MHL 603 – PREPARATION 1

due 14 Sept. 6pm via email (mason.bates@notes.sfcm.edu)

Please listen to Petrushka (1st Tableau) and Rite of Spring (Part 1) and/or watch them on the DVD or VHS on reserve in the library.* Now read the following articles:

Charles Hamm, “The Genesis of Petrushka,” in Igor Stravinsky, Petrushka, An Authoritative Score . . . (ed. Charles Hamm, 1967), 3-20.

Richard Taruskin, “The Rite of Spring,” in Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, vol. 4 (2005), 170-190.

There are xeroxes of the articles in a binder in the library and PDFs on the website. Scores to the two works are also available in the library and online.

Write one paragraph on one of the following topics.

1. Compare the experience of listening to Petrushka and Rite as concert pieces with the experience of watching them as ballets. Is one experience better than the other? Does the ballet change your experience of the concert piece or vice versa? Is the ballet more important in one piece than the other?

2. Discuss the background of Petrushka and Rite in Russian folklore. What were Stravinsky’s sources? How did he adapt these sources? In what ways are the two ballets similar in their relation to folklore, in what ways different?

3. At the end of his discussion of Rite Taruskin characterizes it as “dehumanizing.” What does he mean by this? Do you agree with this characterization? Does it apply to the music, to the dance or both? If it is dehumanizing, how can it also be “a supremely compelling artistic achievement”?

Don’t try to answer every single question I ask under each heading above! I’m just trying to give you an idea of how you can develop the topic you choose into a paragraph. And remember answer only one question, not all three.

* Petrushka is on VHS, and it’s the first thing on the tape. Rite is on DVD (2 copies), and it’s preceded by a long discussion of how the Joffrey Ballet recreated the original, 1913 choreography. The ballet itself starts around track 6.

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