Apollo musagète

See also: Apollo (homonymy)

Apollon musagète (or Apollo ) is a Ballet in two tables made up between 1927 and 1928 by Igor Stravinski.

This ballet refers very clearly to the Antiquité by the topic, but the screen proposes a contemporary situation. It is thus about a réinvention of the tradition because the inspiration is traditional, even post- Baroque, but nevertheless the orchestra is simplified (there are only cords).

Work

The ballet is an American ordering of the patron Elisabeth Sprague Coolidge, intended to be given to the Bibliothèque of the Congress. After Œdipus rex , Stravinski 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 Article.

It chooses to make a white ballet of it which it composes for a purified instrumental manpower represented by a string orchestra of 34 instrumentalists: the first 8 violins, 8 second violins, 6 violas, the first 4 violoncellos, 4 second violoncellos and 4 double basses. The duration is 30 minutes.

Composition

Stravinski writing for a homogeneous whole of string instrument rubbed, chooses to replace the contrast of stamps which one hears in Pulcinella by contrasts of volume. As later with Agon , this ballet takes as a starting point the great traditional tradition of the French music of the 17th century and particularly of Lully. With its pointed rates/rhythms, the prolog starts with the manner of one opening “to the Frenchwoman”. The type-setter is pressed on a fundamental rhythmic cell presents to the beginning of the work, which it transforms by subdivisions of successive values made increasingly complex.

The argument

The characters are Apollon and three Muses: Calliope MUSE of poetry, Polymnie MUSE of rhetoric and Terpsichore MUSE of the dance. The topic: Apollo musagète (“conducting of the Muses”) informed the Muses with their arts and the conduit in the Parnassus. The ballet is divided into two tables:
  • the First table
    • the birth of Apollo (prolog)
  • the Second table
    • Variation of Apollo
    • Pas of action (Apollo and three Muses)
    • Variation of Calliope (the alexandrine)
    • Variation of Polymnie
    • Variation of Terpsichore
    • Second variation of Apollo
    • Pas of two
    • Coded
    • Apothéose.

The choreography of Balanchine

The ballet is created with Washington in April 1928 in the Chorégraphie of Adolph Bolm and it is taken again by the Russian Ballets with Paris the June 28th according to, choreography by George Balanchine (decorations of André Bauchant). The principal interpreters are Serge Lifar, Alice Nikitina, Lubov Tchernitcheva and Félia Doubrovka.

Being based on the beauty and qualities of interpreter of Lifar, Balanchine conceives a Apollon young person and wild, exaltation of the male dance. Work is sober and clear, in perfect adequacy with the partition of Stravinski.

With the wire of the resumptions of this ballet, the Choreographer diagram little by little the costumes and the decorations (begun again 1957), it removes the first table (begun again 1978) and adapts the part to the personality of the new interpreters, of which Mikhaïl Barychnikov.

As regards the costumes, Apollon has a worked over again toga, with a cut in diagonal, a belt and laces which go up. The Muses have a traditional Tutu. The decoration is baroque: two grosses Machinery S (of the rocks and the carriage of Apollo). In the dance one feels a return towards the Académisme (stretching and twinge of the body). But the choreographer George Balanchine breakage the angles of the arms and folds the angles of the hand. It is thus a neo-classic ballet .

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