The Rite of Spring caused one of the most famous scandals in concert history, and its story touches every stage of writing music for picture: a commission, a collaboration, a score that served a story, an audience that wasn't ready, and a second life on screen.

The commission

The Rite of Spring was a ballet, commissioned by Serge Diaghilev for his Ballets Russes, after he had already produced Stravinsky's The Firebird in 1910 and Petrushka in 1911 1. It was a collaboration from the start. Nicholas Roerich helped develop the story and designed the sets and costumes, and Vaslav Nijinsky choreographed it 1. The subtitle sets the scene: "Pictures from Pagan Russia in Two Parts" 1.

The premiere

It opened on May 29, 1913, at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris 1. Britannica calls it one of the most scandalous premieres in history: audience members argued for and against the work so loudly that the dancers couldn't hear the orchestra to find their cues 1. Nijinsky's original choreography was performed only seven times before Léonide Massine's replaced it 1.

What was so new

Strip away the legend and the score itself is the reason it lasted. In BBC Music Magazine's account, the meter keeps shifting under the listener's feet, the harmony grinds, and a huge orchestra hammers the rhythm home; the premiere was conducted by Pierre Monteux 2. Britannica calls it one of the first examples of Modernism in music 1.

Those are craft decisions, not accidents:

  • Rhythm as engine. Complex, driving rhythms carry the music forward 2.
  • Meter as tension. The time signature keeps changing, which keeps the ground unstable 2.
  • The orchestra as a drum. The whole ensemble is used percussively, not just the percussion section 2.

The second life: Fantasia

In 1940, Disney put the Rite on screen. Fantasia premiered on November 13, 1940, at the Broadway Theater in New York, presented as a concert with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra, with the Rite as one of its eight sequences 5. BBC Music Magazine describes the segment as a history of the Earth from its fiery beginnings to the extinction of the dinosaurs 4. Smithsonian notes that the film used a slightly rearranged version of Stravinsky's music, and reminds readers that the ballet's own story was a pagan spring sacrifice 3.

The technology was new, too. Disney describes Fantasound as an early stereo system built at the studio that needed specially equipped theaters 5, and BBC Music Magazine calls Fantasia the first commercial film shown in stereo 4.

What to take from it

For anyone writing to picture today, the Rite's path is a useful reminder of three things. Music that serves a story can outlive the story. A piece written for one image can be re-cut for another, as the rearranged version in Fantasia shows 3. And the most radical tools in the orchestra, rhythm, meter and percussion, are a century old 12. Novelty usually has roots.

For the modern side of that equation, see our guide to how film scoring works today and Korg's struck-steel phase8, a 2026 instrument with a 19th-century ancestor.