I could listen to people talk about the rite of spring for hours. There’s a great story about another composer sight-reading an early draft with Stravinsky, you probably know that one.

After all these years I didn't know that! Thank you.

Stravinsky has used melodies from Russian folklore in his earlier ballets (Firebird and Petrouschka). In the former, the theme of the Princesses' Chorale is subtly borrowed from the Sinfonietta on Russian Themes in A minor Op. 31 by his former teacher Rimsky-Korsakov. Musical literature of all times contains many quotations from folk themes. Thank you for this information, it was very useful.

The intro melody was taken from a three volume set of marriage songs collected in Lithuania by the Catholic priest Antanas Juška between 1865 and 1870, that contains over a thousand melodies. Part of the material was published in Krokau in 1900. For more information, I am waiting to see André Schaefer’s book ,,Stravinsky” published in 1930s. He knew Stravinsky, was a French ethno-musicologist, a number of plates from A Juška’s collection are included in his study. Another contemporary of IS was Lawrence Morton that published ,,Footnotes to Stravinsky Studies: ‘Le Sacre du printemps’. Published in 1979 Tempo. Available in some libraries. A couple of scholarly sources. Performance of the song itself is on KZfaq. Type in ,,Evaldas Vyčinas, Šventasis pavasaris’’. Skip the intro and you will hear a great performance of the song.

Another famous Russian melody based, not on a folk tune but a popular song, is the opening of Rach 3. The song is "Yamshchik ne goniy loshadiey", about a man in a gloomy mood, having just broken up with his girl, sitting in a horse-drawn taxi and is in no hurry to get home. The opening line is: Driver, don't whip the horses. Rach changes the rhythm a bit, but the first eight notes are the same. The song goes "da-Dum-dara-Dum-dara-Day". Rach makes it "dum-Dara-dum-dara-dum-Day"

Stravinsky may not have written the opening melody, but his choice of bassoon in a high range and the rhythms he chose were absolutely brilliant!

Very interesting history lesson! Thanks!

Sneaky Stravinsky!

"I'm not an English horn! This is too high for me!" Thanks for a very interesting video.

Folk music is possibly the most well-referred to source of any musical source. It's massive. Possibly bigger as a source than nature-sounds. From my point of view, Stravinsky did write that music. He based it on a folk song. Perfectly fine and valid and normal. He certainly was not breaking the law when he used that Lithuanian folk song as inspiration. It would've been out of copyright at the time, (and the standardization of international copyright would've still been under consideration at that time anyway I reckon.) As far as Stravinsky secretly inserting some Lithuanian folk song into his music on purpose to irk the Russian authorities and/or show solidarity with Lithuania - I highly doubt it. It's a nice idea, but I reckon he found the music, liked it, and if he happened to also discover the music's traditional use too, he'd've thought that would be particularly appropriate - as you've mentioned - for The Rite. Anyway, still an interesting wee video here, so thanks for researching and uploading.

4:00 It's interesting to hear you say this. As far as I understand it, Stravinsky was a lifelong staunch supporter of the monarchy and Russian empire and his politics were pretty far-right. So, if he was expressing secret support for Lithuanian independence, it would be surprising.

It's kind of funny that Stravinsky only admitted to taking this one tune because from what I recall reading in the Cambridge Handbook for The Rite of Spring, not only are there others he took, but they appear in the same sequential order in The Rite as they did in the book that he took them all from (i.e. he went from page to page inserting the melody featured on the page into the Rite for about half of the first act before he seemed to finally get tired of it (or lost access to the book) and started writing his own imitations) So he basically didn't even try to be subtle about it. But Stravinsky was also notoriously dishonest about himself and his music, likely because he made more effort than most composers of the time to cultivate a certain public image of himself. So it's on brand.

I had no idea.

Really interesting insight on this!

I remember the former conductor of the Joffrey Ballet commenting about this score: “there isn’t an original melody in the entire piece!”

swan you say. just like. just like. just like popular ballet swan lake-- [i am shot]

What inspired IS was a poem by Gorodecky that was quite famous when it was published. It is gruesome, see translation and explanation of L. Morton. Not polite stuff, more like a precursor or maybe influenced by the atrocities that western civilization wrought on Africa, Asia, the Americas and finally on itself by Communists and Nazis. Very timely stuff, even today. After reading it, you will have lost your innocence. ,,Sacre” is not the same.

I don't know if that's true or not, but Stravinsky supposedly said that good composers do not imitate, they steal. If that's true, I guess he was referring to something like this, "stealing" existing melody and then developing it further. Btw, I don't think that makes Stravinsky any less accomplished as a composer.

As the Rite of Spring passed from being a modernist challenge into the standard repertoire, this bassoon solo became a "concerto" moment for its players. It has become much too slow and drawn out in many recordings.

A Russian folk song… but whoever wrote that couldn’t have written the Rite…

I'm not that familiar with Stravinksy but all my musical heroes from Beethoven to Bach to The Beatles to Deep Purple have occasionally ripped off music.

Honestly, with such a sophisticated analysis--the cutscenes appear to be childish, distracting, and annoying--Ruining the feel of the info here.

Interesting content. I don't know why you have to dumb it down with all those silly clips from American popular culture, which for me are just distracting and pointless, and the reason I won't be subscribing any time soon.