Michael wrote:

>It is popular to call whatever occurred a riot.  I thought I had read
>that it was really a rather violent argument that erupted between different
>groups of people as they were leaving the performance, and that it was
>about the music.  Has anyone more detailed information about this?

This is what the composer wrote (almost 50 years later) of the opening:

   That the first performance of Le Sacre du printemps was attended by
   a scandal must be known to everybody.  Strange as it may seem, however,
   I was unprepared for the explosion myself.  The reactions of the
   musicians who came to the orchestra rehearsals were without intimation
   of it, [Debussy, in spite of his later, ambivalent attitude ("C'est
   une musique negre"), was enthusiastic at the rehearsals.  Indeed, he
   might well have been pleased, for Le Sacre owes more to Debussy than
   to anyone else except myself, the best music (the Prelude) as well
   as the weakest (the music of the second part between the first entrance
   of the two solo trumpets and the Glorification de l'Elue).] and the
   stage spectacle did not appear likely to precipitate a riot.  The
   dancers had been rehearsing for months and they knew what they were
   doing, even though what they were doing often had nothing to do with
   the music.  "I will count to forty while you play," Nijinsky would
   say to me, "and we will see where we come out." He could not understand
   that though we might at some point come out together, this did not
   necessarily mean we had been together on the way.  The dancers followed
   Nijinsky's beat, too, rather than the musical beat.  Nijinsky counted
   in Russian, of course, and as Russian numbers above ten are polysyllabic
   - eighteen, for example, is vosemnadsat - in fast-tempo movements
   neither he nor they could keep pace with the music.

   Mild protests against the music could be heard from the very beginning
   of the performance. Then, when the curtain opened on the group of
   knock-kneed and long-braided Lolitas jumping up and down (Dance des
   adolescents), the storm broke. Cries of "Ta gueule" came from behind
   me. I heard Florent Schmitt shout "Taisez-vous garces du seizieme";
   the "garces" of the sixteenth arrondissement were, of course, the
   most elegant ladies in Paris.  The uproar continued, however, and a
   few minutes later I left the hall in a rage; I was sitting on the
   right near the orchestra, and I remember slamming the door. I have
   never again been that angry. The music was so familiar to me; I loved
   it, and I could not understand why people who had not yet heard it
   wanted to protest in advance. I arrived in a fury backstage, where
   I saw Diaghilev flicking the house lights in a last effort to quiet
   the hall. For the rest of the performance I stood in the wings behind
   Nijinsky holding the tails of his frac, while he stood on a chair
   shouting numbers to the dancers, like a coxswain.

   I remember with more pleasure the first concert performance of Le
   Sacre the following year, a triumph such as composers rarely enjoy.
   Whether the acclaim of the young people who filled the Casino de
   Paris was more than a mere reversal of the verdict of bad manners of
   a year before is not for me to say, but it seemed to me much more.
   (Incidentally, Saint-Saens, a sharp little man - I had a good view
   of him - attended this performance; I do not know who invented the
   story that he was present at, but soon walked out of, the premiere.)
   Monteux again conducted, and the musical realization was ideal.
   Monteux was doubtful about programming Le Sacre,  in view of the
   original scandal, but he had enjoyed a great success with a performance
   of Petroushka meanwhile, and he was proud of his prestige among
   avant-garde musicians; I argued, too, that Le Sacre was more symphonic,
   more of a concert piece, than Petroushka. Let me say here that Monteux,
   almost alone among conductors, never cheapened Le Sacre or looked
   for his own glory in it, and that he continued to play it all his
   life with the greatest fidelity. At the end of the Danse sacrale the
   entire audience jumped to its feet and cheered. I came on stage and
   hugged Monteux, who was a river of perspiration; it was the saltiest
   hug of my life. A crowd swept backstage.  I was hoisted to anonymous
   shoulders and carried into the street and up to the Place de la
   Trinite. A policeman pushed his way to my side in an effort to protect
   me, and it was this guardian of the law Diaghilev later fixed upon
   in his accounts of the story: "Our little Igor now requires police
   escorts out of his concerts, like a prize fighter." Diaghilev was
   always verdantly envious of any success of mine outside of his Ballet.

   I have seen only one stage version of Le Sacre since 1913, and that
   was Diaghilev's 1921 revival. Music and dancing were better coordinated
   this time than in 1913, but the choreography (by Massine) was too
   gymnastic and Dalcrozean to please me. I realized then that I prefer
   Le Sacre as a concert piece.

     - Stravinsky, Igor and Craft, Robert; Expositions and Developments;
       Doubleday, NY; 1962; pp. 163-165.

Gene Halaburt <[log in to unmask]>