Something Borrowed, Something New Traditions, Cliches, and Symbolism in Igor Stravinsky's Les Noces

Date of Award

2007

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Clark, Maribeth

Keywords

Stravinsky, Igor, Modernism, Choral-Ballet, The Wedding, Svadebka, Diaghilev, Sergei, Russian Art, Russian Music

Area of Concentration

Music

Abstract

Igor Stravinsky's Les Noces depicts Russian peasant life through an avantgarde looking glass. In exile from Russia, Stravinsky found fame composing for the ballets of fellow emigre and founder of the Ballets Russes, Sergei Diaghilev. Their collaboration at the beginning of the twentieth century brought to birth the strangely-mechanical choral-ballet Les Noces. The complexity of Les Noces is a product of its internal contradictions. Despite its minimalist presentation, musically it is layered and colorful. The ballet depicts the wedding traditions of pre-soviet Russian peasants, yet is an ultramodern work. The personal and emotional content represented in Les Noces, or The Wedding, is juxtaposed by a sense of dehumanization. This final contradiction depersonalizes the ballet characters, producing cliches of Russian peasant tradition. Through these idealized stereotypes, Stravinsky confronts the modern world with the reality of its estrangement with history.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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