Apollon musagète

Apollon musagète is a ballet in two tableaux composed between 1927 and 1928 by Igor Stravinsky.

It refers very clearly to antiquity by the topic, but the ballet brings a contemporary situation. It thus acts of a reinvention of the tradition because the inspiration is traditional, even post-baroque, but nevertheless the orchestra is simplified (there are only string instruments). The music is in neoclassical style.

The work

The ballet is a 1927 commission by Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge. The score was given as a gift to the Library of Congress. Like Oedipus Rex, Stravinsky again chooses to take as a starting point a subject in connection with Greek antiquity and retains the topic of Apollo who informs the Muses with their art.

The work lasts approximately 30 minutes.

Instrumentation

The ballet is scored for 8 first violins, 8 second violins, 6 violas, 4 first violoncellos, 4 second violoncellos and 4 double basses.

Composition

Stravinsky writes for only string instruments, replace the contrasting sound heard in Pulcinella by contrasts of volume. As later with Agon, this ballet takes as a starting point the great tradition of the French music of the seventeenth century and particularly of Lully. With its pointed rhythms, the prologue starts with the manner of opening "to the Frenchwoman". There is fundamental rhythm present from the very start of the work, which is transformed by subdivisions of successive values made increasingly complex.

Form

The characters are Apollo and three Muses: Calliope (muse of poetry), Polyhymnia (muse of rhetoric), and Terpsichore (muse of the dance).

The ballet is divided into two tableaux:

• First tableau
  • Prologue: The birth of Apollo
• Second tableau
  • Variation of Apollo
  • Pas d'action (Apollo and the three Muses)
  • Variation of Calliope
  • Variation of Polymnie
  • Variation of Terpsichore
  • Second variation of Apollo
  • Pas de deux
  • Coda
  • Apotheosis

Premiere And Choreography

The ballet premiered in Washington on April 27, 1928 in the choreography of Adolph Bolm and it was performed again by the Ballets Russes in Paris on June 28, 1928 choreographed by George Balanchine, conducted by Stravinsky himself. Balanchine designs a young and wild Apollo, exaltation of the male dance. The work is sober and clear, in perfect adequacy with Stravinsky.

The choreographer changed the costumes little by little, adapting parts and personalities of the new interpreters. Apollon wore a toga with a cut along the diagonal, a belt, and laces. The Muses wear a traditional tutu. The decoration is baroque-style. Therefore, it is a neoclassical ballet.

References

• Translated from the French Wikipedia article

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