This past weekend I had the opportunity to play The rite of spring with the Lubbock Symphony Orchestra. Technically (for the basses, at least) the piece isn't very difficult. There are a few unusual harmonics that are called for, but most of the notes could be played by a junior-high-school student. The difficulty of this piece lies in the counting. There are a variety of rhythmic techniques used by Stravinsky to make life difficult. In an effort to make it through some of the rough patches, my stand partner and I marked the daylights out of our part. This is particularly important when rehearsal time is limited and the orchestra is not one that plays together every day. Below are two pages from the bass part with our markings.
The first example comes from the Danse Sacrale near the end of the work. The problem here is that Stravinsky's beaming does not correspond to either the grouping (i.e., sometimes there is a rest between what appears to be a pair of notes) or the time signature (i.e., sometimes notes are beamed across the barline). The trap here is that the strings and horns all have this same rhythm and that no one is playing in the rests. It's very easy to fall in one of the holes, so we marked every rest with a long vertical slash, and put brackets with the number of notes in each group above the beams. We made it through both performances without falling into any of the rests.
Arrows at the end of the system indicate that the figure continues onto the next line (i.e., we play on the downbeat). We've indicated the rests from the previous page at the top of the system to facilitate page turns (there are many nasty ones in this particular edition). The markings to the right of the staff are indications for setting the low-C extension on the bass (I don't have one; my stand partner does).
The first example comes from the Danse Sacrale near the end of the work. The problem here is that Stravinsky's beaming does not correspond to either the grouping (i.e., sometimes there is a rest between what appears to be a pair of notes) or the time signature (i.e., sometimes notes are beamed across the barline). The trap here is that the strings and horns all have this same rhythm and that no one is playing in the rests. It's very easy to fall in one of the holes, so we marked every rest with a long vertical slash, and put brackets with the number of notes in each group above the beams. We made it through both performances without falling into any of the rests.
Arrows at the end of the system indicate that the figure continues onto the next line (i.e., we play on the downbeat). We've indicated the rests from the previous page at the top of the system to facilitate page turns (there are many nasty ones in this particular edition). The markings to the right of the staff are indications for setting the low-C extension on the bass (I don't have one; my stand partner does).
In the second example, we detected an ostinato pattern that transcends the bar lines. For the most part, the notes are grouped in a 3+2 sixteenth-note pattern, which we indicated with brackets. There are a few abberations--4+2 and one 5+2--but generally we were able to focus on the underlying 3+2 pattern and (don't try this at home) ignore the conductor at this point. Shortly after rehearsal 198, the pattern shifts to a purely duple grouping, 2+2, at which point we're basically home free.
Incidentally (and I'm embarrassed to admit I never noticed this as a theorist and/or bassist), the last chord in the double basses--D E A D.