Deuxième partie: Le Sacrifice

Composed 1913, revised 1947. The first performance in Paris in May 1913 was a milestone in musical history of an almost unprecented kind, perhaps quite simple the most important musical event of the whole twentieth century. It was the final sacrificial dance that provided Stravinsky's original idea, and this has left its mark on the score: all the other music in the Rite of Spring is a single, gigantic crescendo leading to the orgiastic final pages. The different sections of the work are played without a break, with the exception of a short pause between parts 1 and 2.