Petruska: Stravinsky and the Ballet Russe — A Modernist Explosion

Part One of a Two-Part Series

Ballet music in Russia at the turn of the 20th century was considered second-class music, entertainment, not serious art.

Then came Igor Stravinsky and Diaghilev’s Ballet Russe, and for the first time in history music for dance took a leading role in the musical avant-garde, becoming, for a time, the preferred genre for the cutting edge of musical innovation. The 1910 ballet The Firebird began this transformation, and then one year later came the remarkable Petrushka, with choreography by Mikhail Fokine. Musical modernism was in full bloom. Our lecture will explore the score’s innovations and the complete ballet itself (with the original Fokine choreography), bringing us a new understanding and appreciation of this ground-breaking work of theater. This is the first of a two-lecture series on Stravinsky and the Ballet Russe, the second of which will cover the genre-shattering, The Rite of Spring.

See Part Two of this Two-Part Series.

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This course is part of Roundtable, the online learning destination of The 92nd Street Y, New York.

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Instructor

Louis Rosen

Louis Rosen, composer, lyricist, performer, author and educator, is a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship recipient whose musical style is a fusion of folk, jazz, classical, rock and blues idioms. He has designed and taught the Music Appreciation/History and Music Theory curriculum for the 92Y’s School of Music for over 35 years.

Louis Rosen

The ten albums of Louis’ songs and compositions include three solo albums: I Don’t Know Anything (Music and Lyrics, 2020); Dust to Dust Blues (Music and Lyrics, 2017); Time Was (Music and Lyric Adaptations, 2013); five albums with vocalist Capathia Jenkins: Phenomenal Woman: The Maya Angelou Songs and Songs Without Words (Music, 2018); One Ounce of Truth: The Nikki Giovanni Songs (Music, 2008); The Ache of Possibility (Music and Lyrics, 2009); South Side Stories (Music and Lyrics, 2006); and Dream Suite: Songs in Jazz and Blues on poems by Langston Hughes (Music, 2016), which also features vocalist Alton Fitzgerald White; as well as two albums of instrumental music: Act One: Piano Music for the Theater (2017); and the forthcoming Two Suites. Taken together, the three albums—Dream Suite, One Ounce of Truth and Phenomenal Woman—comprise The Black Loom Trilogy, three song cycles on poems of three major 20th Century African-American writers. Other song cycles include, It Is Still Dark: Songs of Love and Exile (Premiere—Great Hall at Cooper Union with vocalist Darius de Haas, 2006); Five Riversongs on poems by Edgar Lee Masters and Four Songs (Dual Premiere—The Museum of the City of New York and Lincoln Center Library, vocalists Peter Stewart and Barbara Peters, 1985); and A Child’s Garden Song Suite on poems by Robert Louis Stevenson (1994).

Louis’ theater compositions include three musicals: Book of the Night (Music and Co-Lyrics, Goodman Theater, 1991), winner of Chicago's John W. Schmid Award for Best New Work; A Child’s Garden (Music, Lyric Adaptations and Co-Libretto, Off-Broadway, 2000), named one of the top-ten Off-Broadway productions of that year by the New York Post; and The Ugly Duckling (Ann Arbor Arts Festival, 1989). He has also composed thirty scores for plays including the Tony-nominated Act One at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, written and directed by James Lapine (2014); Roundabout’s Broadway revivals of The Rainmaker (2000) and Picnic (1994); off-Broadway productions at theaters such as Lincoln Center’s Mitzi Newhouse, the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Delacorte in Central Park and The Acting Company at the Lucille Lortel; and for major regional theaters including the Goodman Theater in Chicago, Minneapolis’ Guthrie Theater, Seattle Repertory Theater, Shakespeare Theater in Washington, D.C.; New Haven’s Long Wharf Theater; Princeton’s McCarter Theater, the Williamstown Theater Festival and the Westport Country Playhouse, among others. His scores for plays have also yielded twelve concert suites, three of which—Act One Suite for Solo Piano, Into Night and On the Verge and Orchards (both for two pianos)—were included on the 2017 album Act One: Piano Music for the Theater.

Louis is the author of two books: the memoir/oral narrative, The South Side: The Racial Transformation of an American Neighborhood (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, Cloth 1998, Paperback, 1999); and Beyond Category: Music Theory from Bach through The Beatles for the Popular or Classical Musician (2015), which serves as the text for the 92Y School of Music’s Theory curriculum. He also wrote the theatrical adaptation of The South Side, which has played at Washington, D. C.’s Theater J and New Jersey’s George Street Playhouse.

Awards include the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in Music Composition; the NEA New American Works Grant; the 2nd Gilman & Gonzalez Falla Musical Theater Award; ASCAP Awards, 1993-2020; a Puffin Foundation Grant; an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Galileo Prize & Commission; Chicago’s John W. Schmid Award, Best New Work for Book of the Night, among others.

Recent compositions reflect a new emphasis on instrumental music and include The Pearl Suite for Small Orchestra; The Pearl Octet; Suite for Clarinet and Piano; Twelve Guitar Preludes; The Black Loom Trilogy Epilogue for Jazz Sextet; the six-movement Sextet; Riversongs Octet; and Act One Suite for Solo Piano.

Teachers included Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, Arthur Laurents, Alfred Uhry and John Weidman (composing and writing for theater); William Russo (Music Theory and Jazz Composition); William Ferris (Choral Composition, Orchestration and Formal Analysis); and Joseph Reiser (Music Theory and Composition).