MHL 603 – PREPARATION 1
(F-10)
Due 6
Sept. via Email
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.[1] Also listen to Symphonies of Wind
Instruments. 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
Edward T. Cone, “Stravinsky: The
progress of a method,” in Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky
(ed. Boretz and Cone, 1972), 155-194.
There are
xeroxes of the articles in a binder in the library and PDFs on the website. Scores to the three works are available in
the library and online.[2]
Write a
paragraph or two 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. 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. 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? Is Petrushka similarly "dehumanizing"?
3. Cone discusses “interruption” and “stratification”
in Symphonies of Wind Instruments and
two other pieces. What does he mean by this? Do hear “interruption” and/or “stratification”
in Petrushka? In Rite
of Spring? Give examples by rehearsal number or bar number. How does the
technique differ between the three pieces?
Send your
paragraph (or two) to john.spitzer@notes.sfcm.edu
by Monday 6 Sept. at
[1] 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.
[2] The score on reserve doesn’t
correspond exactly to the instrumentation on the recording. The score is the 1947 revision, while the
recording is the original 1920 version.