Igor Stravinsky - Agon (1954-57) [with score]

Agon - ballet for orchestra
Written by Igor Stravinsky in 1954

Thanks to Thomas Van Dun for the preparation of this score video.    / thomasvandun  

Performed by the LSO, conducted by Michael Tilson-Thomas

Boosey and Hawkes ©

00:00​ - Pas-de-Quatre
01:42​ - Double Pas-de-Quatre
03:18​ - Triple Pas-de-Quatre
04:29​ - Prélude
First Pas-de-Trois
05:27​ - Saraband-Step
06:47​ - Gaillarde
08:07​ - Coda
09:32​ - Interlude
Second Pas-de-Trois
10:30​ - Bransle Simple
11:26​ - Bransle Gay
12:24​ - Bransle Double
13:47​ - Interlude
14:47​ - Pas-de-Deux
19:23​ - Coda
20:59​ - Four Duos
21:29​ - Four Trios
22:11​ - Coda

'When Igor Stravinsky's opera The Rake's Progress premiered in 1951, it was greeted in certain progressive musical circles as old-fashioned, proof that its composer was out of step with the times. Not surprisingly, Stravinsky was taken aback by the reaction, but quickly concluded that one way to avoid becoming irrelevant was to incorporate more modern techniques into his style. "More modern" was at that time practically synonymous with serialism, which had its roots in the twelve-tone music of Arnold Schoenberg. The first major work in which Stravinsky essayed twelve-tone techniques was a cantata, Canticum Sacrum (1955). Already, though, in the earlier Cantata (1951-52), Stravinsky had begun to assimilate the influence of one of Schoenberg's disciples, Anton Webern.

Stravinsky began his final ballet, Agon, in 1953 on a commission from Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine for the New York City Ballet. Because he interrupted work on Agon -- first to compose In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954) and then the aforementioned Canticum Sacrum -- each time he returned to the ballet, he found he had to rewrite certain parts as a result of the evolution of his style, particularly his increasing attraction to serial techniques. Thus, for example, the opening fanfare evolved over the course of three distinct versions.

The increasingly advanced nature of Stravinsky's music is matched by the plotless scenario he chose for Agon, which features eight female and four male dancers. As in Canticum Sacrum, Agon commences in a diatonic and fairly accessible vein, but progresses toward atonality. So, for example, as the fanfare that opens the work reappears throughout, it grows increasingly chromatic. With the tenth section, Pas-de-deux, Stravinsky makes overt use of post-Webern serial techniques. By the close of the ballet the music returns to the less complex language of its beginning, again in the manner of Canticum Sacrum. Even a cursory comparison with the music of Stravinsky's Russian and neo-Classic periods strikingly demonstrates just how far the composer's musical language had evolved by the time of Agon.

The ballet's 12 movements are divided into four groups of three each. The first section contains Pas-de-quatre, Double pas-de-quatre, and Triple Pas-de-quatre; the second, First pas-de-trois, Saraband-Step, Gailliarde, and Coda; the third, Second pas-de-trois, Bransle simple, Bransle gay, and Bransle de Poitou; and the fourth, Pas-de-deux, Four Duos, and Four Trios. The second group is announced by a Prelude; brief Interludes precede the third and fourth groups.

There are a number of relationships between the various sections of the ballet. For instance, the music in the first set is reprised in the last number of the fourth, and the Interludes contain the same music as the Prelude. Some have contended that Stravinsky's pattern of "threes" is broken by the inclusion of the Prelude and Interludes; however, because they themselves constitute a collection of three and serve a prefatory role for the main sections, their role in the overall scheme is clearly integral rather than anomalous. Agon was first performed in a concert version led by Robert Craft in Los Angeles on June 17, 1957. It was first performed on the stage by the New York City Ballet on December 1, 1957.' - Robert Cummings