The Rite of Spring At 100 by Walsh Stephen; NEFF Severine; CARR Maureen A. & Maureen Carr & Gretchen Horlacher & John Reef

Author:Walsh, Stephen; NEFF, Severine; CARR, Maureen A. & Maureen Carr & Gretchen Horlacher & John Reef
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Published: 2017-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

Musical Topoi for Earthquakes and Fear in the Works of Rameau, Rebel, and Stravinsky

The Earth is the element of the first part of Stravinsky’s ballet. Beginning with the first measure (R-13:1), the “Augurs” chord is sounded multiple times in an ostinato with irregular accents (see Example 16.1).

Multiple repetitions of a sound are a time-honored way of representing phenomena related to the element of Earth, a rhetorical figure actively used in the Baroque and later—up to Franz Joseph Haydn’s Creation. The figure, a kind of vibrato technique, was termed Bebung (i.e., “trembling”) in treatises of the time.8 This musical symbol accounts for hundreds of examples in the music of Haydn, Johann Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Handel, Georg Philipp Telemann, Rameau, Marin Marais, Rebel, Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.9 The figure is used as a topos for the internal shivering and trembling of the soul, for existential fear, or for the literal trembling of the earth.

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