Nadia Boulanger's Interpretation of The Rite of Spring: "A Work Apart"

Nadia Boulanger, one of the most authoritative advocates for Igor Stravinsky during his lifetime, was hesitant to emphasize The Rite of Spring as significant in the greater context of his career. As with many of Stravinsky’s works, Boulanger maintained a complex relationship with The Rite of Spring. Present for its premiere, it was she who helped Stravinsky reorchestrate the work’s “Danse Sacrale” movement in 1943, and in September 1969, when Stravinsky published The Rite’s sketchbooks, he sent Boulanger an advance, autographed copy as a birthday present. She spoke about The Rite during lecture tours and in her classes, but despite knowing it intimately, Boulanger felt uncertain about advocating for it as central to Stravinsky’s oeuvre. Boulanger’s earliest, unpublished analytical treatments of the work date from 1925 and 1934, and reveal her fascination with the piece’s slippery relationship with tonality. Moreover, Boulanger reveled in the piece’s rhythmic characteristics, not because they were novel, however, but because they expanded upon ancient Greek additive rhythmic processes. Indeed, for Boulanger The Rite was never a strong exemplar of Stravinsky’s forward trajectory, and as early as 1919 she felt it rather dated. One senses her subsequent reticence to freeze Stravinsky’s modernist identity as directly connected to The Rite at the risk of ignoring his other compositions. Ultimately, the evidence shows Boulanger thought The Rite held “a place apart from the rest of his works,” thus adding a new layer to the question of the controversial ballet’s reception by Stravinsky’s peers.