Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring, Rehearsal Numbers 57 & 58

Rehearsal Numbers 57 and 58

This section sounds odd. I mean, unbalanced and odd, volume-wise. The brass are just way too darned loud and they’re crushing everything else. I was imagining what I would sound like without the brass. I think there’s something interesting there.

• Four French Home horns easily devour the bassoons, a contrabassoon, cello in divisi, and contrabass.

• One trumpet completely engulfs the strings (violin one, violin too, and viola) oboes, and the English horns. They’re all doing roughly the same thing, but you only hear the trumpet.

• Yet, one can hear the Piccolo trill, flutes, clarinet trill, and the clarinets because they’re a different design altogether.

• The Ttimpani can also overwhelm other instruments. I ought to be careful of that.

Maybe the moral of the story is: use this style sparingly. Make sure it’s 100% by design. If you’re gonna use the horns and blast them, know that you’re going to bury everything else. This could be a useful thing if you want to go really big, but if you’re doing very intricate, you’re gonna have a harder time with a lot of brass.