The Cambridge Companion to The Rite of Spring

Guides students, listeners and ballet-goers through The Rite, its musical and theatrical origins, and its powerful artistic and scholarly legacy.

Davinia Caddy (Edited by)

9781108476539, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 July 2025

344 pages
24.4 x 17 x 2.1 cm, 0.795 kg

A Companion not only to the historic, path-breaking ballet production by Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Roerich and Stravinsky that premiered in Paris in 1913, but also to its legacy across the centuries. The newly commissioned essays will guide students and ballet-goers as they encounter this fascinating work and enable them to navigate the complex artistic currents it set in motion, intertwining music, theatrical ballet and modern dance with the wider world of ideas. The book embraces The Rite of Spring as a spectrum of creative possibility that has impacted the arts, politics, gender, race and national identity, and even popular culture, from the 1910s to the present day. It distils an enormous body of literature, sharing insights from the very latest research while inviting readers to rethink standard scholarly narratives, and brings together contributions from specialists across multiple disciplines: music history, theory and analysis, dance and theatre studies, art history, Russian history, and European modernism.

List of figures
List of examples
Notes on contributors
Chronology of the Rite of Spring
Introduction: on criticism, excess and felt response Davinia Caddy
Part I. The Paris Premiere: 1. Transforming the world of dance: the Ballets Russes of Sergei Diaghilev Jane Pritchard
2. Genesis and collaboration: Igor Stravinsky's music for the rite of spring Tamsin Alexander
3. Nicholas Roerich's Rite of Spring: costumes, décors and visual design Mary E. Davis
4. Movement and choreographic influence: the contribution of Vaslav Nijinsky to the Rite of Spring Renate Bräuninger
5. The Rite of Spring in the Parisian press Sarah Gutsche-Miller
Part II. Contexts: 6. Framing modernism: primitivism, grotesquerie and orientalism in French art and visual culture Gurminder Kaur Bhogal
7. Vesna Svyashchennaya: the rites of spring in Russian art and tradition Olga Haldey
8. Situating the Rite of Spring within Stravinsky's compositional oeuvre Maureen Carr and Phillip Mackenzie Torbert
9. The Soviet context: the Rite of Spring at the Bolshoi Theatre
Part III. Performance and Interpretation: 10. The Rite of Spring in concert, on record and online Daniel Barolsky
11. Choreographic visions and revisions Rachana Vajjhala
12. The Rite of Spring in popular culture and cinema Luke Howard
Part IV. Scholarship: 13. Contesting analytical traditions Daniel K. L. Chua
14. Transcribed Rites of Spring: revisionist narratives across music and dance history Samuel N. Dorf
Conclusion: reflections, ideas, supplements Tatiana Baranova Monighetti
Further reading
Index.

Subject Areas: 20th century & contemporary classical music [AVGC6]