Location via proxy:   [ UP ]  
[Report a bug]   [Manage cookies]                
0% found this document useful (0 votes)
124 views19 pages

Agon

Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
Download as pdf or txt
You are on page 1/ 19

Agon (ballet)

Agon (1957) is a 22-minute neoclassical


ballet for twelve dancers with music by
Igor Stravinsky. Its first choreographer was
George Balanchine. Stravinsky began
composition in December 1953 but was
interrupted the next year; he resumed work
in 1956 and concluded on April 27, 1957.
The music was first performed on June 17,
1957, in Los Angeles conducted by Robert
Craft, while the first stage performance
was given by the New York City Ballet on
December 1, 1957, at the City Center of
Music and Drama, New York (White 1979,
490). Between those dates the
Südwestfunk in Germany made the work's
first studio recording; the
Sinfonieorchester des Südwestfunks
Baden-Baden, as it was then called, was
led by Hans Rosbaud. This was released
on the Wergo label seven years later and
remains in the catalog, for sale online from
Amazon.de (Anon. & n.d.(b)).
Agon
Choreographer George Balanchine

Music Igor Stravinsky

Premiere December 1, 1957


City Center of Music
and Drama, New York

Original ballet New York City Ballet


company

Genre Neoclassical ballet

Type Classical ballet

The composition's long gestation period


covers an interesting juncture in
Stravinsky's composing career, in which he
moved from a diatonic musical idiom to
one based on twelve-tone technique; the
music of the ballet thus demonstrates a
unique symbiosis of musical idioms. The
ballet has no story, but consists of a series
of dance movements in which various
groups of dancers interact in pairs, trios,
quartets, etc. A number of the movements
are based on 17th-century French court
dances – saraband, galliard and bransle. It
was danced as part of City Ballet's 1982
Stravinsky Centennial Celebration.

Form
Stravinsky laid out the ballet in a
duodecimal form, with four large sections
each consisting of three dances. A Prelude
and two Interludes occur between the
large sections, but this does not
fundamentally affect the twelve-part
design because their function is caesural
and compensatory (White 1979, 490–91):

I.
1. Pas-de-quatre (4 male dancers)
2. Double pas-de-quatre (8 female
dancers)
3. Triple pas-de-quatre (4 male + 8
female dancers)
Prelude
II. (First pas-de-trois: 1 male, 2 female
dancers)
1. Sarabande-step (1 male dancer)
2. Gaillarde (2 female dancers)
3. Coda (1 male, 2 female dancers)
Interlude
III. (Second pas-de-trois: 2 male, 1
female dancers)
1. Bransle simple (2 male dancers)
2. Bransle gay (1 female dancer)
3. Bransle double (2 male, 1 female
dancers)
Interlude
IV.
1. Pas-de-deux (1 male, 1 female
dancer)
2. Four Duos (4 male, 4 female dancers)
3. Four Trios (4 male, 8 female dancers)

Instrumentation
Agon is scored for a large orchestra
consisting of piccolo, 3 flutes, 2 oboes,
English horn, 2 clarinets, bass clarinet, 2
bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 4
trumpets, 3 trombones (2 tenor, 1 bass),
harp, piano, mandolin, timpani, tom-tom,
xylophone, castanets, and strings. At no
point does the entire orchestra play a tutti.
Each section is scored for a different
combination of instruments.

Music
This was not the first composition in
which Stravinsky employed serial
techniques, but it was the first in which he
used a twelve-tone row, introduced in the
second coda, at bar 185. Earlier in the
work, Stravinsky had employed a
seventeen-tone row, in bars 104–107, and
evidence from the sketches suggests a
close relationship between these two rows
(Smyth 1999, 121, 126–27). The Bransle
Double is based on a different twelve-tone
series, the hexachords of which are
treated independently (Straus 2001, 143–
45). Those hexachords first appear
separately in the Bransle Simple (for two
male dancers) and Bransle Gay (for solo
female dancer), and are then combined to
form a twelve-tone row in the Bransle
Double. These three dances together
constitute the second pas-de-trois (Smyth
1999, 133).

Casts

Original …

Todd Bolender
Barbara Milberg
Barbara Walczak
Roy Tobias
Jonathan Watts
Melissa Hayden
Diana Adams
Arthur Mitchell

NYCB revivals …

2008 Winter tour …

t.b.a.
2008 Summer tour to Copenhagen …

t.b.a.
2009 Fall tour to Bunkamura in Tokyo …

First cast E…

Wendy Whelan
Rebecca Krohn
Ashley Laracey
Teresa Reichlen
Sébastien Marcovici
Sean Suozzi
Amar Ramasar
Adrian Danchig-Waring
Second cast E…

Maria Kowroski
Rebecca Krohn
Ashley Laracey
Teresa Reichlen
Sébastien Marcovici
Sean Suozzi
Amar Ramasar
Adrian Danchig-Waring
2010 Winter …

t.b.a.
2012 Fall …

First cast E…

t.b.a.
Second cast E…

t.b.a.

Italy
This section contains information of unclear or
questionable importance or relevance Learn
to the more
When Agon was performed in Italy in 1965
(Anon. & n.d.(a)), Stravinsky was
particularly pleased with the performance
of mandolinist Giuseppe Anedda:

Ma, a consacrare il maestro


Anedda come il più grande
mandolinista del mondo fu a
Roma nell’Aprile del 1965 con
l’Orchestra Sinfonica della Rai
in occasione del nuovo balletto
di Igor Stravinskj. L’orchestra
presentava diverse parti di
mandolino solista. Dopo
l’esecuzione di Giuseppe
Anedda, in platea si sentì un
“Bravo Mandolino!”: era il
maestro Stravinskj che lo
raggiunse per congratularsi e
stringergli la mano. La “Stampa
Sera ” di Torino diede gran
risalto a quest’episodio.
(translation: But, what
confirms maestro Anedda as the
greatest mandolin player in the
world, was the occasion in
Rome of the performance of a
new ballet by Igor Stravinsky in
April 1965 with the RAI
Symphony Orchestra. The
orchestra includes several
passages with mandolin solos.
After the performance by
Giuseppe Anedda, a "Bravo
Mandolino!" was heard in the
audience. It was maestro
Stravinsky who came up him to
congratulate him and shake his
hand. The Stampa Sera of Turin
gave great prominence to this
episode.) (Porceddu 2014)

References
Anon. n.d.(a) "Giuseppe Anedda Cagliari
1/3/1912– Cagliari 30/7/1997 ".
Amromana.it (accessed 27 September
2015).
Anon. n.d.(b) Kauf auf Rechnung –
Bezahlen erst im nächsten Monat: Igor
Strawinsky: Agon – Ballett für 12 Tänzer:
Rosbaud (Künstler), Sinfonieorchester
des Südwestfunks Bad (Künstler), & 2
mehr Format: Audio CD . Amazon Music
Unlimited: Amazon.de (accessed 17
May 2020).
Porceddu, Ennio. 2014. "Giuseppe
Anedda, Il virtuoso del mandolino ".
Ennio Loy Blog (accessed 27 September
2015).
Smyth, David. 1999. "Stravinsky's
Second Crisis: Reading the Early Serial
Sketches". Perspectives of New Music
37, no. 2 (Summer): 117–46.
Straus, Joseph N. 2001. Stravinsky's Late
Music. Cambridge Studies in Music
Theory and Analysis. Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 0-521-80220-2 (cloth); ISBN 0-521-
60288-2 (pbk).
White, Eric Walter. 1979. Stravinsky: The
Composer and His Works, second
edition. Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press. ISBN 0-
520-03985-8 (pbk).

Further reading
Joseph, Charles M. 2002. Stravinsky and
Balanchine: A Journey of Invention. New
Haven: Yale University Press.
ISBN 0300087128.
Macaulay, Alastair. 2007. "50 Years Ago,
Modernism Was Given a Name: 'Agon' ".
New York Times (November 25).

External links
Agon on the website of the Balanchine
Trust
The Bransles of Stravinsky's Agon : A
Transition to Serial Composition By
Bonnie S. Jacobi

Retrieved from
"https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?
title=Agon_(ballet)&oldid=973649389"

Last edited 2 months ago by HaeB

Content is available under CC BY-SA 3.0 unless


otherwise noted.

You might also like