The Rite Signs: Semiotic Readings One Hundred Years On

• Authors: Nicolas P. McKay
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

One hundred years on from the infamous premiere of The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky’sepoch-defining ballet continues to evoke controversy and contention in both musicological and performance circles. Even to call it a ballet is to overlook, or compound, its problematic identity. Throughout its life span, most audiences will have encountered, valorised and identified the work as a landmark of orchestral musical modernism heard primarily, perhaps even exclusively, in concert halls and on audio recordings with not a dancer, theatre stage or set in sight. Still to this day it thus remains one of music’s more remarkable split person- alities: bifurcated along formalist and contextualist lines by Stravinsky’s ret⁠rospective andopportunistic assertion that he had written “un oeuvre architectonique et non anecdotique.”

Keywords

EN

ballet; music; semiotics; Stravinsky; The Rite of Spring.

• Publisher: Ośrodek Badań Filozoficznych - Centre for Philosophical Research
• Journal: Avant
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 1

Dates

published

2016

online

2018-10-20

Contributors

author

Nicolas P. McKay