We are excited for you and your students to join us at the Houston Symphony this weekend. The concert you are attending is part of a two-week festival called Riots & Scandals: Music that Rocked the World. Houston Symphony Music Director, Juraj Vačuha has put together an exciting program highlighting works that scandalized the artistic establishments of their day.
Here are a few ideas for students to experience portions of the music before the concert, either on their own or as a class:
Among other exciting works like Sensemayá by Silvestre Revueltas and Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concert No. 1, this concert will include Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. Stravinsky was a neoclassical composer, meaning that he took elements from music before his time (Classical and Baroque periods) that he combined with elements that made it different or new (“neo”). In the case of his ballet, The Rite of Spring, which premiered in Paris 110 years ago in 1913, these new elements were so unexpected and shocking that it caused the audience to shout out “turn up the lights” and riot during the performance.
The story-line for the ballet was extremely provocative for the day, along with the choreography and costumes, but the music was controversial in and of itself. The audience of the day was accustomed that they could find more predictable - including arcs of phrases, harmonies, meter, accents, and instrument ranges. Get ready for the unexpected journey Stravinsky takes us on through his music, The Rite of Spring!
Here are a few ideas for students to experience portions of the music before the concert, either on their own or as a class:
- Find and play your own part!
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- Take a look at the music for your instrument! This music is in the public domain, so the parts can be found on IMSLP. Locate your part here: https://imslp.org/wiki/The_Rite_of_Spring,_K015_(Stravinsky,_Igor)
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- From the IMSLP link above, scroll down to the “Sheet Music” section of the page and then click on the “Parts (15)” tab. Underneath the flute parts, click “14 more” to expand to all of the other instrument parts, and click on your instrument.
- No need to subscribe. wait 15 seconds, and then a hyperlink that says “Click here to continue your download” will appear at the top of the page. Click on that hyperlink to download your part.
- Once you get your part, try playing a few excerpts on your own! We recommend section [52]-[54], as it's a portion that the entire orchestra plays together (tutti). This portion of the piece can be found at 10:31 of this performance recording
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- Play a section of the music as an ensemble
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- Play a section of The Rite of Spring as an ensemble. We recommend Episode 4: Round – Dance of Spring between sections [52] and [54]. Don’t worry about missing instruments, just use the instrumentation you have for this section. Talk about your experience and what makes this particular section challenging and unexpected.
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- The art of accents
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- What are ways that accents can be used to make music more exciting or unexpected? The short video below incorporates an excerpt from The Rite of Spring exploring this very concept. Look out for the musicians on this video during the concert - you'll see Community-Embedded Musicians David Connor in the bass section and Rainel Joubert in the violin section
We'll see you at the concert! If you see any Houston Symphony musicians around Jones Hall, feel free to say "hi" or ask them questions, like "what part of the music are you most excited a