by Richard Todd
In the spring, a young man's fancy turns to love, or so the sayers of sayings would have us believe. When Igor Stravinsky wrote The Rite of Spring, he had already lived three of the nine decades that came between his birth and death, but was doubtless young enough that the elemental passions represented in his best-known work came naturally to him.
Not that the music is about love exactly. Subtitled Pictures of Pagan Russia, and written in collaboration with the archeologist Nicolay Roerich, the score was intended to accompany a ballet representing a fertility rite among primitive tribespeople. It is sensuous in its elemental way, but utterly independent of any sense of romance or sentimentality. Indeed, its first audience found it brutal and cacophonous. Its premiere was greeted with boos and catcalls so loud that the ballet director had to shout its rhythms to the dancers from the stage wing. They could seldom hear the orchestra.
One wonders whether that first audience was enraged exclusively by the musical techniques, very modern indeed in 1913, or whether the good ballet lovers of Paris might also have been offended and even frightened by the blunt amorality of the natural order evoked in Stravinsky's music. It is still danced with some regularity, but The Rite of Spring is better known nowadays as a concert piece and better still through recordings. The ballet scenario is undeniably erotic in its primitive way, but not particularly instructive to the modern listener who wants to incorporate the music into her or his sexual activities.
Briefly, it involves the gathering of tribes, exuberant games and rituals, the adoration of the earth and that kind of thing. It culminates in a mystical dance by the maidens of the tribe. They work themselves into a trance and, suddenly, one of them breaks away from the circle. She is the Chosen One who dances in a frenzy and, with the last shattering chord of the score, falls dead. The earth is appeased and one imagines that the people and their soil will be fertile for another year.
Taken on those terms, this is not a work of art that speaks to our day-to-day sex lives, at least not for anyone I know. Confronted with the savage might of such primordial fears and lusts, we can feel a little silly about the games of dominance and submission some of us like to play. Our latex fetishes and safe words, our epicurean expertise in lubricants and toys don't seem to count for much in such a context. And let's face it, fertility is usually the last thing most of us want to think of during sex. But Stravinsky's music is not so much descriptive as evocative. Parts of the score can appeal to the most modern sexual sensibilities, provided that one brings sufficient imagination and a lusty sense of adventure to the bear.
It's unlikely that a composer has ever written a major work with the idea that it would accompany a couple's lovemaking. One can be extra certain in the case of Stravinsky's most famous score. It requires an orchestra of about a hundred players, and was written long before the bedroom stereo came into vogue. Still, its primaeval passions suggest any number of possible scenarios which, for once, I'll leave to the imagination of the listener.
I always assumed that Part II,The Exalted Sacrifice, and especially the Danse sacrale with which it ends, would be way over the top for lovemaking music. Then, just a few years ago, I met a woman who told me that she and her husband had used the whole second half of the score that way many times. I shrugged as though to say, "Doesn't everyone?" In truth, I was impressed; I daresay you will be too if you listen to the music. After a considerable amount of study and contemplation, I could begin to understand how it might work if one had the right instincts and a profoundly trusting relationship. One would also have to be 20 or 30 years younger than I am, but that's another story.
Personally, the only part of the score that I've ever used for the purpose at hand is the climax of Part I, beginning with The Ritual of the Two Rival Tribes or even The Procession of the Wisest Elder. Granted, the titles are not very erotic and, truth to tell, not everyone will find the music a turn on. One could hear a lot of brutality in it if one were so inclined. This is not foreplay music. There is little tenderness in it. But it would suit lovers who are already worked up and wanting to come together in a few moments of elemental passion. Some will listen to it and hear its erotic potential, but not have a partner who can also hear the potential. Well, who among us has not spent happy hours alone, pursuing our sexual imaginings? As often as not, that's what fantasies and phantasies are all about.
The Part II Woman, as I affectionately remember her, declined to go into any details about how the music and sex went together in her life, but she did enthusiastically endorse the recording by Claudio Abbado on Deutsche Grammphon. I'm inclined to agree that it has the best combination of sensuality, colour and fire of any I know. A little less sensual and more driven, any of Bernstein's recordings will do nicely, with a special nod going to a recent Sony rerelease of his version with the London Symphony. In fact, most currently available recordings will answer well enough. Avoid those by Boulez and Dutoit. They are excellent in their own ways, but neither conductor interprets the score in such a way that its erotic potential is well developed.
With the right person at the right moment, The Rite of Spring can inspire some truly amazing sex. One word of advice, though: Don't try it on a first date.
A brief sample of Rite of Spring (.8 MB)
