The Sunday Musical Offering: Stravinsky ~ THE RITE OF SPRING

Today, the Sunday Musical Offering is dedicated to a friend of mine who passed away last week after a long and hard fought battle with cancer. I met Ann McElligott at the General Seminary where she was on the faculty and I was a first year student. Ann later went on to be awarded a D.D. from General in 2002 and served on the Seminary's Board of Trustees. She led the congregation at St. Paul’s Church in Indianapolis, and later as the Dean of the Cathedral Church of St. Andrew’s in Honolulu, Hawaii. Ann was one of the founders and first advocates for “Journey into Adulthood” and, because of her work in education, was invited to take charge of a seminary in Australia. From there she went to Honolulu as Dean before her retirement to Portland.

We reconnected over a year ago by Facebook and had been in contact with each other right up until her final week of life. She always had an encouraging word for the John 13:34 Blog and recently suggested to include the music of Igor Stravinsky on The Sunday Musical Offering.

The Rite of Spring is a ballet written for the 1913 Paris season of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes company, with choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky and stage designs and costumes by Nikolai Roerich. When the ballet was first performed, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on May 29, 1913, the avant-garde nature of the music and choreography caused a near-riot in the audience. Nevertheless, Stravinsky's music achieved rapid success as a concert piece and became recognized as one of the most influential musical works of the twentieth century.

In honor of my friend and in loving memory, the John 13:34 Blog offers two selections of Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring. In the first example, maestro Leonard Bernstein inspires young musicians of the Scheswig-Holstein Music Festival Orchestra to give a primal, earthy performance of Stravinsky's masterpiece. Ann would have loved this as a musical master passes on his knowledge and foresight to his students. Ann was a gifted teacher - so was Bernstein - and the insight here is remarkable.

The second offering is a 1968 clip of the entire composition of The Rite of Spring under the direction of Igor Markevitch, another gifted teacher, mentor and musician. As a conductor, Markevitch was well respected for his interpretations of the French and Russian repertory and of twentieth-century music. This video is a fine example of his musical gifts.

Love One Another - Brian