Composition of the century

The Paul Sacher Foundation Basel is celebrating the centenary of the ballet, which was completed on March 8 (February 23) 1913 in Clarens on Lake Geneva and premiered in Paris on May 29, with a literally weighty anniversary edition in three volumes. In addition to facsimiles of the fair copy of the score and the piano version for four hands, it has published a Avatar of Modernity. The Rite of Spring Reconsidered titled study volume with 18 richly illustrated essays in English. In the collection of texts edited by Hermann Danuser and Heidy Zimmermann, studies on the genesis and reception history alternate with those on the mythical and folkloristic sources of this "composition of the century". Although the visual material is also full of discoveries, it is irritating that the program of the premiere is shown twice, but there are no illustrations of the first editions of the four-hand piano version (1913) and the score (1921), which was published later due to the war.

In his introduction to the reproduction of Stravinsky's fair copy of the score in a large format of 45 x 34 cm, Ulrich Mosch also meticulously discusses the various layers of subsequent corrections, the later metronome markings and tempo markings. He even provides information about the lost copyist's copy which the conductor Pierre Monteux used for the premiere, taking into account the corrections entered by the composer during rehearsals. In 1974, Paul Sacher acquired the fair copy of the score in black ink, the most important source for the revolutionary masterpiece, directly from Stravinsky's widow. The composer had made numerous changes since the rehearsals for the premiere until he published the final version in 1967 after a lengthy revision process. Astonishingly, he lent the fair copy, which had become an irreplaceable hand copy, to Vladimir Golschmann and Ernest Ansermet in 1920/21 when they conducted the second ballet production after the premiere.

The editor even provides information about blue entries by conductors and red markings by employees of the Russian Music Publishers (Berlin), about a page bound in the wrong direction and about the two restorations that the top-class manuscript had to undergo.

Stravinsky's handwritten arrangement for piano four hands had already appeared in print a few days before the premiere of the orchestral score in Sergei Koussevitsky's Russian Music Publishing House. The manuscript, which has survived in an unusual form and is still in the possession of Stravinsky's descendants, is made up of two collaborative parts. The first is available in a copyist's transcription, the second in the composer's neat, crisp fair copy with the annotation "Réduction pour piano à 4 mains par l'auteur". The editor Felix Meyer, director of the Paul Sacher Foundation, not only describes the "previews" of the ballet at the piano and the history of this version, which has been recorded several times, but also the many subsequent corrections in a detailed and excitingly descriptive manner.

Igor Stravinsky, Le Sacre du printemps, anniversary edition, facsimile of the fair copy of the score, edited by Ulrich Mosch, 146 p., € 175.00, Verlag Paul Sacher Stiftung (Boosey & Hawkes), London 2013, ISBN 978-0-85162-813-4 (out of print)

id., facsimile of the piano version for four hands, edited by Felix Meyer, 118 p., € 99.00, ISBN 978-0-85162-822-6

Avator of Modernity. The Rite of Spring Reconsidered, ed. by Hermann Danuser and Heidy Zimmermann, 502 p., € 79.00, ISBN 978-0-85162-823-3