Stravinsky - AGON Part-1

With over 120 works spanning from 1898 through 1966 Igor Stravinsky was one of the most prolific and predominant music composers of the twentieth century. After two periods of Stravinsky's musical styles, Agon helped to solidify his maturity as a serial composer as it was the first atonal ballet ever performed.(1) It reflects a major turning point in the history of the ballet and was the third Balanchine ballets named after Greek mythological figures, Apollo in 1928, Orpheus in 1948, and Agon in 1957. This extraordinary piece of music was not only a unique culmination of ballet with an abstract fusion of music and gesture but it also contains traces of boogie woogie and blues.

The piece includes 17 movements, extraordinary mathematical computations, and precompositional planning unlike many previous works. Stravinsky began his third period, the serial period, around the death of Arnold Schöenberg in 1951. A pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky was 20 years old when his compositions began to be recognized. In 1910 he left Russia, the first time, to attend his premier of the ballet L'Oiseau de feu (The Firebird).(2) Stravinsky composed a series of popular works in what has been divided into three periods: The Russian Period, The Neo-Classical Period, and The Serial Period. He is considered by some as one of the three most influential composers of the twentieth century along with Arnold Schöenberg and Claude Debussy.

As the nineteenth century came to a close, so did music's golden age of harmony. Tonality, form, rhythmic structure, instrumentation, and virtuosity would take a new direction. Stravinsky grew into the forefront of what was known as the anti-romantic and post Wagnerian era.

I hope you enjoy this series about the analysis behind the Balanchine ballet, Agon, Ballet for 12 Dancers, composed by Igor Stravinsky, 1957.

(1) Francis Routh. Stravinsky, The Master Musicians. London: J.M. Dent & Sons LTD. 1975.49.
(2) Douglas Seaton. Ideas and Styles of the Western World. London Toronto: Mayfield Publishing. 1991.