The Rite of Spring

The Rite unfolds in two large parts, each depicting a pagan ritual welcoming spring, and each built from a chain of short, sharply contrasted dance episodes rather than a smooth melodic flow.

Part One, "Adoration of the Earth," opens with a high, straining bassoon melody that seems to grow out of silence, evoking the earth waking up. This gives way to the famous "Augurs of Spring," where the strings hammer a single harsh chord in a relentless, irregular pulse, accented in unpredictable places, under stamping woodwinds and brass. Later dances include a game of rival tribes and a solemn procession for a wise elder, building to a wild "Dance of the Earth" that ends the first part in a sudden, crashing halt.

Part Two, "The Sacrifice," is darker and more static at first, opening with a hushed, mysterious night scene for muted strings. Young girls circle a chosen victim, and the music slowly gathers tension through repeated cells and shifting meters. The final "Sacrificial Dance" is the piece's most violent passage: an unpredictable, jagged rhythm played by the full orchestra, ending abruptly, without a soft close.

Listen for the way rhythm, not melody, drives everything, and for instruments used in unusual registers, especially that opening bassoon, pushed unusually high.

Stravinsky composed The Rite of Spring for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, with choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky, imagining a suite of scenes from pagan Russia culminating in the ritual sacrifice of a young girl chosen to dance herself to death. Its premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on May 29, 1913 provoked one of the most famous disturbances in music history, with the audience reacting so loudly to the music and stamping choreography that dancers reportedly could barely hear the orchestra. Within a year, concert performances without the staging were already winning over audiences, and the score's harsh dissonances, irregular rhythms, and inventive orchestration soon reshaped how composers thought about orchestral sound. It has remained a cornerstone of the orchestral repertoire and a frequent showcase for orchestras' rhythmic precision.