''Agon'' is a 22-minute

ballet Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form of ...

for twelve dancers with music by

Igor Stravinsky Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century c ...

. It was choreographed by

George Balanchine George Balanchine (; Various sources: * * * * born Georgiy Melitonovich Balanchivadze;, Romanization of Georgian, : April 30, 1983) was a Georgian-American ballet choreographer, recognized as one of the most influential choreographers ...

. 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 premiered in Los Angeles at

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Its academic roots were established in 1881 as a normal school then known as the southern branch of the C ...

Royce Hall Royce Hall is a building on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Designed by the Los Angeles firm of Allison & Allison (James Edward Allison, 1870–1955, and his brother David Clark Allison, 1881–1962) and completed ...

on June 17, 1957, conducted by Robert Craft. Stravinsky himself conducted the sessions for the work's first recording the following day on June 18, 1957. ''Agon'' was first performed on stage by the

New York City Ballet New York City Ballet (NYCB) is a ballet company founded in 1948 by choreographer George Balanchine and Lincoln Kirstein. Balanchine and Jerome Robbins are considered the founding choreographers of the company. Léon Barzin was the company's fir ...

at the City Center of Music and Drama on December 1, 1957. The composition's long gestation period covers an interesting juncture in Stravinsky's composing career, in which he moved from a

diatonic Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are used to characterize scales. The terms are also applied to musical instruments, intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony. They are very often used as a pair ...

musical idiom to one based on

twelve-tone technique The twelve-tone technique—also known as dodecaphony, twelve-tone serialism, and (in British usage) twelve-note composition—is a method of musical composition. The technique is a means of ensuring that all 12 notes of the chromatic scale ...

; 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 The ''galliard'' (; ; ) was a form of Renaissance dance and Renaissance music, music popular all over Europe in the 16th century. It is mentioned in dance manuals from England, Portugal, France, Spain, Germany, and Italy. Dance form The ''gal ...

and

bransle A branle ( , ), also bransle, brangle, brawl(e), brall(e), braul(e), brando (in Italy), bran (in Spain), or brantle (in Scotland), is a type of France, French dance popular from the early 16th century to the present, danced by couples in either ...

. It was danced as part of City Ballet's 1982 Stravinsky Centennial Celebration. The title of the ballet, Agon, is a Greek word which means “contest”, “protagonist” but also “anguish” or “struggle”.

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

Instrumentation

''Agon'' is scored for a large orchestra consisting of 3

flute The flute is a member of a family of musical instruments in the woodwind group. Like all woodwinds, flutes are aerophones, producing sound with a vibrating column of air. Flutes produce sound when the player's air flows across an opening. In th ...

s (3rd doubling

piccolo The piccolo ( ; ) is a smaller version of the western concert flute and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. Sometimes referred to as a "baby flute" or piccolo flute, the modern piccolo has the same type of fingerings as the ...

), 2

oboe The oboe ( ) is a type of double-reed woodwind instrument. Oboes are usually made of wood, but may also be made of synthetic materials, such as plastic, resin, or hybrid composites. The most common type of oboe, the soprano oboe pitched in C, ...

English horn The cor anglais (, or original ; plural: ''cors anglais''), or English horn (mainly North America), is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family. It is approximately one and a half times the length of an oboe, making it essentially ...

, 2

clarinet The clarinet is a Single-reed instrument, single-reed musical instrument in the woodwind family, with a nearly cylindrical bore (wind instruments), bore and a flared bell. Clarinets comprise a Family (musical instruments), family of instrume ...

bass clarinet The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common Soprano clarinet, soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B (meaning it is a transposing instrument on which a written C sounds as B), but it plays no ...

, 2

bassoon The bassoon is a musical instrument in the woodwind family, which plays in the tenor and bass ranges. It is composed of six pieces, and is usually made of wood. It is known for its distinctive tone color, wide range, versatility, and virtuosity ...

contrabassoon The contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower. Its technique is similar to its smaller cousin, with a few notable differences. Differences from the bassoon The Reed (mouthpie ...

, 4 horns, 4

trumpet The trumpet is a brass instrument commonly used in classical and jazz musical ensemble, ensembles. The trumpet group ranges from the piccolo trumpet—with the highest Register (music), register in the brass family—to the bass trumpet, pitche ...

s, 3

trombone The trombone (, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the Brass instrument, brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's lips vibrate inside a mouthpiece, causing the Standing wave, air c ...

s (2 tenor, 1 bass),

harp The harp is a stringed musical instrument that has individual strings running at an angle to its soundboard; the strings are plucked with the fingers. Harps can be made and played in various ways, standing or sitting, and in orchestras or ...

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

mandolin A mandolin (, ; literally "small mandola") is a Chordophone, stringed musical instrument in the lute family and is generally Plucked string instrument, plucked with a plectrum, pick. It most commonly has four Course (music), courses of doubled St ...

timpani Timpani (; ) or kettledrums (also informally called timps) are musical instruments in the percussion instrument, percussion family. A type of drum categorised as a hemispherical drum, they consist of a Membranophone, membrane called a drumhead, ...

tom-tom A tom drum (also known as a tom-tom) is a cylindrical drum with no snares, named from the Anglo-Indian and Sinhala language. It was added to the drum kit in the early part of the 20th century. Most toms range in size between in diameter, thoug ...

xylophone The xylophone (; ) is a musical instrument in the percussion family that consists of wooden bars struck by mallets. Each bar is an idiophone tuned to a pitch of a musical scale, whether pentatonic or heptatonic in the case of many African ...

, 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 In music, a tone row or note row ( or '), also series or set, is a non-repetitive ordering of a set of pitch-classes, typically of the twelve notes in musical set theory of the chromatic scale, though both larger and smaller sets are sometime ...

, 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. The Bransle Double is based on a different twelve-tone series, the

hexachord In music, a hexachord (also hexachordon) is a six- note series, as exhibited in a scale ( hexatonic or hexad) or tone row. The term was adopted in this sense during the Middle Ages and adapted in the 20th century in Milton Babbitt's serial t ...

s of which are treated independently. 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.

Original cast

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

Italy

When ''Agon'' was performed in Italy in 1965, Stravinsky was particularly pleased with the performance of

ist Giuseppe Anedda. "Bravo Mandolino!" shouted Stravinsky at Anedda and caught up with him to congratulate him and shake his hand.

References

Sources * *

External links

''Agon''
Balanchine Trust

by Bonnie S. Jacobi {{Authority control 1957 ballets 1957 compositions Ballets by George Balanchine Ballets by Igor Stravinsky New York City Ballet repertory New York City Ballet Stravinsky Centennial Celebration Twelve-tone compositions by Igor Stravinsky