The Firebird: Finale

The finale opens quietly with a warm horn solo playing a slow, folk-like tune, the kind of melody that sounds like it has existed forever, though Stravinsky wrote it himself in the style of Russian folk song. That tune is passed gently through the woodwinds and strings, gathering warmth but staying hushed at first.

From there the music begins a long, patient climb. The same melody keeps returning, each time in a higher register, with more instruments joining and the volume slowly swelling. There are no big surprises or sudden shifts in this stretch, just steady accumulation, like a sunrise.

The buildup arrives at a broad, triumphant statement of the theme in the full orchestra, brass blazing, strings soaring, over a strong, steady pulse. Listen for the shift partway through into an irregular, off-kilter meter that gives the final pages a subtle limp or lurch, even as the music feels unstoppable.

The piece ends with a series of massive, repeated chords that grow louder and more insistent, driving to a final, decisive cadence. It is the kind of ending that audiences recognize even if they have never heard the rest of the ballet, triumphant, glowing, and unmistakably final.

Stravinsky composed The Firebird in 1909 and 1910 on commission from impresario Sergei Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes in Paris, and its premiere at the Paris Opera on June 25, 1910 made the twenty-seven-year-old composer an overnight sensation. The ballet tells a Russian fairy tale of a magical firebird, a captured prince, and an evil sorcerer, and the finale accompanies the moment the prince is freed and celebrated. Because the full ballet score calls for a very large orchestra and runs nearly fifty minutes, Stravinsky later drew concert suites from it, in 1911, 1919, and 1945, and the finale from the popular 1919 suite became a concert staple in its own right. Orchestras today often program just this closing movement as a bright, crowd-pleasing curtain-raiser or encore, independent of the rest of the ballet.