‘Twas a hundred years ago today, Sgt. Igor taught the world to play. OK, maybe I shouldn’t quite my day job.
It is the centenary. Or more like, THE Centenary. That is one place/time I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall. The Theatre at the Champs-Elysées is doing a live webcast tonight in celebration. All sorts of fun things have cropped up on the net, including this extremely interesting animation which really puts things into perspective. A word of warning – those of you who have already taken the brown acid might want to wait a bit – it’s trippy. And of course there is the centenary edition of Sacre published by Boosey. Frankly, I can’t believe anyone out there hasn’t already bought this.
I’ve had a long personal history with The Rite. Many years ago at Eastman I performed the 4-hand piano version, although we cheated and used two pianos. This started a long fascination with the piece, and I performed it on piano more than 2 dozen times. Then I conducted it – and I was very disappointed. It didn’t do it for me, I couldn’t find a groove. So after conducting it a few times I put it away.
Recent research has revealed that it was the ballet, as opposed to the music itself, that caused the scandal. Just a few days after the premiere there was a orchestral performance of Sacre which went off without a hitch. But that’s really a false premise. No matter how dramatic the ballet is it is nothing without the music.
Leading up to this centenary has allowed me (and the rest of the music world) to come back to this miraculous piece. Just a few weeks ago I had the joy of performing it with my good friend Christopher O’Riley, and epic battle because we decided to do it on one piano as it is originally written. During the last month I have had as many as four of the orchestral scores open simultaneously. Add the piano version into the mix and I plead guilty to being an anal-retentive nerd.
Now that I am older the piece has even more power. Now that I am older the orchestral version of the piece is even more interesting. The rhythms have always been there but I see the colors now. I would argue that this piece has even more impact today than it did 100 years ago. It would be interesting to hear from composers whether there’s a certain “Beethoven 9” hangover effect with Sacre. I wouldn’t be surprised.
Certainly Sacre has lost none of its impact in the real world. Today is the centenary of its premiere. Today Michelle Bachmann announced she was leaving congress. Coincidence? I think not.