was trying to recapture and then colhides in the conversion of the Rite into “absolute music.” Stravinsky, though he recanted very ate in life, spent the better part of fifty years loudly proclaiming that Nijinsky’s Rite was the work ofa talented but fatally inexperienced choreographer, that it vitated much of his original scenic inspiration for the piece, and that, in any case, he preferred it “as a concert piece.” As early as 1914, he was cannily convincing ‘Monteux to reprogram the Rite at the Salle Pleyel by arguing that “Le Sacre ‘was more symphonic, more of a concert piece, than Petroushka.”* By 1920, he ‘orcheseation, most immediatly striking tothe car would be the restortion ofthe complex ale ‘tion of pzscstos and arco sing chords that dominated Stravinsky's orignal conception ofthe “Danse strale.” Cyr comptes the various versions in “Writing The Rite Right,” 165-73. 4. Igor Stravinsky and Robert Cat, Espesionsand Deelypmens (London: Faber and Faber, 1962), 144302 Journal of the American Musicological Society ‘was claiming in the press that his first inspiration for the Rite had not been a vision, but a “purely musical” theme; it was the brutal character of the ham- mered chords opening the “Augures printanieres” that led him to the vision of the “Great Sactifce,” and not the other way around. ‘The Rite was thus “not an anecdotal, but an architectonic work.”® In the Autabiggraply of 1936 and in his conversations with Robert Craft during the 1950s and 1960s, ‘Stravinsky kept up the refain: The Rite of Springs not a representational bal- let. It is a sonorous and scenic object, an abstract piece of musico-spatial geometry. Surely no one believes this anymore. Richard Taruskin distilled his hun- dreds of pages of research on the genesis and reception of the Rite into a dev- astating cruise missle of an argument whose portmanteau title says ital: “A Myth of the Twentieth Century: The Rite of Spring, the Tradition ofthe New, and “Music Itself?” He claims that the Stravinsky-led charge to revamp the Riteinto a piece of modernist symphonic abstraction is always about forgetting somedbing wnpleasant:in Stravinsky's case, the humiliating failure ofthe Rite 2s ‘ethnographic ballet and the eclipse of his music by the notoriety of Nijinsky"s dance; for the rest of us, the actual content of the ballet’s proto-fascist sce- nario, containing “the darker aspects of primitivism—biologism, sacrifice of the individual ro the community, absence of compassion, submission to com- pulsion, all within a context defined by Russian or Slavic national folklore."6 Egged on by Stravinsky himself, music theorists have thus placed a cordon sanitaire of extreme formalist discourse around the subjeet matter so power- fally and disturbingly presented in the Rit. But itis conductors who truly do Stravinsky's whitewashing: “One senses the same sort of evasion in recent per- formances of the Rife—one might even say, in its contemporary performance practice —where emphasis is placed on flet precision and on an athletic vireu- ‘sity that defies or ignores the crushing strain the music was meant to evoke.”” That fleet precision was on conspicuous display in the pit during the 1987 Joffiey reconstruction, as the music busily and athletically canceled out 5. Michel Georges Michel, “Les Deux Sacres du prntemps” Comoe (11 December 1920); quoted in Truman Bullard, “The Fire Performance of Igoe Stravinsky's Sacre dn rin temps” (PhD. ds, Univesity of Rochester, 1971), 1:3. 6, Richard Tauskn,“A Myth ofthe Twentieth Century: TBe Rite f Spring, the Talon of the New and ‘Music sf" Mofersin/ Modernity 2, no. 11995) 21. Tarski isreacing here to much recent discourse in music theory, in partlar the work of Peter C. van den Toor, who, ‘venafter surveying the mas ofhitoral evidence thar shows Stravinsky colhborsing on aml media Genmshunsmert, dismiss the bale Rite a icevant to what really cous, formal ana. See theft chapter, "Point of Order” fis monograph on the work, Servi andthe "Rite of Spring”: The Beginnings ofa Musical Language Berkeley and Lox Anges: Universty of California Pres, 1987). On the Rite as “otal work of ar” se Jann Pas, “Music and Spectacle in Peru and The Rit of Spring in Confoning Searing ed. Ps, 53-81 7. Tarski, “A Myth of the Twentieth Century 2"The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 303 any significance that the enactment of ritual human sacrifice on stage might still ave had.* Presumably, then, the sound of the orchestra accompanying Nijinsky’s Rite ‘was quite different from the contemporary performance practice we are used. to. Do we want to go back to that sound—even if Stravinsky emphatically did not? The case of Nijinsky x Stravinsky poses in uniquely bald form a more ‘general question of historical reconstruction: Is what we are “restoring” a ma- terial phenomenon (“the way it actually sounded”) or an ideal one (“what the ‘composer actually wanted”)? There can be no comforting fantasy here that we can harmonize what we know about the conditions for which the Rite was composed and what we know of the composer’ intentions for the Rite’ rea- ization. (The composer’ intention was clearly that we try to forget those first ballet performances ever happened.) This is a major problem, for the funda- ‘mental assumption of most twentieth-century musicological reconstruction js that the material and ideal truth of a work in performance are one and the same—and that, in fact, the only reliable guideposts to the composer's intentions are the material facts of contemporary (preferably the very fist) performances ? 8. One might tilt rin!) Tzraskin's moral casionary tale with the more gen a possructrais fatalsm of Jacques Aral Arali's Noi The Pali Economy of Mua (as Bran Massumi[Minneapols: University of Minnesota Dress, 1985]) takes six premis that mu Scarose at way of controling noe, that nsf ign of vole, and that music ists onthe deepest sociological evel a simulacm of tual human stifie. (The revance tothe xenario of {Le Saeed printempris tal, abough, amazing), Atal never mentions the pec) Arai iden fies tue “codes” of musi: csificing, representing, and repeating the Rite sts precy in the ‘eanstion beren the las two, The disonance ofthe Rite reerion to noe, andthe scenario ‘spl represeos rua murder on stage. This signals the collape ofthe code of representation (che code of tonality) in which the sound of hrmony atempec o represent the channcling of rial violence ito the harmonious socal relations imapined by post Enlightenment polical phi losophy. The next code i repetition: the spectacle calles not into barbarism, but nto the dl ‘commodified, meaningless routines of mate production. Atal would not be saps that inthe twentieth century the Rie was sipped of ilen spectacle and allowed to proifrate tough mpl, epetitve, and ikimaey faceless recordings. Thais what the sxity of reptison does And the fact thatthe Rit was ereately inscribed within the dicoane of “theoreti msi”? ‘Ashe points ou in truly mordant port of postwar high modernist compostionl eulogy, "An ete, bureaucratic mas desires tobe universal, [and] inorder o be univer, diminishes ins specific reduces the syntax oF ts cove, Ie docs not creste meaning .. [fr] the abience of meaning iste necearyconiton or the leptimacy fa echnecracy’powe” (pp 12-13), We can assume thr this “absence of meaning” the ding tit of the empry polemical construct “Tsrskin anatheratizes “the music il” 9, This was, predicably enough, Suainsky's own postion Se hs comments on Bach's St ‘Matthew Passoa in chapter 6 ofthe Poetiy where "is fine performance in Bach's time” and “the composer's wishes” are unproblematcalyasumed 10 be identical (Stravinsky, Pir of Music inthe Form of Sex Lesons, ans. Arr Knodel and ingot Dahl [New York: Vinge, 1956}, 135),304 Journal ofthe American Musicological Society In fact, this essay will argue forthrightly the material against the ideal. Attention to the actual sound of the first performances of the Rite wil prove an effective antidote to the kind of sanitized, sterilized performances the composer demanded and even disseminated himself. This does not imply a ‘maniacal positivism, with overwhelming audience noise piped into the concert hall and wrong notes reintroduced for effect (though a little more “crushing strain” might do wonders); nor does it make the untenable claim that the piece can ever have the effect on late twentieth-century ears that it did in 1913-14, What we are attempting to understand is how the Rite as composi tional breakthrough interacts with an independently evolving history of per- formance. Exhaustive research has laid to rest the absurd claim that the Rite was created ex nihil (Stravinsky in 1962: “Very litte immediate tradition lies behind Le Sacre du printemps”).!© We are even les likely to find that it was re created in the Theatre des Champs-Elysées out of nothing but the composer's intentions. The Nijinsky-Stravinsky Rite, which received only seven perfor: ‘mances (four in Paris, three in London), never had time to create its own per forming tradition. (Obviously Stravinsky worked indefatigably to create a new modernist tradition of performance for “his” Rite of Spring—thus the “forg- ing” of my title, which we will trace below—but that was a different work, more abstract and symphonic.) At its premiere, regardless of the composer's intentions, the Rite ballet would have to be inserted into an existing tradition, ‘one quite at odds with modernist ideas of the “authentic” performance. ‘Stravinsky might well have wanted the same brisk, rigid performances of the Rite at its premiere that he demanded in the 1930s and demonstrated in the 1960s, but in 1913 he was hardly the conductor-celebrity-oracle he later beeame, Early conductors like Pierre Monteux routinely disregarded Stravinsky's tempo indications and metronome marks, going so far as 10 cross them out and write new ones directly onto his autograph. They persistently “romanticized” the Rit, at least with regard to long-range tempo relations: they took large sections of the music mostly slower, but sometimes much faster, than the written tempos; they also planned and executed unwritten tempo modifications for dramatic (and perhaps choreographic) effec, in what probably was direct contradiction of Stravinsky’s wishes. Even the composer himself has left documents—in particular a set of Pleyela piano rolls punched under his direct supervision in 1921—that seem to enshrine tempos and tempo shifts that do not appear in any printed score. Before we can really see Nijinsky’s Rite, we must reconstruct that of Pierre Monteux, lost as irrevocably as Nijinsky’s choreography and subsumed into 10, Stravinsky and Cra, Exqustions and Denelopments, 147. The research i, of couse, the ‘massive achievement of Richard Taruskn. This ea ia every moment indebred 0 that work, ny teview-esay on Taruskin’s Serainay andthe Rasa Traditions A Bigraply of he Works ‘Trongh “Marya ® (Berkley and Los Angels: Universty of California Press, 1996) appeared n Motemnion/Madenity4, 0.3 (1997): 147-54,‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 305 the only Rite that turned out to matter, Stravinsky's. We are used to late twentieth-century Rites, executed with careful fidelity to what is, for most conductors, a late twentieth-century text, (Stravinsky was still revising perfor: ‘mance directions in the work as late as 1967.) Monteuy’s 1913 interpretation, though it possesses the material “authenticity” of the first performance, might well sound quite strange if resurrected for contemporary ears. As strange, perhaps, as “authentic” Bach once did. ‘The birth-trauma of historical performance ‘The question is stating and yet somehow inevitable: Are we ready to treat the Rite still the great masterpiece of modern music, as if it were early music? Hodson had no reason to ask this in 1987. The great controversy then was ‘whether the early music ethos might apply to the canonical masterworks of the nineteenth century; musicologists and critics were hotly debating the propriety of Roger Norrington’s readings of Beethoven on what were still “unblushingly called “authentic period instruments.” Ten years late, after his- torically informed Brahms, Wagner, Bruckner, and even Debussy, we wait with bemusement—and some trepidation—for Early Music to rendezvous with Modern Music. Many agree that itis precisely over Stravinsky's most fi ‘mous ballet score that they will shake hands. Paul Griffiths has gone so far as to announce in the New York Times, “The erstwhile early music movement is fon the threshold of the twentieth century: soon we may expect thoroughly documented interpretations of The Rite of Spring or of easly Cage.”"! ‘The extension of “authentic” performance practice to modernist music does seem historically (and commercially) inevitable, and The Rite of Spring is «particularly tempting target. But before plunging into the documentary and recorded evidence, we might do well to get our ideological bearings. I would argue that attempting to look at the Rite through the lens of historically informed performance means stepping behind the looking glass into an acs- thetic space rife with contradiction and paradox. The visionary claim of the carly music movement—that there is such a thing as “authenticity” in musical performance, and that ic can be found through a simple congruence of linked imperatives (knowing the historical record, respecting the composer's will, and invigorating contemporary music making)—tums out to be untenable. ‘What fels “authentic” will not be historically accurate; converscly, the practice that accords with historical documentation will contravene modern assump- tions about the relation between composer and performer that underpin the very notion of “authenticity” in performance, An “authentic” perfor ‘mance of the Rite may well be at the same time oublingly different from the way it was originally done and, even worse, disappointingly identical tothe 11. Gifiths, "For Baty Music, 1's About Face! Forward March!” Nov Tok Tm, 11 une 1997,306 Journal ofthe American Musicological Society way everybody is already doing it. The reason? The different perspective on canonical music that historical performance has come to represent disappears ‘when it encounters early modernism, for the historical performance move- ‘ment ise is one of the consequences, intended or not, of modernism in mu- sic. In tackling The Rite of Spring, Early Musics revisiting the traumatic scene ofits own birth. ‘The claim that authenticity in performance cannot be understood except in relation to the modernist “break” is the common thread that binds the three key attempts to theorize the early music movement historically that have ap- peared since the early 1980s, those of Laurence Dreyfus, Robert Morgan, and Richard Taruskin. “The sense of trauma comes through most clearly when Dreyfus bitterly up- dates Adorno’s critique of the pre-war early music movement and its crowd of “resentment listeners.” Both critics see historical performance as a reflexive shying away from the open wound of modemist expressionism. The search for “authenticity” sino more than regression into a fantasized presubjective Past: ‘To maintain equilibrium in a mythical kingdom of the past, replete with courtly, ‘values and (palpably) harmonious relations, Early Music paid a pric: it forcibly represted every ign ofthe present "To the sme extent. that “modem music” crea 1890-1914 exposed the raw nerve of social disharmony inthe form ofthe neurotic uterance, Early Music reressed the imbalance by repressing the nightmarish present and ‘mounting a grand restoration of the glorious past. Whereas the Mainstream had said “no” to modernism, Early Music forgot it was traumatized,!? Robert Morgan secs the turn-of-the-century break in almost diametrically ‘opposite terms: the early music movement was, he argues, not a recoil from the modemist present, a merging back into the flse consciousness of organic tradition, but a pragmatic reaction to modernism’s implacable denial of all ra- dition, Being Modem meant accepting a total break with history, and the price for the immense freedom gained was equally immense anxiety about ‘engaging the newly distanced past. Authenticity came not from a fantasized identification with “our” past, but in a detached (modern) investigation of ‘what everyone now saw as “not ours”: multiple independent traditions, ‘equally close and yet all equally distant. Morgan sees this modernist objectivity and detachment leading to a strangely postmodern collapse of meaning, Like the cynic in the proverb, we appear to know the price of every tradition and the value of none: “One might even say that we no longer have a culture of ‘our own at all. By way of compensation, we attempt to assimilate everyone 12. Lawrence Dreyis,“Euly Music Defended Against Its Devotees: A Theory of Historical Performance inthe Twentieth Century” Musca! Quarzely 69 (1983): 305. Dey’ ie (as swell a lange sections of his angument) is indebeed to Adorno’ 1951 exay in Merkur, “Bach Defended Against His Devotees” See Adorno, Pron tans Samuel Weber and Shery Weber (Cambsidge: MIT Press, 1981}, 133-46. On the “resentment ntene,” sce Adomo's Inge ‘uction tthe Soilgy of Masi tas. BB, Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1976),9-12.“The Forging of « Modernist Performing Style 307 clse’s, including the fragmentary remains of our own, creating in the process a sort of all-world, all-time, cultural bazaar where one traflicsfrely.”!> "Thus far the early music movement emerges as either.a neurotic failure to deal with the modernist break or a pragmatic attempt to make the best of it. (The choice depends on whose modernism is under discussion. Dreyfus takes Schoenberg as the forbidding avatar of modernism-as-trauma, while Morgan sees Stravinsky as the paradigmatic modern—deracinated, cosmopolitan, es- pousing a detached view of history and tradition as freely circulating cultural ‘apital.) In either case, the triumph of modernism in composition at the tum of the twentieth century leads to a strategic retreat in performance: a long, bad-fith search through the musical Past forthe authenticity lacking in the ‘musical Present. Now, having ransacked all of Western music history, early ‘music has turned around (hence the title of Griffith's New York Times article: “For Early Music, It’s About Face! Forward March!”) and stands at the threshold of the very music that launched it on its Long March. For Dreyfus and Morgan, the phrase “authentic modernist performance” thus contains an unacknowledged (and ethically dangerous) contradiction, ‘According to Richard Taruskin, on the other hand, it is simply redundant. ‘The crux of Taruskin’s extended consideration of the relation of the historical movement to modernism, his 1988 article “The Pastness of the Present and the Presence of the Past,” is that behind this seeming oxymoron are two names for the same thing: “We have come at last to the nub and essence of authentistc performance, as I see it. Itis modem performance.” Like Morgan, Taruskin sees modernism as programmatically detached and objective. Surveying the cultural ground, he adds worship of scientific ratio- nality and materialism (Ezra Pound); a valorization of the impersonal over the subjective (T. S, Eliot, Ortega y Gasset); a visceral loathing of romantic senti- mentality (Pound, TE, Hulme); and, most crucially, a turn away fom the revolutionary “flux” of nineteenth-century vitalism to an art that was fixed, hicratic, and geometric (Wilhelm Worringer, Hulme, Pound, Yeats, etal.) Igor Stravinsky i at the center of this icy constellation. In an extended and vir- tuosic argument, Taruskin surveys Stravinsky’s pronouncements on musical ‘composition and musical performance, his compositions themselves, and even the rare recorded documentation of the composer's own performances of ear- lier music—and finds a modernist aesthetic ideology and performance style in distinguishable from the so-called historical authenticity of the early music ‘movement (that is why he consistently calls its position the “authentic” one). “The rage against flux and impermanence, the same refuge in fixity and neces: sity, the same fear of melting into air. I would go so fir as to suggest tha all 13, Robert P. Morgan, “Taiton, Amst, andthe Current Musial Scene,” in Awhenisiy «and Early Music ed. Nicolas Kenyon (Oxford: Oxo Univer Pres, 1988), 67. 14 In Auchensici and Early Mus, ed, Nichols Kenyon (Oxford: Oxford University Pres 1988), 182,308 Journal ofthe American Musicological Society ‘truly modem musical performance (and of course that includes the authentistc variety) essentially teats the music performed as if it were composed—or at least performed—by Stravinsky. ‘Taruskin’s take on the modernist break is by far the most useful for recon- sidering the performance practice of the Rite, especially the critical question ‘of tempo. Eschewing twentieth-century exceptionalism, he presents us not ‘with an irrevocable authenticty-destroying split between Past and Present, but with a contrast between two equally authentic performing traditions, the nineteenth-century vitalist and the modern geometric, each with its own distinct idea of how to manage musical time. Geometric performing practice brings with it a self-consciously objective stylistic ideology based on metronomic, unyielding tempos and a horror of ‘expressive rubato, To use the terms of Stravinsky’s Poetics of Music, the ideal modernist performer is an executor who voluntarily submerges his or her per- sonality and adds nothing to the composers intentions. The executor ignores spurious emotional or “spiritual” promptings, keeps the scenic or program- matic element firmly in its place, and remains aloof from all hermeneutics, preferring to base performance decisions on purely musical, purely material considerations. Form is everything, and any mannerism in performance that tends to distort formal stracture must be ruthlessly purged. Most critically for structure, one must adhere strictly to the score, and most especially to it car fully notated tempos; temporal rigidity gives the impression of an ideal music ruled by what Stravinsky—or rather Pierre Souvtchinsky, ghostwriting for Stravinsky and cribbing shamelessly himself from Henri Bergson—called “on- tological” or “clock” time. Once schooled in ths style by assiduous practice in contemporary music, the conscientious executor would naturally apply this scientific, impersonal, objective performance technique to earlier music as wel (And, as Taruskin wryly points out, scholars have been happy to manufacture plenty of fictitious “historical evidence” for the desired fist, rigid tempos.)!* ‘The Romantic interpreter, on the other hand, was thought to interpose the striving for personal expression or theatrical effect between composer and lis- tener, Secure within a living tradition of performance, interpreters scored 15, Tarun, “The Pasnes ofthe Present” 16. 16, Thus Stravinsky's praise for Ernest Ansermet in the Autabiggap“Anscene's mess precisely in his bility ro reveal the relationship becween dhe muse of today and tha ofthe past by purely musical methods. Knowing, a he docs o perfction, the musical language of our Own times, and, on the oder hand, paying large numberof ol, asa scores, he soon perceived tharthe author ofall periods were coaifonted by the sluson of problems which were, abo ll specify msia™ (Stravinsky, An Autbignraply [New York, M an J Steuer, 1958) reprint of snonymous 1936 English ration of Chronique de mari 2 vols (Pats, 1935-36], 76). See bo Tarski, *The Pasiness ofthe Present,” as well t Stavinay, Antobiqgapl, 74-78 and 150-51; and Stravinsky, Peis of Muse, 125~#2, Suavinsky defines ontlogal time inthe Pacis, 31-33; Tarskin’s tke on the historia evidence for geometric tempo rltions can be ‘sampled at “The Paste the Present,” 167-09."The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 309 mere fidelity to the text and instead stressed an imagined communion with the composer, refusing to reduce the scope of creative intention to material issues of “pure” sound. A successful performance transmitted not the notes but what was between and behind them: the sense of a living, feeling conscious: ness at work. The most powerful interpretive weapon in achieving this “vital ism” in performance was tempo fluctuation. Sensitive performers marshaled ‘both local and long-range tempo shifts to mimic the subjective ux of what Stravinsky later denigrated as “psychological” time Between vitalism and geometry We will have occasion to reengage this vitalist tradition below, soit might be ‘well to goa litte more deeply into its ramifications. What Taruskin called sim- ply “itaism” appears to encompass two quite separate performance strate- gies, which we might distinguish functionally as the expresve versus the structural use of tempo modulation in performance. The former involves ‘icro- management of phrase beginnings, endings, and accents by means of a suite of interpretive tools—agogics, lufipausen, dynamic stresses, and coordi- nated accelerando-crescendos and ritardando-decrescendos—that we have tended to lump together under the generic name of rubato.” Expressive ru- bato, the painstaking sculpting in time of individual melodic phrases, got its ‘most powerful nineteenth-century advocacy from Wagner's famous 1869 treatise On Conducting. A generation later, it was associated with such virtu- (050s of the baton as Artur Nikisch and Hans von Billow. Writing his own On Conducting 1895, Felix Weingartner used “tempo-rubato conductor” asan epithet in a famous attack—which is also a capsule description of the practice in its fllest lower: “The tempo-rubato conductors... sought to make the clearest passages ob- scure by hunting out insignificant details. Now an inner part of minor impor: tance would be given a significance that by no means belonged to it; now an accent that should have been just lightly marked came out in a sharp gorzavs often a so-called “breath pause” would be inserted, particularly inthe case of a crescendo immediately followed by a piano, as if the music were sprinkled with formate, These lite tricks were helped out by continua alterations and disloca: ‘ions ofthe tempo, Where a gradual animation or a gentle and delcae slowing: offs required—often however without even that pretext,—a violent, spasmodic saccelerando o rtenuto was made, 17. The defstive treatment of tempo rato is Ricard Hudson's Stl Time: Te History of ‘Tempo Ruth (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994) Hudson ses 3 secession of two types of rubato, with the loser righthand ove steady left hand of eghteemh century keyboard players giving way t0 the wholeale bending of time in the Inter nineteenth century, He does noe dicus lager ale sirutural sues. For thse see the computer aided study of tempo fucstion in Dav Epstein, ‘Spin Time: Muss erwin, and Performance (New Yok: Schiseer, 1995),310 Journal ofthe American Musicological Society ‘The rhythmic distorions ... were in no way justified by any marks ofthe composer, but always originated withthe conductor. ® Weingartner saw tempo rubato already decadent and in eclipse. The pen- ddulum was beginning to swing away from “pure” vitaism toward a more ‘modiern style: less individual lamboyance; less obtrusive and less idiosyncratic interpretations; more conscious submission to the composer's will; more fidelity to the text; and, underpinning all these reforms, more attention to keeping tempos steady By 1906, in his third edition, Weingartner could claim to have stemmed the growth of tempo-rubato music making; more performances, he noted, were being acclaimed as “simple” and “grand.” (Stravinsky later volunteered that Weingartner was a “near idol” of his youth.) By the time of The Rite of Spring and the first strings of historical perspective on the performance of canonic works, expressive rubato was seen as a specialized technique for deal- ing with contemporary (ic, late Romantic) music. So while Dionysian perfor: mances of Mahler and Strauss built the reputations of latter-day rubato specialists like Willem Mengelberg, Mozart and Beethoven were thought to demand a mote sedate, more classical approach. But not even Weingartner es- poused giving up modifications of tempo altogether. In music with a strong pulse, he consistently attacked anything that gave the impression of tempo shifis from bar to bar, but he just as consistently allowed for larger-scale modt- fications of tempo, as long as the organic unity of the whole was not compro: mised. If subtle shifting of tempos would bring out the character of different sections of a work and thus help uncover its organic structure, the conductor got no points for hiding behind a metronome mark?" ‘We might call this manipulation of long-range tempo relations seructural ‘rubato, as opposed to the mercurial shifts of expresine rubato. This isnot to say that structural rubato does not result in sudden speed-ups and slow-downs, 18. Weingarer, On Conducting, rans. Ernest Newnan (London: Bretkopf and Herel, 1906), 28-29. 19. There are moments, particulaly when Beethoven is under dicusion, when Weingarnce —2o one's idea of moderist—antcpates some of Suatnsky's most acerbic attacks on conde ‘oral arrogance. Here is Weingarten 1906: “So much temion was directed to the penon of the conductor thatthe audience even came to regard the comport a the creates it were, oftheir interpreters, and in conjunction with the name ofa conductor people spoke ofthis BrorHovEs, his’ Basu, or "his Wane” (On Conducting, 29). Compare Stavnay i 1989 “Perched on his sbylne ripe, [the conductor] imposes his ow movements, his ow particule Shadings upon the compostions he condues, and he even reaches the pon of talking with a ave impuence of his specialties, of fifth, of lasseventh, the way a chet boats ofa dish of his ‘own concoction” (Pico Mua 131). 20, Weingarner, On Conducting, 40, “Felix Weingariner waa eae iol of mine in my youth, and a Beethoven cycle T heard him direct in atin in 1900 was very great event in my lie” (Igor Strvinsy, “On Conductors and Conducting,” in hit Themes and Conclusions {ondon: Faber and Faber, 1972), 225) 21. See Weingarse, On Cinucring, 40-42.‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 311 but they come at the turing points ofthe form, to accommodate the chang- ing character of the music’s thematic material. Wagner declared in On Conducting: “The right comprehension of the MELOS isthe sole guide tothe right iempo?; comprehending the melas meant knowing to what extent individual _melodic periods partook of the lyrical “pure” adaaro and the rhythmic “pure” allegro22 The relative strength of these two temporal archetypes—not the written tempo indication or metronome mark—determined the correct ‘tempo. In the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century practice that took ‘Wagner’ treatise as gospel, tempos tended toward the extreme: allegras were faster and adagios slower, since no pretense was made that a single moderated tempo should work forall the melodic characters in a movement. ‘A classic opportunity for structural rubato in the Wagnerian vein is pro vided by the contrasting themes of the typical nineteenth-century sonata- allegro movement: the rhythmic character of the first theme group usually de rmanded a brsker tempo than was appropriate for the lyrical second theme. In the absence of specifi direction from the score, it was the conductor’ respon: sibility to plan the necessary tempo modulations, Structural rubato thus artic: ‘lates large sections with uniform thematic character: as the melas shifts, there are moments of sudden flexibility, but wherever the music maintains a single character, the perception of a single, basic tempo is never allowed to dis- integrate. Wagner’s conducting treatise specifically warns against “arbitrary nuances of tempo” applied simply for effect. He does take great pride in re counting his success at leading an orchestra through the tricky (and unvrit: ten) tempo shift in his interpretation of Weber’s Freisciits overture, but in ‘every case the accelerando or ritardando is planned and then negotiated not for its own sake, but to prepare the correct tempo for the melas that follows. ?* ‘The articulating function of structural rubato remained attractive to per- formers long after the more mercurial expressive rubato had become unfish- fonable, Well into the 1950s, Wilhelm Furtwiingler (Taruskin’s paragon of vitalsm) was tuning andantes into ultrsiow pure adagios, pushing pure alle 872s into overdrive, and using tempo shifts within movements to articulate ‘Schenkerian prolongation spans. His performances of Beethoven's Fifth com- pletely abandon the nervous flexibility of Artur Niksch’s famous 1912 record- ing, in which not a single bar of the Allegro is in the same tempo. On the other hand, Furtwingler, whose moment-to-moment beat is monumentally steady, always slows down quite deliberately for the second theme 22, Wagner, On Conducting: A Treat on See inthe Execution of Clasical Masi tans award Dannreuther(Londoa: W. Reeves, 1887; eprint, New York: Dover, 1989), 18, 34—48; cemphasisin edging. 23. On sonata forms: “Evident the greater number, if oe ll modem Allegro movements, consist of a combination of wo eens diferent construe part: in contst with the ole ze unmixed Agro, the onsrucion s enriched by the combination ofthe pare Allegro with the thematic pecuirtes ofthe vocal Adagio inal ts gradations” (Wagner, On Conducting, 52-83). On “ubizary mance of tempo," sce On Conducting, 7.312 Journal of the American Musicological Society As if it were composed by Stravinsky But what is the point of splitting hairs over the typology of vitalsm? What could it possibly have to do with the Rite? The ultimate triumph of Stra vinskian geometric performance practice is well documented both in print and ‘on recordings. Early music thatis actually earlyis now being performed with a certain degree of freedom again, but in the mainstream of performance the ‘geometric has become the norm, and more rigidly so the closer in the reper tory one gets to Stravinsky. Given the present-day hegemony of Stravinsky's ‘own modemist aesthetic, performing the “authentic” Rite now seems trivial rather than quixotic. Make it brisk, geometric, faithful to the letter of the score: that is, do exactly what the composer explictiy demanded, which is what everybody is already doing. Well, of course. As far as the Rite is con: ccemed, it seems we have all ben authenticiss mat a etre. After threading its way through the interlocking paradoxes outlined above, musicology finds itself in the unfamiliar position of having to argue history against historical “authenticity” The goal is not—as in Taruskin’s numerous ddemolishments of self-serving record-jacket scholarship—to force spusiously historical performers to unmask themselves as modern. Rather it isto seek to understand an instance of the historical process by which modernist-hstorical performance constiuted itself in the fist half of our century. We will do well to remember that performance styles are not constructed ina day, nor are they ‘ultimately enforced by unilateral shifts in compositional style oF the apodict- cism of a composer's aesthetic pronouncements. Since the time of Beethoven, performance practices have been the result of prolonged cultural negotiations between composers and performers. Tracing a performance practice means ‘excavating the documentary traces ofa long, intense, ongoing conversation about the interpretation and control of musical texts. 24. For bref surveys ofthe recorded evidence se Taruskin, “The Fastness ofthe Present,” 163-64, 187-88; and Daniel Leech Wikason’s contribution to “The Limits of Autheniiy: A Discusion,” in Eary Music 12 (1984): 13-16. Fora prescient discussion of the “reverse dicrimi nation” whereby early musi performer ar alloted the vals tat modem mainstream players hve abandoned, see Michele Dll, “The Quict Metamorphosis of atly Misi” Repro sion2, no, 2 (1993) 31-61, Forte most exreme aatement ofthe moxdemistconseratory post tio fom a pas president of dhe New England Conservatory, no ls) see Gunther Schl, The ‘Compleat Conductor New York and Oxon: Oxo University Pres, 1997) 25, This type of performance histor, with particular attention pid to the recorded evidence, hs been the principal imterest of José Bowen, ctecor unl cen of the Center forthe History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM) 3 the Univesity of Southampton. See hi “Tempo, Duration, and Febilty: Techniques in the Anais of Perfomance” Journal f Maslin! Resarch 16 (1996): 111-86 Fora longer discussion that touches on some ofthe same cis nd historical issues broached here, see Bowen, “The History of Remembered Innovation: “Tradicon and Is Role in the Reitonship Becween Musical Woks and Their Performances,” Jornal of Musicology 11 (1993): 139-73, Lass relevant 0 te present dscoson-—ehough sila Pioneering sudy-—is Robert Philip's Early Reerdingr and Musical Sie: Changing Tastes in Instrumental Performance, 1900-1950 Cambeidge- Cambridge University Pes, 1992),‘The Forging of a Modemist Performing Style 313 As it turns out, The Rite of Spring is the perfect text upon which to trace the complex forging of modemist performance practice in the first half ofthe ‘twentieth century. The negotiations were unusually personal, and they often ‘tured ugly: Stravinsky’s imitation with conductors who got in the way of his music i legendary. It took sustained work with the pen and the baton—and ‘multiple revisions of the text—before Stravinsky could rely on hearing even his ‘own most famous piece played “as ifit were composed by Stravinsky.” To get some idea of the distance he had to traverse we ean retum, not to the 1913 ballet premiere so painstakingly researched by Hodson and com: ppany—wve have almost no testimony from qualified witnesses about how that sounded—but to the St. Petersburg concert premiere the following February. This is the ealiest Rite for which we have critical discussion of the musical performance by a trained, disinterested observer familar with the score. The ‘composer Nicolai Myaskovsky in 1914 still considered an important journals: tic ally of Stravinsky, had been furnished with a score of the Rite so that he could soften the ground alittle before the fist Russian performances. His as sessment ofthe piece itself was guardedly positive, but a the actual premicre, 8 a composer in possession of the score and its metronome markings, he had “only scom for Serge Koussevitsky’s “interpretation” —and I use the word in its Stravinskian, pejorative sense. According to Myaskovsky, Koussevitsky made a hhash of the piece (the review refers to “sonic porridge” and “the mess called forth by Mr. Koussevitsky’s magic wand”); most of the themes were simply in audible. Even worse, the conductor used cheap sound effects in an attempt to compensate for his inability to control the orchestra: “The end [of the piece] was beyond Mr. Koussevitsky’s powers, In general the music went at exagger- ated tempi, with the brass bellowing and the percussion crackling the way Mr. Koussevitsky loves it.”2” Evidently playing the Rite was not always as serenely geometric an affair as, at present, In the absence of any surviving recording of Koussevitsky's Rite (I will propose a substitute below) one can only imagine a highly theatrical but sloppy performance in which appropriate tempos, geometric regularity of pulse, and carefl orchestral balance were ruthlessly sacrificed for dramatic and expressive effect. The following study of source materials and recordings at- tempts to outline the path fom this putative vitalst performance—not an atypical one, as I'l try to show—to the grimly geometric Rite embalmed in the composer’s 1960 Columbia recording, I will begin with a brief considera tion of the extant performing materials for the Rite and the shifting timings and tempo markings in various scores. The question of the “correct” tempo 26, Thus the famous flings out with even his most tasted executants: Monte, who took understandable offense at Stains advertisements tat his on mesy performances ere, = fei, more definitive than Monteus's and Ansermet, trusted lly banished for making fo “anauhorized cuts alt scores. 27, Review in Muza, no. 171 (1 March 1914); quoted an rarlted in Tarski, Savin ye he Rosin Traditions 2:1023,314 Journal ofthe American Musicological Society for the “Danse sacra” will lead to a more detailed discussion of expressive ‘tempo modifications in that final movement. As I pointed out above, what- «ver Stravinsky’s 1913 intentions might have been (and as usual we will have to be skeptical about his ex post facto claims), historically important recordings of the “Danse sacrale” betray an underground, mostly unvritten tradition of vitalist tempo fluctuation. I will survey, through published and primary sources, the fugitive documentary justification for this recorded practice Finally, Iwill trace the process by which Stravinsky later imposed modernist ‘ecometry onto the Rie in his attempt to wipe out not only this one condue- torial inspiration but unauthorized tempo modifications in general ‘The Performing Materials of the Rite Let me say at the outset that I have not found any “new” sources for the Rite; am simply reexamining some well-canvassed documents, the most important of these being the autograph full score (hereaier Partitur) currently housed at the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel (The boldface terms inthe following de scription of sources are keyed to the texts which ae listed as primary sources in Works Cited and whose markings are coated in Tables 1-3 of the Appendix The German nomenclature follows that of the Paul Sacher Stiftung, where most of these sources reside.) Before 1922, when a printed full score became generally available, the four manuscript orchestral scores of the Rit in exis- tence were regularly lent out to conductors for performances. Stravinsky’ au- tograph, although not the primary lending score,” was among these, and it now carries extensive performance markings, a fact that the composer's alter ‘ego Robert Craft deplores: “Every page of the original manuscript [is] marred by [conductors] reminders to give cues, by large redrawings of the meters, and by such expressions as “tis eranpuill’—where Stravinsky merely gives @ change of tempo."* Most commentators on the Partnur fllow Craft in giv- ing relatively shore shrift to these “inauthentic” markings. Even Volker ‘Scherliess, who has published the most extended description of this closely held source to date, was mostly interested in compositional variants (of which there are many) and what the autograph reveals of Stravinsk’s early revision process. Conductors’ mark in the score engage him only briefly and in pas- ing, though he does atleast list the places where Stravinsky’ metronome ‘marks are crossed out and replaced. 28, The key refrence 10 all the soures fo the Rite i ill Cy, Le Sacred printompo— Pest histoire un grande partion." Te flowing catalogue is indcbed to his painstaking and pioneering work 29, Seid, 109-10, 230. Craft, “ie Stere du printemps: A Chronology ofthe Revisions,” ia Savin Sted \Comrspondence ed and tans. Robert Cale (New York: Koopf, 1982-85), 1:399 a. 4 31, Scher, “Bemerangen zim Autograph des Sacred rintemps” Muskfonchung 38 (0982): 244-45‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 315 ‘Considered as a performing document, the Partitur forms the fist link in a chain of primary sources, all now resident in Basel, that together justify some startling inferences about performances of the Rite over the years. The most important supplementary sources are Stravinsky’s personal copies ofthe 1922 and 1948 conductor’s scores (RMV 197; B&H 16333); the composer ‘quite clearly conducted from these full-size scores for decades, and they are heavily encrusted with corrections, cues, rebarrings, and all the practical jot- tings of the pocium. Stravinsky's thickly annotated copy of the 1913 four- hhand piano score (RMV 196), whose choreographic notes on the original production were described in print by Robert Craft, also contains a few key ‘musical corrections Stravinsky had two personal copies of the 1922 pocket score (RMV 1976), and though he of course never conducted from these, he did write in corrections, particularly of tempos. In addition, tempo markings in Stravinsky's Sketchbook, available in facsimile, and his draft short score (hereafter Particell) can be brought to bear. Finally, there are the printed ditions of 1922, 1948, and 1967 (B&H 19441) themselves, along with the 1943 revised version of the “Danse sacrale” (Associated Music Publishers, unnumbered). When added to the acoustic evidence—the 1921 Pleyela pi- ano rolls and various historic recordings—they outline a contested perfor- ‘mance practice that isa fascinating as it was fundamentally unresolved. Before turning to the specific question of what the conductors’ marks in the Partitur and other significant early scores suggest about tempos and ‘tempo shifts in early Rite performances, it will be useful to give a general ‘overview of the performance markings in these unpublished sources. First, the Partitur: Volker Scherlies assumes that most of the performers’ annotations in the autograph are by Pierre Monteux.** This is logical, since Monteux re- hhearsed and performed the score more than anyone else in the crucial period (1913-21) before the first printed edition. (A definitive identification of the handwriting is difficult, however, for most of the annotations are isolated nu- ‘mera in crayon, lines and circles, and the like, and even the few complete words seem scrawied in haste. While the matter is by no means closed, for cu- phony’s sake I will refer to *Monteux” below rather than “the conductor ot conductors who marked the Partitur at this spot.”) The conductor's perfor- ‘mance notes are written in a lange hand across the score, mainly in red and blue crayon, They ae cay distinguishable from Seravinsky’s text corrections, most of which are small, neat, and in pencil or dark ink. (The composer does ‘ot appear ever to have conducted from this score; by the time he took up the baton in 1926, he owned several printed copies of the Rite.) Though Craft ives the impression that Stravinsky’s autograph was heavily defaced, ‘Monteux’s markings are in general quite discreet. It seems that unlike many 32, Igor Suavinsy, The Rite of Spring Sketches 1911-1013 (Landon: Faber an Faber, 1968), appendix 3 See also Craft, "The Rite at Seventy: ive,” fo eproductions of evel key pages. 33, Scheie, “Bemetkungen,” 244316 Journal of the American Musicological Society ‘modern conductors, who use complex systems of score marking to ease (or substitute for) analyzing and internalizing a tricky score, Montewx knew the ‘Rite 0 well that he needed only the most fleeting aides memoires during actual formance. Most ofthe makings highlight complex metic changes: Monteux is ikly to write the number of beats per bar in quickly changing passages in large roman numerals at the center of the score, though ofien he simply enlarges the actual meters as they change. Where there are compound uneven meters {n fast tempos he usually writes out the division of the bar he will beat (more ‘on this below). There are very few cues. The conductor has circled a few of the trickiest entrances—mosty citcal percussion passages like the bass drum hhemiola heralding the entrance of the “Cortége du Sage” three measures be fore R65) and the irregularly spaced timpani shots that pockmark the opening of the “Danse sacrale.” He also reminded himself to encourage exposed ‘woodwind solos like the high-altitude horn melody at R25 of the “Danse des Adolescents.” Monteux added slurs or articulation marks extremely rarely (he did clarify some ambiguous mute and pizzicato-arco changes); he altered dynamics more readily, fiddling, with the balance of several passages and even changing a doubling or two (for example, he asked the third horn to join the fourth in the growling pedal passage at R31), Significantly, he added no marks of “expressive” phrasing: no hairpins, no breath-marks, and no fermatas that were not already implied by the music. (There area few character words, but we'll deal with those, along with tempo markings, below.) There are also no indications of the choreography beyond the bare acknowledgment of the ris- ing and lowering of the curtain for the wwo tableaux. Interestingly enough, given Craft’s hauteur over conductorial defacement of the autograph, Stravinsky's own copy of the 1922 fill score is much more thickly encrusted with performance markings than the Parttur. Is elaborate ‘mnemonic annotations seem to suggest that the composer had to learn the Rite quickly, almost from scratch, as he prepared to begin his own conducting career in the mid 1920s. Stravinsky went far beyond redrawing the meters in ctayon: he reminded himself ofthe rapidly shifting beat patterns with the pro- cessions of lage vertical strokes, triangles, and squares above the score that are still many a conductor’ first step when parsing an unfamiliar score. He delin- 34, Actually, one wonders what score Craft was thinking of, or whether he was working Som memory or heasay when be disparaged those who conduct fom the Part. The “es ran pile” acs exercised him seems relatively innocuous: af al, Stravindy imeel sed “Tran dull” a a tempo marking at R48 and R56, A for lange resrawings ofthe meter, Montean’s ‘markings are just numbers; no new bar ines, vertical ck for bess ote big squares (dupe) and ‘wang (tiple) favored by modem conductors (ke Seavnsky himself) appear anywhere. I suite posible thar Monteax dd actually—pace Crft—hestae to use the compen astgraph {sis personal notebook, See rch Lensdor, The Compr Advacate: A Radical Orthod fr -Masiians fo a wondecby acebic diatribe against using this kindof graphical core paring 2 crutch ([New Haven: Yale Unverty Pres 1981], 2-4)."The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 317 cated hypermetric groupings of measures by tracing key bar lines in bold blue crayon and drawing brackets above the fist violin line, and sometimes actually enclosed a sequence of bars in a large red box spanning the entire height of the score. Important cues are carefilly noted, as are the score’s few written- ‘out tempo transitions. Stravinsky transferred most of these markings to his personal copy of the 1948 fll score with meticulous precision. All these annotations make it easy to trace the development of a perfor: mance practice. Let us take one striking instance. Having the strings play the famous “Augurs” polychord using nothing but repeated down-bows was an inspiration that struck Stravinsky only in performance during the 1920s. The bbowings are not in the autograph Partitur, nor are they in the 1922 first edi- tion. The composer /conductor penciled them into his 1922 full score (and not his pocket score) sometime in the mide 1920s, and they were duly en- ‘gaved in the 1929 revision of that first printed edition. Why? One practical reason probably struck Stravinsky the conductor the first time he rehearsed the passage: a the string players sawed back and forth, taking his famously irregu lar accents just s they came, he must have realized it was imperative to specify 4 bowing to ensure that none of the string accents landed on an weak up- stroke, Demanding all down-bows was a simple solution that combated or- chestral routine, avoided fussiness, and guaranteed absolute regularity of accent. But the decision might also have been a product of Stravinsky the com- poser’s changing conception of the way the Rite should sound. Having the strings retake over and over again forces players to lift the bow after every note, clipping each chord short and thus enforcing automatically the trade- ‘mark “etched” staccato sound of postwar New Objectivity. One might infer that earlier conductors of the Réte had played the Augurs chords more on the string, more tenuto; later recorded performances by Monteux, Ernest Ansermet, and Stokowski do indeed bear traces of this pre-1929 performance practice. Do the repeated down-bows then imply that every cighth-note beat should be heavily and equally felt? Not if we respect the Fassung lettes Takestocs. As Example 1 shows, Stravinsky reminded himselfin his 1948 score to beat the passage in an easy alla breve, writing in the metrically incorrect pulse of two half notes per bar. At or below the written tempo of J = 50, beat= ing four eighth notes to the bari just possible, if one wants a heavy, stomping effect; but two beats to the bar implies a faster, lighter fel, ike the bouncy J = (60-62 Stravinsky demonstrates in his 1960 Columbia recording, Insofar as conductors’ markings representa kind of rough-and-ready analy- sis, they are also rich in theoretical and structural implications. For example, ‘comparing the way Monteux and Stravinsky broke up the Rite’s complex un: ‘even meters is particularly helpful in unraveling knotty questions of rhythmic scansion, Sometimes the two simply disagre, as in Example 2, which shows how the two conductors parsed the infamous eleven-four bar that begins the “Glorification de ’élue.” Iris revealing that both felt the need to split this318 Journal of the American Musicological Society Example 1 Staviny’s performance markings forthe “Aur printanires" (R13) Igor Stravinsky, n red peneilin his personal copy of B&H 16333 (after 948) apr rr Igor Stravinsky, nbue pencil in his personal copy of RMV 197 (afer 1922) undifferentiated string of quarter-note beats into familiar triple and duple patterns. But Stravinsky often worked through several notations of his trickiest rhythms. Knowing how contemporary performers actually subdivided the ‘composer's originals throws new light on the provenance, motivation, and structural implications of his rebarrings. To take a famous instance: in the late 1920s Stravinsky redrew most of the bar lines in the “Danse sacrale”; seven- teen pages of score had to be completely reengraved for the 1929 “revised first edition.”# He arrived at the barring familiar to most of us by splitting almost all ofthe measures with five or seven sixteenth notes into shorter bars of three ‘or two, and by rewriting all four-sixteenth measures as bars of two-cight. This had the immediate advantage of simpliffing the counting—almost everything ‘was either a two ora three—and, more crucially, of allowing the composer to control the way conductors would actually beat (and thus accentuate) the bars of five. Robert Craft and others have noted that this rebarring fst appears in 235. Lcan find no deeper sgiicance in Stravinsky's choice of 4+ 4 + 3 vers Montes choice of 3 +44 4. Monteu’s division malt be prefered as closer tothe choreography, iF Millicent Hodson’sestoaton work sto bette 2 ths evel of deal He econsicon has the “amazon” stomping in place forall eleven eats here ian arm gesture on the fourth best the beginning of Monteu's second group; and a clap on dhe le quarter, which works better i the ast group i group offour asin Monte rather than a group of thea in Savy. See Hvkson, Nijinstys Crime, 137. '36, The publsher declined to change dhe plate numbers, so both the 1922 fi printing and {his 1929 revised score carry the number RMV 197, This ha ed quite & ow laces ols thee ‘ery common 1929 scores a the mich more rie 1922 printing. Sec Cyr, "Le med printemps —Peitehiswive d'un grande partion,” 98-99 and 120-27, fora more dete discusson of varlantsberween the edo,“The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 319 [Example 2. Stravinsky versus Monteu atthe inzoduction to “Glorfcation dee” (R103 + » Brackets and numbers by gor Stravinsky. in red pencil in is personal copy of B & H resister 9a N 4 4. 8 Flach Tambo ema slurs, nd numbers by Piere ‘Monte? in crayon on Parr (1913) Stravinsky's 1922 conducting score, painstakingly and ingeniously drafted by the composer's own hand over the original text.” But no one seems to have noticed how closely Stravinsky's rebarring follows Monteux’s own rhythmic “analysis” of the “Danse sacrale,” recorded on the Partiur in 1913, ‘Example 3a compares Stravinsky’s original barring in the 1913 autograph, “Monteux’s parsing of those bars into beat patterns, and Stravinsky's revised barring of the 1920s. In almost every case, the division of five that Monteux beat in 1913 is the division that Stravinsky Inter wrote into his score. The only place where Stravinsky’s new barring contradicts what was conducted in 1913 is at what is now R148. Monteux opted for consistency (the oom- pah-pah of the low brass is always beaten in three) and followed the percussion (his version keeps all the timpani strokes on the “stronger” beats). Stravinsky, interestingly enough, had something quite different in mind. The composer's new barring disrupts symmetry and displaces percussion accents in order to follow the melody, placing the fist leap up to A in metrically stressed relief ‘The 1943 revision changes the barring yet again, placing both A’s on written downbeats and the following B} on what a conservative listener will almost certainly hear as an unwritten one (see the scansion symbols at the end of Ex. 3a), Even when Stravinsky didn’t split up bars of ive, he renotated them to make sure the A's of the melody would always fill on strong beats. Monteux, faced with several bars of five in which every note carried an accent, chose to beat them as 2 + 3—a logical division, but one that in retrospect looks like a 37. Craft, “Le Stored printemps A Chronology ofthe Revisions,” 403-4; van den Toor, suvinaly Re-brred,” 188-90. 38. Stravinsky's decision to combine the ewo measures before what i now RIAT into one ould not beans,npn ~ wetness Tee a IS wa Hage , es 28h322 Journal of the American Musicological Society Example 3b Stravinsky corects Monteun’s “wrong” divisions offre Fain divisions implied by Stravinsky's | ‘mistake, an artifct of the beaming (see Ex. 3b). Once aware of Montew’s “error,” anyone can see why Stravinsky went back in 1929 and rebeamed the note-heads, thinned out the accents, and added haigpins leading directly to the crucial A's. No conductor could now fil to see what Boris Asaf yey would call the intonation ofthe whole passage: the way its coordination of rhythmic and ‘melodic accents creates a perceptibly coherent shape (he would have called ita popevka, a “litle melodic cel”), repeatedly leading to the high A and, finally, ‘when enough tension has built up, one scale step higher to Bh ‘The Partitur lets us watch Stravinsky “correcting” Monteux and shows the ‘composer parsing the music to favor middle-ground melodic connections. ‘Abstract melodic structure—at any level of reduction—is not a structural fea ture of the Rite that has come in for much recent discussion, yet this dispate ‘over accentuation in performance shows that it clearly mattered to the com poser. (Such documentary evidence tempts me to undertake an Asaf” yev-style {ntonational study of the entire work’s melodic structure.) Taking the metri- cally ambiguous Partitur as the text for a historical performance of this passage, one might still choose to follow the interpretation of the composer as-conductor, enshrined in the 1929 revision of the text (“the composers in tentions”), rather than the interpretation of the actual conductor who used 39. Sce Bovis Aye, A Book About Soar tas. Richard F. French (Aan Arbor: UM Research Pres, 1982), 50-59‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 323 the Partitur at the premiere, as recorded on the 1913 text itself (“the sound of | the first performance”). But in any case, this “mistake” in beating recorded on the autograph remains crucial for musicologist: it alone makes sense of the traces Stravinsky left in later sources as he clarified his rhythmic (and intona- tional) intentions. Furthermore, one can argue that Monteux’s “wrong” interpretation has become, if only negatively, part of “the music itself.” Stravinsky did not arrive at the revised 1929 barring and accentuation of the “Danse sacrale” by soli tary approach to a Platonic Ideal; his reading of the text was sharpened in clalectical struggle with anothers. The point of dispute between the two in- terpretations is small, but the philosophical implications are profound. Stravinsky later argued performance aesthetics from the proposition that there ‘were two “moments” of musi: “potential musi,” the fully realized set of the composer’s intentions “fixed on paper,” which exists logically prior to any performance; and “actual music,” the stuff mortals can actually hear, because mere mortals have actually played it for them. As soon as we accept that these two moments are discrete ontological essences and accept the logical pr- fority of the potential (composer's) over the actual (performer's), the entire ideology of modernist-hstorical performance practice follows with inexorable logic. The move from potential to actual is always fll from grace, especially if the performers have known Sin, letting their own musical ideas “contaminate” the purity ofthe composer’ original conception. (The only salvation is the in- ‘errant scriptural authority ofthe Urtext.) But the litle vignette we have just traced on the Partitur shows the absur- dlity of subordinating actual to potential music: Monteux’s incorrect interpre: tation of the text was not a betrayal of the composer's prescriptions but the catalyst for them. Actual music, inthis case at least, precedes and determines ppotential—if only dialectically, by contradiction. An ironic, almost deconstruc- tive paradox arises: composer-conductors (Stravinsky, Mahler, Boulez) who intervene in the practice of actual music on behalf oftheir potential music end up undermining the very texts whose (non)interpretation they are trying s0 hard to control. Their “intentions” become clear to them only gradually, in retrospect, and the result isa destabilizing proliferation of contradictory texts, cach purporting to realize once and for all “the composer's intentions.” Every remaking of the score to make it (at last) a perfect document of the com poser’s will undermines the very idea that a material text alone can guarantee any “authentic” realization a all ‘The Rite of Spring provides an extreme example. It is no accident that the ‘most famous work of our most famous “composer's advocate” spreads itself among. a bewildering array of contradictory texts, recordings, and anecdotal admonitions. (After almost a hundred years, the idea ofa single critical edition 40, Stravinsky, Posie of Music, 125-29. The terms “potential” and “stl” ae Svinsy’s324 Journal of the American Musicologial Society of the Rite seems more impossibly utopian than ever.) The only way for the composer and his amanuenses to establish control over the text of the Rite was to produce more texts, which had the paradoxical effect of dissipating the composer's textual authority even further, to the point where he could make a complete revision and reorchestration of the “Danse sacrale” only to have it pointedly ignored by most scholars, nearly all performers, and even his pub- lisher of record. (One does not revise Scripture lightly.) ‘What, then, can be done? The temptation isto invoke arbitrary closure by privileging either the composer's last text (the musicological default) or the ‘composer’ fst thoughts (a new performing wrinkle exemplified by “period” recordings of early and even draft versions of canonic works). One might well choose either of these options as the basis for an “authentic” Rite. The Fassung letter Hand would be the 1967 Boosey and Hawkes score, with the possible substitution of the 1943 revised “Danse sacrale”; the “original version” (to use the authenticist slogan) would be the text of the Partitur as it stands in the Paul Sacher Stiftung, with a few Key passages returned to their primal state before rehearsals started in the early spring of 1913. ‘But neither ofthese texts guarantees the realization of Stravinsky's “original intentions,” the “potential music” that he famously claimed to have heard in 1910 but had been unable to write down. That music scems to me to be, if not an ex pas fico fabrication, then a red herring with litte relevance to per formance practice. Even after he wrote the Rite down, Stravinsky couldn't know the relation of what he had written to what he (didn’t yet know he) wanted—what he later would decide he “had always wanted”—until Pierre ‘Monteux tried to give it to him. And itis only that gift in sound—however un: sratfilly received—thata “historical performance” can ever hope to reclaim General Questions of Tempo ‘The case is no different with geometric tempo: Stravinsky's vastly influential strictures turn out to be not so much intention as reaction—or overreaction, This is not to say that Stravinsky did not have reason to feel that his “poten- tial” Rite had been betrayed by his early interpreters. Even a cursory glance at the performance markings in the Partitur shows that the first generation of Rite conductors fet fiee to ignore both Stravinsky's tempo indications and his ‘metronome marks; someone has simply crossed many of them out in blue crayon and written in his own. (These and other changes appear in the columns labeled Partitur in Tables 1a through Ic. Taken together, these three tables should provide an independently useful concordance of tempo mark- ings found in significant primary sources for the Rite, with special attention given to variants and handwritten corrections at the places where performance practice isin dispute.) ‘The new tempos are almost all slower than the composer's, and most com- mentators, prodded by Stravinsky’s jaundiced recollections, assume that‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 325 ‘choreographic demands forced the wholesale abandonment of the composer's ‘original tempos. But Stravinsky’s repeated hatchet jobs on Nijinsky and his ‘work are so crude and so transparently selfserving—or, rather, so transpar ently in the service of the Rite as abstract concert piece—that all of the com- poser’s complaints need to be vetted with particular care. In his 1936 autobiography, Stravinsky did indeed sniff that Nijinsky had, “either through clumsiness or lack of understanding,” ruined his “Danse sacrale”: “Its unde- niably clumsy to slow down the tempo of the music in order to compose complicated steps which cannot be danced in the tempo prescribed.”*! But oon closer examination that “prescribed tempo” turns out t0 be something of a chimera, For the “Danse sacrae,” there are no tempo markings in the ‘Sketchbook, the Particel, or the Parttur: tempo markings fist appear in the printed four-hand score, which came out at the earliest in mid April 1913, well afer all the choreography was worked out. We do not have any manuscript sources for this score, so there is no way to know whether Stravinsky specified tempos in the piano reduction that he never wrote down either for himself (in the drafis) or for Monteux (in the Parttur) It would be comforting to let the composer convince us that he had an ideal ontological tempo in mind for every dance before the first rehearsal of the Rite, but it is more likely, as ‘Volker Scherless proposes, that loose tempo ranges were honed collabora- tively during the dance and orchestral preparations ‘Scherliess’s hypothesis is borne out by the early manuscript sources, The di- vergence of metronome markings between the Sketchbook, the Particell, and the Partiur (Tables 1a-c) allows us to see just how variable Stravinsky's ealy ‘conceptions of tempo were. In several cases, the Partitur’s “compromises” re- turn to tempos “pre-scribed” in the Partcel. When Monteux decided to pull the “Jeux des Cités Rivales” (R57) back from a breakneck J= 168 to the more ‘manageable J ~ 146, he came within two metronome clicks of the oxiginal ‘tempo for ths section (the Particell implies J = 144 at R57, since there is no direction to modify the tempo set at R54). At R72, the beginning of the “Danse de la terre,” Monteux crossed out Stravinsky's prestisimo and wrote in “rigoreux,” implying a tempo significantly slower than the J = 168 marked; I suspect this “rigorous” tempo was quite close to the “Vivace. J = 138” that Stravinsky’s short score originally demanded. ‘Actually, the damage to Stravinsky's geometric conception is generally Jess than the casual disregard of his metronome mark in the Parttur might in- dicate. Though obviously offensive to Craft's sensibilities, the verbal tempo in- dications Monteux wrote in next to his new metronome marks are by no ‘means romantically effusive; in fact, they often imply a conscious preoccupa: tion with maintaining a locally strict (ie., geometric) tempo. What else can ‘we conclade when “Molto Allegro” is replaced by “Allegro rigorow” (R57), ot, AL. Suavinly, Anbiggapl 48. 42. See Cyr, “Le Sto du prinempr—Pesehistire d'un grande partion,” 114-18. Nowe that the “Danse sacral” does no even appeain te Partie in posession ofthe Sache nist 48. Scheie, “Bemerkungen” 244326 Journal of the American Musicological Society as mentioned above, when Monteux declines to take the “Danse de la terre” prestisimo, but reminds himself that it must still be “rigoreux” (R72)? It is ddoubifil whether a veteran ballet conductor like Monteux allowed any spon: tancous phrase-level rubato. One thing we can say for certain is that he never confessed to this kind of expressive shaping on the score itself. And on a larger scale, the new slower tempos are often carefully calculated to preserve the interlocking tempo relations written into the score: in Tableau I, for example (sce Table 1a), the 1:2 ratio between the slow and fast sections of the “Rondes printanieres” (R54) is maintained (80:160 becomes 69:138), and the subse ‘quent addition of exacty cight metronome marks to determine the tempo of the “Jeux des Cités Rivales” (R57) is also punctiliously preserved (160:168 becomes 138:146). Ultimately, all these slower tempos are something of a distraction. If they are Monteu’s, he had abandoned them by the time of his 1929 recording, which makes heroic efforts to take all the fist sections of the score at or near the tempos Stravinsky indicated. (Table 1d compares the markings in the PPartitur with Monteux’s recording.) In fact, Monteux’s most significant de- parture from the printed text is in the other direction, when he begins the “Danse sacrale” at what Myaskovsky would undoubtedly have called the exag- grated tempo of 2) = 148-53; this is more than twenty clicks faster than Stravinsky's rather sedate J)= 126.4% ‘There is no justification for Monteux’s blazing tempo in any printed or ‘manuscript score. There is, however, the 1921 piano roll, which start and fn- {shes the “Danse sacrale” at about that speed (more on that later). And there is a fascinating document in Stravinsky’s hand—hitherto unpublshed—which I hhave transcribed as Example 4a. This chart appears pasted into the inside front 44, Monteux had been wih dhe Bales ruses for ess than two years when he conducted the ‘Rite; in fact, he had never conducted dance before agreeing to rehearse the orchestra fOr ‘Prorat in 1911. (Monteux was 2 the time the asian cector ofthe Concerts Colonne and fey enerenched in the nineteenth century symphonic repertory) But a8 he pointed out when (George Genin later praised his “marvelous ythmic sense,” he ad pin several formative ‘yeas (age fourteen to stern) paying forthe acrobats and dancers a he Fbes Berges "Os ny two years tthe Fob has a geat deal odo with it There were many dancing and scrobati 2c, in which, a you know, the rhythm is marked and extremely preci. Iwas excellent taining for young musica.” His wie point out the relevance tothe Rite “This experince stood hit) ‘in good stead ltr, when aa conductor of the Balet Russe under Serge Dag he tamed inthe wosks of Igo Seavinsky and Maurice Rael” See Doris G. Monteu, 1° All ne Mu (New York: Farr, Seaus and Giroux, 1968), 30-31. This ea Key source of information about ‘Monteu’s taining, background, ad temperament—though the great man, reining near the end ofhis ie, isnot abowe prevacaing ae, as we shall se below 45. All timings of recorded performances are my ow, taken by hand the difculy of etab- lishing regular pulsations in this complex mewic environment can be taken asa given. All ‘metronome marks given shouldbe undestod 3s having a margin of err of approximately 3, (On te oer hand, where I speci a range of mars, the implication i that the performances? ‘ates intempo between the two numbers given‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 327 cover of Stravinsky's personal copy of the 1922 fullsize score of the Rite, from which the composer conducted in the 1920s and 1930s. It is thus the score the composer had to hand when he was planning his 1929 recording. ‘Compare Example 4a with the actual disposition of Stravinsky's 1929 record- ing onto the ten 78-rpm sides of Columbia LX 119-123, given in Example 4b: they are close enough, atleast at the beginning, to let us identify the chart as Stravinsky’s attempt to map out the best way to fit the Rite onto four- minute record sies.* Useflly enough, Stravinsky projected timings foreach section of the Rite that were, for the most part, accurate to within afew sec- ‘onds (compare them with my timings in Ex. 4b forthe actual sides of his 1929 recording). Stravinsky’s projected recording has one fewer sie than the even- tual 1929 pressing, since he is convinced that he can get the entire “Danse sacrale” on one side. But his timing is wildly optimistic. By my calculations, ‘one would need to maintain the frantic tempo of } = 155-60 to complete the dance in the 3°50" that Stravinsky allows. ‘The only person who has ever come close to that tempo on records was Pierre Monteux. But Monteux’s 1929 recording of the “Danse sacrale” takes ‘well over four minutes and is, like Stravinsky’s, split over two sides. This is be- ‘ause—and now we begin to close in on what this investigation is really about —Monteux doesn’t maintain any one tempo. Though he blazes through the beginning and ending of the “Danse sacral,” he slows down significantly and dramatically in the middle. He thus introduces at east two major tempo mod- ifications not called for in any orchestral score. It isto the question of these ‘modifications that we now tur. ‘Modifications of Tempo in the “Danse sacrale” Let’ consider and eliminate two possible practical explanations for the tempo shifts. First, the generic appeal to faulty orchestral technique. In fact, the parts of the “Danse sacrale” that consistently get slowed down in early perfor- rmances are not the most difficult—they are the easiat to beat and to play. ‘And, as we'll hear, the tempo shifting persists and even proliferates in comfort: able performances from the 1950s. Second, an appeal to the choreography: ‘Atthough there is evidence that these tempo shifts may go back to 1913, it seems unlikely they were put there solely for the dancers. As anyone who has ever accompanied ballet will attest, dancers hate complex tempo fluctuations in the middle of movements. One could make a case that Nijinsky’s original choreography both accommodates and is articulated by the tempo shifts Iam liscussing here (and I will make that case below), but that would not explain 46. The roman murals are the acral ecords the arabic nabs are the sides (mates) the leters are the individual tacks. Matix nambers and label in Example are taken fom Louis Cyr liner notes foe Peal GEMM CD 9334,328 Journal of the American Musicological Society ‘Example 4a. Transcribed from Stavnsy's copy of RMV 197 (1922 cond score, inside rons «cover (orignal orthography) 1 pete C3) 2) Lesaugurs princes M3) SJenderperondes pint 4) a)Jeudescits les 3) Comege da sage «) Dansedeletere TH 5) Prelude a I Tableas suppriment a *™ mesure ds Bet changent cee gui sorten 5/4, suppiment| TV 6) Girces mystrcuses des aolesentes [7] 7) ® Gleifcation de elu (avec les 11 coups) ' L7Bvocation Vs) Aconsineledes ances [FTES] b) Danse sere Example 4b Matrix numbers and dipesiion of Seavinsy’s 1929 recording (Columbia LX 119-123) afer Louis Cy" iner nots tothe 1989 Peal essue GEMM CD 9834; side timings arc the author's) 1X19 (1) WIX1027 —@)— Prelude /3°077) (2) WLX 1028 (b) Les Augursprintaiers (3:38) 1X120 (3) WIX1029 — (@)__Jeuderape ve (@)—Rondesprintaniers | 9°55 (8) WLX1030 fe) __Jeutdes Gus Riles (8) Conige du Sage Fe) (g) Adorason de i teme Le Sage (h) Danse de latere LXI21 (8) WLX1081—@)_— Prete (3:24) (6) WIX1032—(b)_—_Gicesmystrcuses des adolescents (305%) 1X12 (7) WIX1033 (©) Glonicatondeleue (1527) (@)VEvoation des antes /56") (8) WIX103¢ —(¢) Acton tele des anctes (3°35) 1128 (9) WIX1035——(F)—_ Danse sacle (2:37) (10) WEX 1036 (g)_—_ Danse sicrale-fin 245") ‘Theresa ca, 25-secondovetap between sides 9 [RIA2-74] and 10 [R16-cnd the toa siming forthe “Danse scale” s thas actually 4°58 their persistence in the face of compositorial atack over several decades of concert performances. It seems to me that we must accept these tempo fluctu- ations asa considered aesthetic choice on the part of early conductors of the Rite, They enforce a vtalist interpretation of the “Danse sarale,” one that is‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 329 firmly based—and I point this out with a certain amount of revisionist glee— in well-established Wagnerian principles. ‘The vitalist practice What would a thoroughgoing vitalst performance of the “Danse sacrale” sound like? Not like a Mahler symphony conducted by Mengelberg, to be sure. The elegant techniques of rubato phrasing developed to articulate the complex melodic periods of Classic and Romantic music are simply irrelevant to the Rite. Asaf"yev’s 1926 formulation is still unsurpassed: "No mechanical division ofthe texture of melodies into periods, clauses, phrases, ‘or motives will reveal [the Rite’s] structure... the dynamic view of music sees the melodic texture as a fabric that salve with melodic cells (popevki) which are constantly changing position and aspect.” ‘Thisis not Romantic vitaism but a very different kind of “aliveness.” It de- pends on (and enforces) the consistent, precise interaction of many short ‘melodic gestures with repeated but irregularly spaced metric accents. The overall effect is what Strvinsky and his followers later called “monometric”: ‘music that presents a rigid succession of beats without the formation of a com- plex hierarchy of beats.8 Expressive rubato, the art of the anacrusis and the agogic accent, displaces successive beats to articulate their hierarchy; Stravin- skian monometer eschews that hierarchy and thus gives no space—and no cues—for sensitive sculpting of phrases in time. (At the few spots in the Rite ‘where a melodic period actually needs rounding off, Stravinsky has written in the phrasing himself—hence the “romantic” ritardando-crescendo just before R54 as the Eb-minor Bhorovod comes to its stentorian end.) On the other hand, The Rite of Spring, like Stravinsky’s other essays in nnconationalism, is fundamentally structured by its melas the basic dialectic of the Riteis between pounding rhythmic ostinatos and the folk-tune fragments (poperki) from which Stravinsky abstracts them. In the composer's Russian pe- Fiod these popenki function like subatomic particles of the Wagnerian melas (aruskin glosses popevka as “a musical morpheme”): they may not have peri- ‘dic structure or even a single fixed harmonic reference point, but each will have a pronounced melodic character and thus might imply structural rubato to a musician whose interpretive reflexes were those of nineteenth-century vitalism.!” A conductor used to scanning an allegra movement for the shifis 47, Asal yx, A Bao abou Siravindy 51. 48. We can thnk Richard Tarun for recovering this wl term (“The Pass ofthe resent,” 169), ashe epots, Vig Thomson sa ths "modem quanta sanson” asa gene ‘al eat ofl progrenive tenet cen ns, 49, Taruskn, Srvinsty ad the Rusia Traditions 1678, Tarski’ 1980 dicuson ofthe fk sources in the Rte remains fundamental. See the updated version in Sram and the ‘Rusian Traditions 891-983; othe crigial “Rusan Folk Melodies in The Rie of Spring” this Journal 33 (1980): 501-43,330 Journal of the American Musicological Society between periods of propulsive passagework (played as fast as practicable) and singing melody (slowed down to preserve cantabile) might well adjust the tempo of the Rit’s monometric dance movements the same way. Evidence that Pierre Monteux came to the Rite with his Romantic inter- pretive reflexes intact is not hard to find. Fifty year after the premiere, musing about his life and musical issues to his wife, he comes across as an amiable, ‘open-minded, but still very nineteenth-century musician $° Who were your carly conducting idole? “Another magnetic man was Arthur Nikisch, the mar- vellous Hungarian conductor... He was fascinatingly romantic, with burn ing eyes... . [He] was my ideal asa conductor” (p. 43). “Willem Mengelberg [w]e were extremely impressed by this youthful Dutchman's conducting of Bach and Beethoven” (p. 44). “I never failed to record everything in the ‘way of interpretation ofthese great conductors in my scores. At home I would sit for hours, smiling over Arthur Nikisch’s interpretations or Felix Wein- {gartner's remarks on the works of Beethoven” (p. 44). How did you feel about the nineteenth-century vitalist tradition? “As (Hans Richter and Felix Mott] conducted three times each, I had a wonderful opportunity to hear Wagner led by the finest Wagnerian conductors ofthat period. I absorbed this mu- sic into my heart and soul, and became in no time a confirmed Wagner addict, listening to all of the conductors’ remarks, watching all they did, and subse- «quently writing it into my scores... . I was determined that I would some day bbe a fine conductor of Wagner also” (p. 49). Were ou realy a modernist at Jeart? [Mahler] was a fine conductor, but very disagreeable. I have never cared for his music, as I fee! most of i is contrived” (p, 63). “As a conductor ‘bom in France, Ihave been asked to play certain of Debussy’s works too many times over these past fifty years, and I am sometimes weary of them, The eter nal repetition of measures So prevalent in Les Nuages and other works have disturbed me over the years. [am never weary of Beethoven and Brahms, and consequently I have wondered about the future of these compositions of Debussy” (p.47). “I must admit I did not understand one note of Le Sacre dit Printemps [when Stravinsky frst played it for Diaghilev and myself” “I de- cided then and there that the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms were the ‘only music for me, not the music ofthis crazy Russian!” (p. 89) “Monteux could afford this jocular conservatism in 1962, because he had, ‘ofcourse, become one of the world’s most respected interpreters of “the mu- sic of this crazy Russian.” But one wonders how much affinity his 1913 Rite performances had with the vitalist performing tradition in which he had so clearly steeped himself. Did he make the work sound a litle like his beloved Beethoven and Brahms? Or even like the Wagner operas to which, like so many ofhis generation, he had been addicted? ‘As a defumilarizing thought-exercise, let us follow Monteux back to the foundational text of his youthful idols Nikisch, Mott, and Weingarter, the 50, Alleeférenesin the following discussion are to Dots Montes, 1 Alin the Masi‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 331 bible of nineteenth-century vitalism: Wagner’s On Conducting. To get a sense ‘of what structural rubato might do forthe Rite, we can apply (misapply, really) ‘what we find there to Stravinsky’s “Danse sacrale.” Remember, Wagner told us that “the right comprehension of the Melos is the sole guide to the right tempo”; we thus look to the melodic character of the popenki as a guide to ‘tempo modification. As Example 5 shows, this movement intermingles three very different kinds of thematic textures, which I have attempted, not without some irony, to correlate with performance directives gleaned from Wagner's ‘treatise. The opening and closing sections (A) are dominated by “pure” rhyth- ‘mic figuration and are noticeably devoid of cantilena, or sustained melody. So is the first “episode” of contrasting material (B). It is only the popevka marked (C) that displays a sustained, singing melody. ‘These iruptions of the sustained tone characteristic of the adagio into a purely hythmic allegro must be respected by a sensitive conductor. The fol Jowing tempo plan suggests itself all A sections are to be taken as fast as hu- ‘manly possible, with litte or no slackening for the B section; the two C sections, however, should be articulated by a noticeable slowing down to bring out the melaz, When the A material returns after C, it will be with a sud- den and dramatic a tempo, and toward the end the fire of the “pure” allegro ‘might well be allowed to take its natural course: a powerful aecelerando to the final “Beethovenian” férmata, in which a last snatch of eantilena must surely be given enough space to breathe. Nothing further from Stravinsky's geometric, ontological ideal of perfor- mance can be imagined. A strong misreading along these Wagnerian lines ‘would be strikingly inauthentic (and of course unmodern). It would also be ‘quite typical. To dramatize the issu, I will adduce a recording made in 1958, well after Stravinsky's public pronouncements on performance had achieved wide dissemination and only two years before his own “definitive” 1960 recording, (See Table 2 in the Appendix for a tempo chart ofthis and all other recorded examples discussed below." ‘The performance in question is that of Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic. Here we have Myaskovsky’s “exaggerated” tempos, with “the brass bellowing” and “the percussion crackling” all the way. Bernstein came by them honesty; he is standing in here for his old Tanglewood con- ducting teacher, Serge Koussevitsky, whom Myaskousky was grumbling about back in 1914, Bernstein begins the “Danse sacrae” at } ~ 138-42, signifi cantly faster than the 2) = 126 marked. This “purer” allegro will not do forthe section, soit is taken much slower both times it appears. The second time is particularly operatic: Bernstein sams on the brakes at RI81, delaying the second beat of that bar so he can sink into a huge agogic accent and an instan- taneous drop of 25 metronome marks. Holding the orchestra at J = 112-16, SI, Interested readers are encouraged to diet ther browser to . Aematve, a search engine canbe wed toate the page ted “Fink JAMS Sound Examples”cel ener (Gupeosn Soon Aan) any ap opus ue § aydurasd 02200 puss oe 3 (9311p o8-F2ng) woR>5 3 Ponunoo> dune334 Journal of the American Musicological Society he indulges the mclos coaxing a truly terrifying orgy of fff cantabile out of the bbrassand strings. The A material returns at R186 asifit had been shot out of a catapult: Bernstein tries to jump instantly to = 138, but as in most perfor- ‘ances of the “Danse sacrale” that use structural rubato, this spot is a melee of failed ensemble. ‘Things finaly sort themselves out a few bars later at ) = 127-36, leaving plenty of room for a race to the end. Bernstein blazes past R201 at well above J)= 140 and then luxurates in the final bars ad libitum. Vitalism lives! Stravinsky dismissed Bernstein’s hyperactive Symphony of Paris with a wry ‘monosyllabic pat-down that we might transfer to his Rite: “WO W'S But a quick survey of the conductors who were associated with the Rin is earlcst dlays reveals that they all subscribe to this “Wagnerian” interpretation of the “Danse sacrale.” Bernstein might well have first heard the Rite in Leopold Stokowski’s pioneering 1930 recording with the Philadelphia Orchestra ‘Stokowski had conducted the 1922 American premiere of the Rite; his RCA discs, cutles than a year after those of Monteux and Stravinsky, are the earliest documentation we have of how the work sounded when played by a first-rate ensemble under its own music director. Stokowski’s 1930 recording, which is far more polished than either of its predecessors, has been unjustly neglected, thanks to a later indiscretion involving an animated mouse and some di- nosaurs. In it we can hear the conductor, who begins at = 128, very close to the printed score, slow down even more dramatically than did Bernstein at R181. Stokowski drops to J = 98-100 and gives his beloved Philadelphia strings their one fall-bowed, espresino moment in the sun. After speeding up very slightly, he attempts a dangerous leap to J) = 137 at R186, carrying only the lower strings with him. (The faltering is particularly noticeable since the strings and horn are not supported, as in the post-1929 Rite, by the low brass. More on the reorchestratons ofthis passage later) Eugene Goossens conducted the 1921 English concert premiere of the Rite. Almost forty years later, in a recording from 1960, he was indulging in a massive agogic slowdown at R181 (J)= 132 to J= 96), turning R181-86 into 2 broad singing strain, and bounding out of the C section with a sudden tempo. Years after this recording, Stravinsky took time out from jaundiced gos- siping about famed conductors for uncharacteristic praise of Goossens: “I re- «all his performance of Zz Sacre in London in 1921, with pleasure." If chat 52, Stravinsky, “On Conductors and Conducting,” 231; 1 hae preserved the orthography, 53. There i—finalh—a serious dscusion in pine ofthe Sac setion of Disneys Fantasia (1940), See Nicholas Cook, “Disney's Deeam: The Rit of Spring Sequence fon ‘ant in his Anabying Musical Multimedia (New York and Oxford: Orford University Pres, 1998), 174-214. Cook’s dscusion ofthe Rive as “mules” (he dimes the abote autonomous ‘Rite out of hand and then ingeniously coreats Nini’ and Disney's vial counterpoint) ‘exemplary work—specially coming fom 2 music cheodst inthe mid of 3 demonsraton ofa Ia method, 54, Strvnsky, “On Conductors and Conducting,” 231.‘The Forging ofa Modernist Performing Style 335 1921 Rite sounded anything lke the one Goossens recorded in 1960, our ex- pectations ofa “historically authentic” performance will have to be dramati- cally revised Even the conductors closest to Stravinsky slow down for the cantilena Emest Ansermet, who conducted the Parisian ballet revival of 1921 and was perhaps more intimately involved with the score than anyone other than its author, is most discreet at RI81-86. In his 1957 recording, he drops back ‘only slightly at R181, accelerates abit through the section, and makes a rela- tively smooth transition at R186. But even Ansermet indulges in perceptible structural rubato atthe firs appearance of the C material. Having held quite close to the written J) = 126, he digs in and drops to 4= 102-6 as he crosses RUZ, Finally, there is Pierre Monteux himself, conductor of the frst recorded performance in May 1929 as well asthe premiere. His tempo atthe climax of the “Danse sacrale,” while not quite as exaggeratedly slow as that in some of the later American recordings, is easly the most flexible. After dropping back to J 116, he accelerate feely between RI8I and R186, reaching J~ 138; he ‘thus must make a breakneck jump to an almost impossible ) = 152 to preserve ‘the tempo contrast. Monteux thereby privileges a particulirly striking fuctua- tion in “psychological time” above all else—even getting the notes right, as the hair raising final bars of his 1929 recording attest. Documentary and choreographic evidence ‘There area few fleeting documentary trices of this vitalst practice, allowing us to posit with certainty that it was a feature of atleast some interpretations of the Rite as eatly as 1913. Dover Publications has disseminated one of these far and wide, Example 6 reproduces R174 of the “Danse sacrale” as it appears in Dover's reprint of the original four-hand piano score published by Kous- sevitsky’s Russische Musk-Verlag in 1913. Here, forall the world to sce, is not only a slower metronome mark but the clear suggestion of a perceptible ‘change in expressive character: “Sostenuto e maestoso, J = 116.” The “authen- ticity” of this marking is dubious. It does not reappear at RI81, nor are the implied returns to J = 126 marked. Now we can hypothesize about Anscr- met’s decision to slow down at R174 and not later: more than any other con- ductor, he was likely to be punctilious about the composer's wishes, and he had this single written source that authorized slowing down at R174 and not later. But in the absence of any manuscript sources, itis impossible to know where this tempo indication really came from. (What Stravinsky thought about it after the fact will become clear below.) Whether or not the Satenuto e maesteo and the slower metronome mark ‘originated with Stravinsky, we have some fragmentary confirmation that the score was danced that way. Millicent Hodson has uncovered an unpublished memoir by Valentine Gross-Hlugo, whose real-time sketches of the first fourz= SS i =e =e J pera _——— oh }_ z= SEE = ee ee ea SS Ss » =r 3-5 #“The Forging of « Modemist Performing Sle 337 performances provide the most immediate documentation of the original choreography. Gross-Hugo’s verbal description of R174, set down at some later time, reads: “The sustenuto and macstoso led this balanced movement— ‘here the limbs moved more freely—into ever larger movements, all lading toward the final entreaty, all rendered desperate and ecstatic at the same time.” Gross-Hugo’s account, unlike those of both Maric Rambert and ‘Stravinsky, was not written on a copy ofthe four-hand score itself, and she was ‘an artist with no special musical training, It seems likely that “the sstenuto and ‘maestoso” was company shorthand for a landmark moment in the “Danse sacrale” which stuck in her memory. ‘The Gross-Hugo memoir leads us to a consideration of the actual choreog raphy she evokes so poetically. Would the kind of tempo shifting we see in carly recordings be appropriate, or even practicable, during the climactic mo- rents of the danced “Danse sacrale”?5¢ Certain basic facts seem auspicious. As ‘everyone realized even at the premiere, the final solo was the most traditional, familar, and “expressive” part of the Rite. (The audience, which had been jecring steadily throughout the performance, watched Maria Piltz in silence.) ‘Asan extended solo, with a distinctly subordinate role for the men represent- ing the Ancestors, it certainly offered the technical possibility for tempo ru bato, if the conductor and the premiere danscuse agreed. And Nijinsky's ‘chorcographyy, as it plays out the scenario of increasing frenzy and exhaustion, «alls for dramatic shifs in movement and gesture at all the right places in the It is thus possible, though of course highly speculative, to correlate tempo fluctuations in Monteu’s 1929 recording with key choreographic events dur- ing the “ultimate paroxysm” (Gross-Hugo) of the “Danse sacrale.” We pick up the story at R167: With the return of the dance’s opening material (the A section above), the Chosen One returns to her “signature phrase,” the quick series of hops followed by a droop that was Nijinsky’s precise translation of the opening motivic cells into gesture. Monteux’s 1929 tempo here is the same quick J) = 148 as at the opening. At R174, the jumps change character, get bigger (“ever larger movements”), and are interspersed with even more Vi ‘lent gestures. The Chosen One drops to the ground and pounds it with her fists; she even takes her “frozen” right eg and slams it down as if to break or 55. Hoxton, Nijndy’s Crime, 183. Hodson's bibliographic cation for the Gross Hugo ‘memoirs on page 201, the “caption eeference” for Tables I, R30, im, 1-3 56, Reconstroctng the “Danse sacrale” runs out © be uniguly icky. Marie Rambert, the bese witness we have, Was not around when Nn set the final ol on his sster wo was cig ral to dance ie before she inopportanely became pregnant). Rambert, a student of Jacques Dalcroze, was called in later ro help tran the corps de ballet. So, in addon to Gross Hugo's Arawings and recollections, Hodson’s reconstruction tees heaay om Nijkaya's own descrip tion ofthe slo tothe Rusia dance historian Vera Kresonkaya in 1967, over iy years alter the fac. Krasovstaya then checked Njnskya's account with Maria Pl, theft Chosen One, who ‘was sil alive. The following discussion is drawn from Hoon’ barby bar account, sce Haxon, "Nijinys Crime, xi, 180-93,338 Journal of the American Musicological Society waken it. The larger, more violent motions complement the ff maestoso in the orchestra; they may well have demanded in 1913 the same sudden slowing cof tempo that Monteux allowed in 1929 (,) = 148 drops to J= 124-26). At R180 the signature phrase returns with the A material, as does Monteux’s “original brisk tempo. ‘At RI8I the jumps change character again. The Chosen One leaps with both arms and legs windmilling infront of he, giving the effect of “a prehis- toric bird whose wings try to raise the body, clumsily, not yet ready” (Krassovskaya). She begins to weaken: in six out of the next eleven bars she does the arm movements but is too tired to leap. (Nijinskaya: “The Chosen ‘One in a frenzy flounders in the repetition ofthese jumps.”) How logical to begin this section under tempo (J= 116 in Monteux’s 1929 recording), both to accommodate the extraordinarily awkward jumps and as a response to the soloit’s momentary weakening. In 1913 the Chosen One next went into a delirious spin, “the feet almost on the points striking the ground like daggers” (Gross-Hugo). Her whirling intensified as R186 approached: “She releases her neck and arms so that the braids fly erratically with her failing limbs” (Hodson). Monteux’s 1929 recording vividly mimes this uncontrollable cen- trifugal acceleration. As the melodic line ratchets up from D to G, his orches- tra races ahead, reaching J = 133 at R184 and nearly J = 138 by R186. (It could hardly have mattered whether this frenzied spinning, gesture was synchronized to the musical beat.) But the most dramatic tempo sift is yet to come. What was happening on- stage in 1913 at R186, the moment when the 1929 recording leaps suddenly and recklessly t0 2) = 152? The jaw-dropping answer: absolutely nothing. The ‘Chosen One had frozen into an awkward clutch and then drooped down in preparation for the final return of her signature phrase, but she does not ap- pear to have started jumping again until several bars after R186. All the other dancers on the stage were watching her, motionless. Monteux had total free- dom to set any tempo he wanted, because no one was dancing. His later recording suggests that he seized the moment to set a punishingly fast tempo for the last set of signature jumps, literally driving the Chosen One to her death. I think one can make a case that the tempo shifts in Monteux’s 1929 recording ofthe “Danse sacrale” are the traces of what happened when he ac- companied Maria Piltz in May 1913 (though no doubt all the tempos were slower).” At the very least we can say that nothing we know about the orig 57, To be fr, Monteu’s account ofthe premier contradic this reading, “You may think this strange, cir, bu Ihave never sen the ballet. The night ofthe remire, [kee my eyes on ‘the score, Paying the exact tempo Igor had given me and which, must ay, Lhave neve forgo ten” (Doris Monte, Alin he Muse, 90) We ean dismiss the idea that Montcux had never seen the ballet However focused e was on opening night he ms ave watched the dances in rehearsal, And eater in this same memoir, Monteuxcongeatubtes himself tebe dance a ‘companist whose vitalit management of tempo deserved credit for one of Nijnsiy’s most‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 339 nal choreography is incompatible with the later vitalist practice. But any histo- rian of performance practice would be happier with some more immediate, notated trace of this practice. Did Monteux write any of this down on his Partitur in 19132 Unfortunately as I mentioned above, Stravinsky's autograph Partitur contains no metronome or tempo markings at all for the “Danse sacrale”—the Sastenuto ¢ macsts0 marking at R174 does not appear there, for ‘example—and thus there was no opportunity or motivation for conductors to «ross any out and write in their own. Yer there isa single four-letter word marked on the score that speaks vol- umes (see Fig. 1). On page 82 of the 1913 Partitur, exactly on the double bar line of R186, a foreign hand has written, diagonally across the low bras staves, underlined and in bold blue crayon, the one-word instruction “Vivo.” This la- conic injunction to “look alive” ratifies by inference the whole vitalist tempo scheme implied by the original choreography and audible on early recordings. We can assume that the entire passage R181-86—and by analogy the previous C section from R174 to R180—was to be taken at a perceptibly slower tempo, and that at this point the conductor is reminding himself of the need to make a sudden leap ahead to recapture the faster tempo of the surrounding A sections Forging a geometric Rite That one word is the extent of the direct textual support for interpretive tempo modification in the “Danse sarae,” since Stravinsky spent quite a bit cof time over the next thirty years methodically stamping out as many traces of vitals in Rite performances as possible. Before we consider his response to this ict elasticity of tempo, let us look briefly at the one spot in the Danse where Stravinsky explicitly provided for the momentary suspension of onto- logical time—where he actually wrote the words “ad libitum into his score ‘The bottom row of Table le traces the progressive erosion of the temporal fieedom allowed to performers of the Rite in its final bars. Stravinsky's original ‘conception, transcribed and reduced from his sketchbook as Example 7, was ‘ofa dramatic pause long enough to execute a tricky “fade-out fade-back-in” famous dance wiumphs: “I have always ile over the stores of Vasa Nii’ famous eleva tion, and his ap through the window athe very end of Le pete dela Roe. The truths. he ‘was nobly assed by Montcusin the pt, who played the cho before the last with aight pont ‘orgs, tereby creating the ison of 2 prolonged cevaon ofthe dancer. When I played the final chon, you may be sure, the spectre was already recining onthe mattress place there 10 receive him. Ha, ha! (p. 77), What to prevent us rom conjecturing sna ube but eral adjustments of tempo for Pir inthe Rite? As for Stravinsky's exact tempos, really, what was ‘Monteux to say in 1962? The Patt doesn't be—someone did change Stravinsky’ empos. Pechaps we are 10 iar that dhe new metronome matks, though notin his hand, cme fom Savinsy himsel (Le, why would Swainsy aced to “give” Montes the tempos i they were already writen inthe coe?) A Tadd above, the question remains open{340 Journal ofthe American Musicological Society 2 Semone Aras peas apne Sire opty ssa zs ee pA peeT San preg s ¢ # rf pre Myton capes SNE Rh ame Fe tomtom pene Btas 4: i. f L Kates Aye BAL pba pe +B ais ate ' i aust ptops att * eee. ree Figure 1 Page 82 (RI85-87) of che 1913 Pacur of The Rite of Spring, with performance ‘markings Reproduced by the kind permison of the Paul Saher Foundtion,“The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 341 Example 7 A preliminary sterch forthe ial bars ofthe Rite Vint.ch Tang > ‘Tes + Too sand ota Bact aint yma fox longa ot th ve Note: Dplomatiallytanseribed and reduced from Igor Stravinsky, The Rite f Spring Skrtches, 1911-1913 ed, Robert Crt (Loodoa: Faber and Faber, 1969), 89 maneuver: thus the fermata, and the instructions to hold the string tremolo Junge ad ligand to play the woodwind scales clla parte. (What could be more vitalt?) By the time of the 1913 four-hand score and the Partitur, the dy- namic fade-swellis gone, but the fermata, lung ad lif, and colla parte instruc- tions remain. In addition, there is an accelerando marked in the previous bar. By 1922, it too has disappeared, and in all scores after 1929, the fermata and Junga ad lib are gone as well eaving the winds instructed to play colla parte for no apparent reason. Thus all tempo fluctuation has been eliminated, as in- deed Stravinsky specifically requested in a 1938 letter to the Italian conductor Alfredo Molinari (who was conducting the Rite in a festival of contemporary music at Venice and was troubled by the discrepancies between the orchestral and piano scores): “There is no need of an accelerando nor of the “lunga ad libitwn’—everything should be played strictly according to the tempo indi- cated at R186 and at the beginning of the ‘Danse sacrale’ a pulsation of 126342, Journal ofthe American Musicological Society to the eighth-note.”8 (That would close the matter, except that, confusingly enough, in the 1943 revision the fermata has been reinstated and the colla parte removed.) Even before all printed license to change tempo had been eliminated, Stravinsky had begun battling the vernacular performance practice of tempo shifting that was forming around the Rite. The composer was unequivocal in print about the unwritten practice of slowing down for the cantilenasat R174 and R186. His copy of the four-hand score at the Sacher collection carefully ‘corrects the metronome mark at RI74 in both the primo and secondo parts, twvice changing J = 116 back to J = 126. This alteration may well have been added as carly 5 1913, since this i the same score on which Stravinsky took ‘copious notes on Nijinsky’s choreography. And, later, in self-defense, Stravin- sky began to hedge the “Danse sacrale” with metastasizing metronome marks and tempo equivalencies. He had evidently decided that it was the difference in beat unit that made the sections between R174-80 and R181-86 “look slower,” so he set out to create a score that would never again ead conductors into temptation. In his 1922 pocket score (the first printed score he pos- sessed), he hand-wrote J= 2'= 126 or 2'= = 126 in red ink a every change of beat unit. Not all of these markings would appear in print in the 1922 fall score, but by the 1967 final revision every single sectional transition is de fended by both a metronome mark and an explicit tempo equivalence, Stravinsky also tinkered constantly with the orchestration of R186 over the years (Ex. 82-c). As soon as he took up the baton to conduct the Rite he be- ‘came aware ofthe problem: the herd mentality of orchestral musicians reading, an unfamiliar score and the performance practice already forming under Monteux et cie. guaranteed that at this crucial moment the “Danse sacrale” ‘would change tempo, regardless ofthe conductor’ intentions. Hee would thus Fisk an unrecoverable collapse of ensemble every time he led an orchestra through it Example 8a is a reduction of R186 as it appeared in the 1913 Partitur and 1922 first edition. The scoring is light—in view of the circumstances, danger- ‘ously light: double basses alone carry the bass part and a weak combination of bassoons and two low horns take the offbeats. The whole complex is marked ‘iano pianisimo, IP a nice idea to have this dynamic contrast afer the sf arrival on the downbeat, and one can instantly appreciate the correlation be- ‘ween this sudden intense gp and the frozen terror of Nijinsky’s motionless Chosen One. Unfortunately, it didn’t work in performance. The rest of the ‘orchestra coulkn’t hear the pp offbeats, missed the new tempo, and inevitably 58. Letter to Aledo Molina of 1 August 1938; quoted in Crafted, Savin: Selected Corrspondence 1406, interestingly enough, we have evidence of Molinans authentic cons couse: the performance impressed at lat one sympathetic observer as bing “pay with 2 lighnes, peefction, and lyaly to the sore tha he work has probably ever experince be fore” (Paul Hindemith, eter to Wily Sucker of 20 September 1938, in Selected Lee of Pad “Hindemith ed and tans. Geotiey Skelton [New Haven: Yale University Pres, 1995], 120),i anosad 01 poyom 246 1 sax2M04 981 UY (29H 2 == SS = aa meet (cot ava) ome sy zzot (©) ony carne sue, ajo suomERSpIOANS GENS aNeE‘Buus 20 smoguioppotads: pur sewer 9 9 sem ef ou ea nyc un ma Ame Bm ne Op ES LV SHEN (ona = spa) (paquanen soy NYY PAIEHONY) ALON SEC JO REA! EFT O) Ponunuos dane346 Journal of the American Musicological Society degenerated into the weltering chaos audible on every early recording, (This 1913-22 scoring—and the chaos—can be heard in the Monteux and Stokow- ski pre-1930 recordings discussed above.) Stravinsky’s frst solution was of the spit and-bailing-wie variety. The 1929 revised first edition (Ex. 8b) disseminated the orchestration that evolved through the 1920s, made it into a new set of engraved parts in 1926, and is familiar from most contemporary scores and performances: the dynamic level is raised to forte, and everyone is asked to play marcato, seca, and staccato, “Moreover, the composer, taking out a kind of sonic insurance policy, has the heavy brass double everything sempre sorzato ¢ ben marcato. Iti quite possi- ble that Stravinsky the composer simply no longer wanted the effect of a sud- den sotto voce here, but if his goal asa conductor was to make it easier to keep the passage together, he displayed striking orchestral naiveté. Any conductor will tell you that the extra weight of trombones and tubas makes the passage ‘harder to contro), especially ifthe orchestra has slowed down and one desires to retum toa strict, geometric = 126. For proof, one need only listen to the hhash that the low brass make of this moment in Stravinsky's own premiere reconding in 1929. In 1940, when Stravinsky recorded the Rite with a trucu- Jent and uncooperative New York Philharmonic, the problem was, ifanything, even worse. ‘This catastrophic recording experience was undoubtedly the major factor in Stravinsky's decision to undertake another fll-scale revision of the “Danse sacrle,” finished in 1943. In ithe decided to solve once and for al te perfor: ‘mance problems caused by his original decision to notate the C section “twice as slow” as the other parts of the Danse. He simply doubled the value of all the notes in the A and B sections (compare Exx. 8b and 8c). The composer claimed this made the music easier to read, but it also nicely solves the prob- Jem of the music at R174 “looking slower” The effect isto erase all trace of formal division in the “Danse sacral,” disguising (orthographicaly at least) the moments where the “character of the melas” changes. (The articulating double bars at R174, R180, RI8L, and R186 that gradually crept into the 1929, 1948, and 1967 editions are all eliminated as unnecessary in the 1943 score.) The global change of beat unit allowed Stravinsky to dispense with the low brass safety net that had been so embarrassingly useless. Though still marked loud and accented, the 1943 orchestration of R186—pizzicato low strings, bassoon, and bass clarinet—is even lighter and crisper than the origi- nal 1913 version. ‘Now the composer needs only to place a single tempo indication and a sin- se metronome mark at the beginning of his rhythmically homogenized score to ensure total geometric regularity. The absolutely characteristic injunction is “Rigoroso (2) = 126).”* And so it is in his 1960 performance. One has to have 59. This i, ofcourse, incorrect: Stravinsky fg change the eat wn ofthe metronome ‘mark, which should Iogially be J~ 126. Is i foo pessimistic to ansipate an informed perfor: ‘mance late next century that attempts to respect this absurd, ye undeniably “authent,” mark ing‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 347 suffered with Stravinsky through his 1929 and 1940 recordings to appreciate the triumphant moments in which, even with the underrchearsed and scrappy “Columbia Symphony Orchestra,” nothing happens at R174, R181, and R186. Vitalism is vanquished and strict ontological time is preserved; the “principle of contrast” is replaced by the “principle of similarity.” ‘Now finally, Stravinsky sounds ike Stravinsky. ‘Traces of life ‘And, thanks to that “definitive” 1960 recording, so does everyone else. Listen to any performance of the “Danse sacrale” recorded within the last ten years and you will hear the same unyielding monometer throughout ®! And yet... the Fasung letster Aufnabme remains elusive. The composer, reported Robert Craft in 1969, had instructed him that “the accelerando, inthe four hhand score, four measures before the end, should be followed, and @ outrance, in the orchestra score.”* In the 1938 leter to Molnar that categorically out laws that same accelerando, Stravinsky—amazingly—told Molinari that the 4 =116 at R174 of the four hand piano score was corect.° But that might have been a slip. What is harder to explain away i the evi- dence of the eatliest “performance” we have ofthe Rite. Stravinsky declared in his Autobiography that he transcribed works like the Rite for player piano “to prevent the distortion of my compositions by future interpreters,” and in par- ticular to fix “the relationships of the movements (zempi)and the nuances." How strange itis, then, to hear the perfect mechanical executant betray is pa- ‘ron by transmitting a suspiciously vitalst interpretation of the Rite! Its yet another performance that stats much fister than J) = 126, slows down dra ‘matically at R181, and leaps ahead at R186 for an exhilarating rush to the final cadence. But this time there is no preening macstro to blame—ust a humble pianola playing back the piano roll ofthe Rite punched under Stravinsky's d- rect supervision in 1921. Drawing inferences about performance tempos from 4 piano rolls, of course, fraught with complications in particular, any attempt 60, Stravinsky, Peter Mai, 38, 61, This isthe conclsion ached in the only exhautve ana ofthe recorded Rit, Jerome Waters, “The Rit of Spring by Igor Sevinky: Comparative Peformance Cite Based on ‘Sound Recordings fom 1929-1993" (PhD. dis, Honda State Universty, 1996), Water's ab ssract reports that although timings for the Rie were actually ser overall inthe eal par ofthe ‘century (one wonders if hiss just Monteun’s 1929 recording sewing the data, “in some sx tions there has been 2 naroning of interpretative variety with rgard to overall tempo.” Mi pet sonal collection of post-1980 “Danses acrale” contems that whatever the abso tempo taken, bby now—at leat in this particular section ofthe Rite—the range of interpretive vat fe” ‘ively 20, (62, See Robert Cra, “The Performance ofthe Rite of Spring," in The ite of Spring: bce, 1911-1913, by Igor Srvinsk (London Faber and Faber, 1969), 48 (68. See Crate, Savini Sete Corrpondene 106, 64, Scavinky, Auabiggrapy 101. By page 151 he is toting his recording a better than ‘he piano rolls bea they rans al his ntentions.™348 Journal of the American Musicological Society to deduce absolute tempos from this 1921 Pleyela roll ofthe Rite is bound to disappoint us. We don’t know for certain either the precise roll speed Stravinsky intended or whether he expected the pianolist to compensate for the built-in acceleration inherent to the pianola mechanisms But there isa strong argument to be made from the rolls about relative tempos in the “Danse sacrale” (see Tables 32~c). Physical examination of roll nine of the Rite (and Tam indebted here to'the world-renowned pianolist Rex Lawson) shows that the sections beginning at RI74 and R186 are actually punched slower on the roll—that is, the number of punches (and thus the 2c tual length of the paper roll) corresponding to a given beat unit increases (Table 3a). This guarantees that whatever the absolute speed of the music at those two points and, asthe rest of the example shows, there are at least four uite different plausible “performances” to be pulled out of this roll—there will be very perceptible slowdowns for the two cantlena sections, and a thrling jump of at least thirty metronome clicks at R186. The irony is 65, The following discussion i deeply indebted wo the acknowledged world expert onthe aoa and the pricing piano, Rex Lawson. Ihave had occasion boeh to talk exensivey with “Me_ Lavon and 1 heat him perform Stravinsky piano ols in peron, Some key point (1) [Akhoug itis quite cay forthe panoli ointedce tempo sie when realizing a lanl rl, [Lawson sys he didnot intnsonally do so in any ofhis published ecoring. (2) sno rol came in diferent “speeds,” usualy measured in fet per minute; most pianols had several rollspecd secings, and unfortunately, the leyea rolls Strviny made ofthe Rite are not clay marked (3) In any mechanism where a rls pled oto a (powered) take-up rec, there wil be a i cesableaceleraton as more and more ofthe rll moves onto tht ee. Ina reproducing oF “player” piano, this soft consequence, snc the sme acceleration took plce when the roll vas recorded by the pianist. Buta pianos roll, unlike the reproducing plano, was punched by than and was designed to be controled during playback bya musically sense performer This performer has consant contol over tempo, and many ols of Clas and Romantic misc used 2 curving line to direct the performer to change tempos (normaly oe lever was sed o keep ‘narrow on the mechanism ined up with the moving line). The performer ths was alo respon ile for equalizing the builtin aceleraion of the rol mechanism. As Table 3 shows, Lamson appear not to have done this, but one can easly imagine Suavinsy riding” the roll to keep its rempo geometrically exact. (Ironically the panola—Seravnsy’s paradigmatic geometric “per former"—could not keep a seay best without human hand to guide) (4) There isa growing ‘musicologialterature on the pianola; the key reference is The Pianola Journal, founded an ‘edited by Rex Lawson sine 1987. OF particule interes is Rex Lawson, “Stravinsky and the anol,” publshed in evo pars in vl. 1 (1987): 15-26,and vo. 2 (1989) 3-16. An ear ver son appears in Confronting Savina: Mas, Musician, and Maderna, ed. Jann Pase (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1986). See alo Louis Cy, “Two Pleyla Recordings of The Rit of Spring: A Review,” The Pianala Journal 8 (1995). 41-50, Orr's ex tended dissin of tempo and tempo faciations inthe “Dante scr” whe notin otal a= ‘cord with the one set forth above, doe agree with ton the sent pont “If one loks atthe “Danse sacra, i will be obvious how difcul,inotwell-ngh impossible iis to maintain in practic the one prescribed tempo throughout the entie scene” (p48). Parlay veriginos fiom the aesthetic point of view isa short meditation by aster troubled about the “authentic ly” of eal piano rolls which feature expressive rbsto, ee Druc Fergeson, "Ambiance, Muscal ‘Spl, and Authentic: Some Thoughts with Respect to Reprodcing Pino Roll,” Tie Panola Journal (1993): 25-81.‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 349 tense: the pianola, Stravinsky’s mechanical paragon of geometrically perfect reproduction, does preserve a simulacrum of the composer’s 1921 intentions ‘with flawless precision. But it enshrines vtalism, not geometry Conclusion ‘At one point in The Philosphy of Modern Music, Theodor Adorno taunts Stravinsky with one of his trademark dialectical reversals: regardless of its stance of modernist objectivity, Le Sacre du printempsis actully complicit with the Romanticism it claims to supersede. ‘The aboriginal Russians bear an uncanny resemblance to Wagner's ancient Germanic Examples—the stage settings for Sacre recall the rocks of the ‘Valkyries. The sound in particular ofthe work is Romantic in origin; the tutti sound of the orchestra has at times a touch of Seraus-lke excessive luxury. Regardless of all theoretical ant-subjectivism, the effect of the whole work is largely a matter of mood, of anxious excitement.” Adorno holds out no prospect that this covert Romanticism will be ex- pressed by tempo fluctuations in performance. He is too busy taking Stravin- sky's geometric aesthetic at face value (“any subjectively expressive flexibility of the beat [is] absent”), so that he can equate it with fascisic violence: “In the ‘sacrificial dance,” ... the most complicated rhythmic patterns restrain the conductor to puppet-like motions. Such rhythmic pattems alternate in the smallest possible units of beat for the sole purpose of impressing upon the bal- lerina and the listeners the immutable rigidity of convulsive blows and shocks.” (This all-too-influential argument has played havoe with Frankfurt School-influenced cultural studies of minimalism, jazz, and rock.) By a re- ‘markable coincidence, in a later passage setting up Stravinsky and Mahler as antipodes, he discusses R184-86 of the “Danse sacrale,” the climactic passage 66, Thatis why the only *hixoicly informed” resoring of the Rite wo date remains an in teresting but ulate filed cust. Conductor Benjamin Zander thought to achive “authen tiiy” by reproducing dhe exact tempos from the Pleyea piano rol in performance with the Boston Philharmonic (Innovative Music Masters MCD 25, 1989). What he dil was provide fore ofthe faved reasoning thats sre to plage authentic Rite of Spring. He ignored the {sues of rll speed and acceleration discussed above and simply chose the fstest temp forthe “Dans sacral" he could find. The hypothesis (OF cour) is that this fer tempo was “what ‘Stavinsky waned.” Nevermind tat, 25 pint ut above, there nota shred of documentary ‘evidence that Stavinkyhinsef ever wanted anything other than = 126, Zander has fled the carly music movement imperative to Mate It New by Mabing I Fuser Even mere stmpoma- cally he ignores the actual tempo creations onthe rail. Once he has bis nef tempo, Ne holds oe grimly and gromewically 0 the end. f we ae going to hallow these piano rol = dence ofthe campos’ intensons, ought we no itn to them ll the way through? 167. Theodoe W. Adorno, Pnlophy of Mader» Muss, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomser (New York: Continua: 1985), 160-61,350 Journal of the American Musicological Society that tured out to be the crux of our argument here. Adomo holds this “can- tilena” (his term) to be a rare “moment of respectability”: Stravinsky, normally so incapable of teleological form, for once provides the culminating release of tension that Mahler's symphonis struggle toward so consistently. Except, of course, itis not rally, after al, so very satisfing: There isa tendency to become enthusiastic about a wicked man if he once does something respectable; in lke manner, such music is praised for its moments of respectability. In rare exceptional cass of cleverness, [Stravinsky] music per mits conclusion lke sections [abesangitbnliche Srophen] which, by contrast— precisely by virtue oftheir raity—border on ethereal bis. An example is the Intensive final “cantilena” from the “Danse de 'Elue” (from number 184 to 186), before the last entrance of the rondo theme. But even bere, where the rio- ins ave permitted to “ing themselves out” for 2 moment, the same, unchanged rigid stinato remains inthe accompaniment. [Stravinsky's] Algesangisa fake Adomo, vitalist through and through, scathing critic of the historical per- formance movement's sewing-machine Bach, cannot conceive of a satisfVing release of tension without some kind of agogic accent and thus at least some fluidity in the geometric pulse around R186. Nor can he conceive of the Rite allowing it. Looking at Strvinsky’s 1929 score, he sees all oo wel the unvary ing monometric pulse of the accompanimental ostinatos, and the minatory tempo equivalencies. The composer’s geometric intentions are damningly clear. But Adomo should have listened to some recordings of this spot: he would have heard more than a few Mahlerian Durchbriice. Searching in ‘Stravinsky's ballet forthe temporal fluidity of a post-Wagnerian tone poem, he ‘was in the company of a phalanx of early conductors of the Rite. They all dd ‘whatever it took to make the climax of the “Danse sacrale” a real teleological climax, much closer to Mahler than anything Stravinsky ever authorized, ‘And what of the early music movement, marching resolutely into the ever ‘more recent past? The historical information surrounding the Rite holds out lirde prospect ofthe comforting authenticity that comes from being conspicu- ‘ously “historically informed.” The documentary evidence shows not only that Stravinsky never sanctioned romantic tempo modification in this music, but that everybody, including even Stravinsky early on, probably did it anyway. ‘And if we want our performances of the Rite to be “historical,” we may well have to work to recapture and reproduce the vitalist misreadings of Koussevtsky, Monteux, and their compatriots. We will have to give up once and for ll on the idea that we can be authentie—or authentcist. ‘We will have to play the Rite wrong, 68, Ibid, 154, 155, 195-96 n. 42. 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GOL psd cot st ume gt st lo}smana| (vhwoapis weary “pins ane as sing mL wr ewoRNP 2. DURPIOND OT AAEL,ura 21) psn ds panouue sions = SDE aH 3 SUMP HARE PID HHO | pam sO aN OSB POORER ap pe VED UT ON ray ey oon }no era sa] 7 Fojumar syst pat, gat pad et St fo}‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 355 ‘Table 1d Tempo Matks in 1913 Parstur Compared with Tempos of Monteux’s 1929 Recording Location Partur Monteux 1929 reonting Tablew R13 Tempogint. = 56 4-50-56 R37 Pra.» 152;crosed out by conductor eue22 RAS Tranguile 1~ 108; crossed outby Monteuxand = 108 slowing v0 80 replaced with Andantina j= 88 R49 Sotennte pene 4~80;"80"iscrosed outand = 80 replaced with 69-72" R54 no poco it; Vtw.j= 160;"160" crossed outand d= 160 replaced with “138” SS +2 conductor marks camara R56 Thanguill.J~ 108;crosed out by conductorand —_J= 108 slowing so 80 replaced with Andantina j= 88 RS7 Malo Allegra. = 168;"168" scrosed out and_——_J~ 168! but down to 146 replaced with “146";loweron pageinsame hand: for Cortege “Allegre rgor”™ 1RS9— 4 ritenntopesome, then tempo yes RIL Tanto. =52;°52" scone outand “42” writenin = 44 R72 Pretisima.J~ 168; conductor begins to crom ont = 164-68! “Prestissimo”; writes “rgoreux” below on score “Tables I (opt end of “Action rte des anctzes") R89 Pin mage. |= 60; “poco” is inserted in crayon. 4366 ROL ——_Andantecon mate. 80; conductor has boxed = 100 ‘he “Andante” and written in “és tranguile” R93 Pin masn {= 80; conductor has writen in J=100 “Allegretto tanquille” above mm R97 1-76 RUO2-3 _ poco. goo emendeearelerand conductor ‘no Ferma! has boxed “acelerando™;frmata sed over ast beat of 108 11/A bar J= 120; conductor has divided the 11 beats deta Banded R108 Je135-44 RII7~1 molto alargande ‘esl then iste, 144-50 RIZ1_ = conductor adds fermatain empry bar . RI28 Tenia. d= 52 Je66 [Note Se Tae 2 “Danse wr”my 2 s0WU wo VOSMeT xy Sq PAI Vy na gen 20 a) eS OrSet Wrovpoe ou ge-set__ rot sprorpore ow 91 ope ot one ovpee worn Soo pe avg “PIED an, 2 SoD popIONTY 3wG 7 AE,"The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 357 ‘able 3 Proportions Anais of Te Rit of Spins, yl Rall Nine (eyels/Ouéla 437, 1) The roll ‘Location Actual perforations pe bea unit RID 2)=24 punches Rua 1 = 30 punches (~20% deceleration) R80 2-28 punches RISE 7 36 punches (~22% deceleration) R86 De 24 punches b Approximate metronome mars ifroll teavelsat 7 feet per minute Location ‘Accelerating (no compensstion __Metronomic (pianolist foc roll speed-up)" compensates fo ol speed-up) Rua )=150 d-148 Rua dens dene Riso! dri38 de138 Rust 3-120 J 107 Ruse de169 de «Approximate metronome mats iol teavel at 65 fet per minute Location Accelerating® ‘Meronomic Ru do 140 d=140 RI74 Tens d-u10 Riso dea38 deus RIS Js107 J e99) Rus deas9 dli39 ‘Aca mesuremens dae by Rex Lawson, London, Egan, Oxober 1996, onthe olin pose ‘The Rite wa cles on ine Pleyel az mmbered 8429-8437, (Se Lavin, oStviy andthe aol Corns Sine, Pae, 299.) “The relson berneen punches and enpo ir omens ounteriite. Pano punch hos eof ed Jeng th more punches pres un, the eae te aca length fol coespnsng Een ttc fore. Sine the roll move (basal) a Bed ped wl beth longer pte of ol mare Sane layed: Thar more punch per beat ea sow ele ten “Apianola rofl wo ay on own, wl ped up gradual co siti wegh he rol mone onto {he akeap red Ia ee i waned deny onto the ol by panching, he seceteando ly sud ie The panos can compere fr he ped pings hand iver and nd oped” onthe Panola to heaped tempo, The column sbore marked “Accating” show the appoinat spo a ‘he Ritts ran ons om those med "Metronon show he apprise rela the [aol ares to use te temp cones to malta steal ol ped "this seon eo shor gen accurate tempo mestremen al mame prosonal ‘Th clumn aromas Rex Lams’ 1989 reason on Innovate Mase Mass MCD2S,358 Journal of the American Musicological Society Works Cited ‘Toe Rite of Spring: Primary Sources Manuscripts ad printed scores A Sketchbook, 1911-13. Available in facsimile as Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring: Sketches 1911-13, edited and with commentaries by Robert Craft (London: Faber and Faber, 1969), BParticell (autograph short score), 1912. Paul Sacher Stifung, Basel. Catalogue 014-0008. C. Partitur (autograph fill score), 1912, Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basel. Catalogue 014-0010. D. 1913 Four-Hand Piano Score. Berlin-Moscow-St. Petersburg: Russsche Musik-Verlag RMV 196, Identical with reprint in Igor Stravinsky, “Petrushka” ‘and “The Rite of Spring” for Piano Four Hands or Two Pianos (Mineola, N.Y. Dover, 1990). Suavinsky’s personal copy s owned by the Paul Sacher Srftng. E, 1922 Pocket Score. Berlin: Russsche Musik-Verlag RMV 197b, Stravinsky's ‘wo personal copies are owned by the Paul Sacher Stiftung, 1922 Conductor's Score. Berlin: Russische Musik-Verlag RMV 197, Stavin- sky’s personal copy is owned by the Paul Sacher Stiftung. F2, 1929 “Revised First Editions” of 1922 Pocket and Conductor's Scores. Republished by Russische Musik-Verlg with the same plate numbers as RMV 197/197b. Although these are the texts in which the Rize first achieves is “stand: ard” form, there is no record of Stravinsky having put markings in any copy ofthis. edition G._ 1943 Revision of the “Danse sacrale.” New York: Associated Music Publishers, ‘unnumbered, 1945, H. 1948 Conductor's Score. London: Boosey and Hawkes B&H 16333, Stravinsky's personal copy is owned by the Paul SacherSeiftung 1. 1967 Conductor's Score. London: Boosey and Hawkes B&H 19441 Receptors Igor Stravinsky, Piano Roll (Paris, 1921). leyla/Odéola Piano Rolls 8429- 37, Performed in 1989 by Rex Lawson, pianolit, on Innovative Music Masters McD 25, B. Pierre Monteux, Grand Orchestre Symphonique [de Paris} (Pais, 1929) Gramophone W1016-1019, Rerlesed on Peatl GEMM CD 9829, Liner notes by Lous Gy C. Igor Stravinsky, Orchestre Symphonique (de Pais] (Paris, 1929), Columbia 1X119-123, Rereleased on Pearl GEMM CD 9834. Liner notes by Louis Cyr D. Leopold Stokowski, Philadelphia Orchestra (Philadephia, 1930). RCA.Victor 727-30. Rerlesed on RCA-Victor 09026 613942, E, Igor Stravinsky, Phiharmonic-Symphony of New York (New York, 1940). Columbia 11375-78-D. Rercleased ss Pickvck GLRS 107 and a Pearl GEMM cDs9202, FEmest Ansermet, Orchestre de la Suisse-Romande (Geneva, 1957) London LL 1730, Rerlezsed on Lonlon 443 4672. G. Leonard Bernstein, New York Philharmonic (New York, 1958). Rereleaed on Sony Classical SMK 47629,‘The Forging of a Modernist Performing Style 359 1H, Sir Bugene Goosens, London Symphony Orchestra (London, 1960). Everest SDBR 3047. Rereleased on Everest EVC 9002. L Igor Stravinsky, Columbia Symphony Orchestra (Hollywood, 1960). Rereleased on Columbia Masterworks MK 42433, J. Benjamin Zander, Boston Philharmonic (Boston, 1989). Innovative Music Masters MCD 25. Secondary Sources ‘Acozll, Joan, and Lynn Garafola, “Rts of Speing.” Balle: Review 20, no. 2 (1992). ‘Adorno, Theodor W. 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Abstract It is only recently that we have begun to consider modemist performing style —especially its brisk, unyielding tempos and abhorrence of “expressive” rubato—as a historical phenomenon. Much of the credit (or blame) for this style has been ascribed to the composer of The Rite of Spring; Richard Taru- skin argues that “all truly modern musical performance .... treats the music performed as fit were composed—or at least performed—by Stravinsky.” But the performing history of the Rite shows that the composer struggled might- ily to get his own music played “as if composed by Stravinsky.” Early interpre- tations of the Rite were slower and more lastic—more “romantic” —than the ‘composer wanted, Focusing on the “Danse sacrale,” this paper examines the battles over ‘tempo and rubato evidenced by historic recordings, piano rolls, and published documents. It also considers the unpublished compositional and performing ‘materials forthe Rite Stravinsky’ autograph short and fall scores, and his an notated personal copies of the 1913 piano reduction and the 1922 and 1948 full scores, The record indicates (1) that tempo and pacing of many sections of362. Journal of the American Musicological Society the Rite were radically rethought between sketch and 1922 printed score; (2) that someone (Picrre Monteux?) indicated rubatos and changed many of Stravinsky's metronome marks on the autograph; (3) that early performances of the “Danse sacrale” featured unwritten tempo modifications for dramatic effect; and (4) that Stravinsky had to work for decades to fix in his score the rigoroso that has become the characteristic performing tempo of our time.