Article-review to Severine Neff, Maureen Carr and Gretchen Horlacher with John Reef (eds), ‘The Rite of Spring’ at 100

The centenary of The Rite of Spring’s premiere, given at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris on 29 May 1913, has been marked by an outstanding flourish of concerts and new stagings, symposia, exhibitions and publications, including two annotated facsimile editions of Stravinsky’s manuscripts of The Rite. Starting from a discussion of topics and perspectives addressed in the volume "The Rite of Spring at 100" and other recent publications, the essay analyses in depth the reasons for The Rite's leading role in twentieth-century culture. During its long history, The Rite has lived at least two parallel lives: that of a staged, choreographed dance work supported by music, and that of a self-sufficient music work performed in concert halls, without any reference to the realms of either dance or theatre. These parallel lives have been the subject matter of deep analysis in musicology and dance history, in which The Rite has been explored respectively as an ‘object’ (a musical score) or as an ‘event’ (a performance). The new challenge is precisely to reconnect these parallel lives, to allow them to speak to each other with a view to highlighting some previously underplayed perspectives, focusing on two aspects. First, The Rite’s ability to foster an extremely rich and diversified hermeneutical activity; and second, that the full meaning of The Rite cannot be found in any particular phase of its historical destiny, but in the totality of the different steps of its evolution in the breadth of its twentieth-century reception.