An Androgynous Couple: Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Matisse’s Joy of Life

On our third date, my wife and I saw the Rite of Spring. Victorian sexuality freed. The piano’s legs uncovered, its heart grabbed hard. Stravinsky invents chords at the piano, a shot of vodka in hand. Experiments, inventions, of rhythm. Russian folk songs, violence. I wanted to move in 4/4 time, but Stravinsky invents a new century with its constantly shifting time signatures: 3/16, 2/16, 2/8, 5/16. 3/8, 1/16, 1/8, 5/16, 11/16 . . . My wife’s a percussionist, so she’s endlessly happy, endlessly engaged. I’m a little afraid, embarrassed. I wanted innocence, lyricism, beauty, sex, meadows, trees, water, sky.  I wanted Matisse, his Joy of Life. Not Stravinsky’s high pinched solo bassoon, an instrument of the steppe, but Matisse’s shepherd playing his flute for eternity’s sheep. Not Stravinsky’s gurgling clarinets like two snakes on the ground, something low-slung, but Matisse’s lovingly sketched androgynous figure playing two pipes at once. I am she is we are. She loved Stravinsky’s hard charging, quick changing ostinatos in the trumpet and English horn. I loved Matisse’s serpentine arabesques outlining the contours of women and trees. Then she loved what I loved; I loved what she loved. Matisse’s amorous couple so lost in a kiss that time disappears, two faces become one.  Stravinsky’s endless, complex layering of solo instruments playing so many patterns and ostinatos at once reedy, seductive, energetic, raw, burbling, bubbling, unpredictable, juicy, earthy, percussive, song-like. We kept crossing paths, getting lost in wonder. Matisse’s six nude women dance in a circle holding hands. Stravinsky’s elders jump up and down to pounding rhythms, dissonant chords.  

Performance of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring. London Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Sir Simon Rattle.

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