The Ellington Century (17 page)

We can designate the inherited technique of irregular meter as “rhythmic tool number one” and note its handiwork throughout
Le sacre
, most obviously at the opening of “Spring Rounds,” in which a simple melody unfolds in groupings of
,
, and
, quite similar in effect to a Mussorgsky Promenade. This technique of rhythmic variation applies to melody; according to Taruskin, it springs from prosody, and we might compare it to vers libre, the poetic technique that uses a different meter in every line. But melody usually needs an accompaniment; Stravinsky used two additional rhythmic tools for this purpose.
⁵⁰
In the main part of the “Spring Rounds” a syncopated figure in the bass interlocks with the melodic phrases and expands or contracts along with them: rhythmic tool number two. This technique of synchronized irregularity also served Stravinsky's purpose in the far more irregular “Naming and Honoring of the Chosen One” and the “Sacrificial Dance,” in which the melody bounces off changing accents in the bass.

Stravinsky had a far more devious rhythmic tool (number three) in his kit. Under the
irregular
metric groups of the melody
in the “Mystic Circle of the Young Girls,” he placed a
regular
pattern of four eighth notes that goes out of phase with the melody midway through. The clash between a regular ostinato and a changing accentual pattern occurs throughout Stravinsky's oeuvre, from the “Royal March” in
Histoire
to the “Bransle Gay” in
Agon.
Stravinsky often chose to notate this type-three rhythmic counterpoint in a way that emphasized the irregular element rather than the steady one. This notation calls attention to the distinct characters of the two rhythmic elements but makes it harder to see how they synchronize. We might say that it makes the “beat” secondary to the “rhythm.”

Superimposed rhythmic patterns, some more regular than others, produce some of the most exciting moments in
Le sacre;
I'm thinking in particular of the phrases after rehearsal number 28 in “Les augures
printaniers,” in which two ostinatos, one of four eighth notes, the other of six, appear under two melodies, a fast one in the high winds, a slower one in the trumpets, whose phrase lengths vary in the Mussorgskian way; and the even more complicated layering at rehearsal number 67, “Procession of the Oldest and Wisest One,” particularly at 70, when the guiro enters in a 4:3 ratio with the bass—but since when was the guiro a Russian instrument? Or—to ask a bigger question—what connects these polyrhythmic textures to the idioms of any of Stravinsky's putative nationalist predecessors? They sound more like West African music, or perhaps like a mating of Russian melody and West African drumming, than a little reminiscent of jazz: Irving Berlin and George Gershwin also had Russian origins, after all.

The most rhythmically charged sections of
Le sacre
, the “Dancing Out of the Earth,” which ends part 1, “The Naming and Honoring of the Chosen One,” which begins the
Totentanz
of part 2, and the final “Sacrificial Dance” display intriguingly West African rhythmic patterns and textures. “Dancing Out of the Earth” piles up rhythmic element in eighth notes, triplets, and then sixteenths, with each rhythmic strand assigned its own harmonic identity: whole tone, quartal, and octatonic. On top of this volcanic rumble Stravinsky sounds a rhythmic figure derived from the infamously off-accented “Sacre chords” from the “Augurs of Spring” in part 1:

I can think of no precedent for this kind of rhythm in Russian or European music, but it strongly resembles the West African Husago dance transcribed by A. M. Jones.
⁵¹
African sculpture was the rage among Parisian cubist painters at the time; African music was imported as well.

The off-kilter shuffled meters of “Naming and Honoring” and “Sacrificial Dance” relate to African music in a different way—through Spain and the New World. In both sections I hear the strong influence harmonically and rhythmically of Ravel's
Alborada del gracioso
(that favorite, you'll recall, of Billy Strayhorn and Lena Horne) in particular the asymmetric
rhythm (2 + 2 + 2 + 3) heard at measure 31 and after: this figure forecasts the terrified leaps and falls of Stravinsky's victim. The “Sacrificial Dance” turns the rhythmic tension several notches tighter toward vertigo. Stravinsky said that he heard this rhythm before he figured out how to notate it and he revised the notation later in his life, as did conductors like Koussevitzky and Bernstein. The spasmodic
notation masks the regular and (dare I say it) ragtime element lurking in the dance. As Pieter van den Toorn noted, the main rhythmic figure, represented in a phrase unit of
adds up to twelve sixteenths, also known as
:

If you heard them against a regular quarter pulse (and snapped your fingers on the eighths) you would feel a rhythm with a family resemblance to, say, Joplin's familiar “Entertainer”: