Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky
( , ) ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian
composer, pianist, and
conductor, widely acknowledged as one of
the most important and influential composers of 20th century
music. He was a quintessentially
cosmopolitan Russian who was named by
Time magazine as one of the
100 most influential people of the century. In addition to the
recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame
as a pianist and a
conductor, often at
the premieres of his works.
Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic
diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets
commissioned by the impresario
Sergei Diaghilev and performed by
Diaghilev's
Ballets Russes (Russian
Ballets):
The Firebird (1910),
Petrushka (1911/1947),
and
The Rite of Spring
(1913). The
Rite, whose premiere provoked a riot,
transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about
rhythmic structure, and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's
enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary, pushing the
boundaries of musical design.
After this first Russian phase Stravinsky turned to
neoclassicism in the 1920s. The works
from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms
(
concerto grosso,
fugue,
symphony), frequently
concealed a vein of intense emotion beneath a surface appearance of
detachment or austerity, and often paid tribute to the music of
earlier masters, for example
J. S. Bach and
Tchaikovsky.
In the 1950s he adopted
serial procedures,
using the new techniques over his last twenty years. Stravinsky's
compositions of this period share traits with all of his earlier
output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas
out of a few two- or three-note cells, and clarity of form, of
instrumentation, and of utterance.
He also published a number of books throughout his career, almost
always with the aid of a collaborator, sometimes uncredited. In his
1936 autobiography,
Chronicles of My Life, written with
the help of
Walter Nouvel, Stravinsky
included his infamous statement that "music is, by its very nature,
essentially powerless to express anything at all."
With Alexis Roland-Manuel and Pierre Souvtchinsky he wrote his 1939–40
Harvard
University
Charles
Eliot Norton Lectures, which were delivered in French and later
collected under the title in 1942 (translated in 1947 as
Poetics of Music). Several interviews in which the
composer spoke to
Robert Craft were
published as
Conversations with Igor Stravinsky. They
collaborated on five further volumes over the following
decade.
Stravinsky signed a full agreement with
Boosey & Hawkes for his musical
copyrights in 1947.
Biography
Russia
Stravinsky
was born in Oranienbaum
(renamed Lomonosov in 1948), Russia and brought
up in Saint
Petersburg
. His
childhood, he recalled in his autobiography, was troubled: "I never
came across anyone who had any real affection for me."
His father, Fyodor Stravinsky, was a bass singer at the Mariinsky Theater
in Saint Petersburg, and the young Stravinsky began
piano lessons and later studied music theory and attempted some
composition. In 1890, Stravinsky saw a performance of
Tchaikovsky's ballet
The Sleeping
Beauty at the Mariinsky Theater; the performance, his
first exposure to an orchestra, mesmerized him. At fourteen, he had
mastered
Mendelssohn's
Piano Concerto in G
minor, and the next year, he finished a piano reduction of one
of
Alexander Glazunov's string
quartets.
Despite his enthusiasm for music, his parents expected him to
become a lawyer. Stravinsky enrolled to study
law at the
University of Saint
Petersburg in 1901, but was ill-suited for it, attending fewer
than fifty class sessions in four years. After the death of his
father in 1902, he had already begun spending more time on his
musical studies. Because of the closure of the university in the
spring of 1905, in the aftermath of
Bloody Sunday, Stravinsky was prevented
from taking his law finals, and received only a half-course
diploma, in April 1906. Thereafter, he concentrated on music. On
the advice of
Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov, probably the leading Russian composer of the
time, he decided not to enter the Saint Petersburg Conservatoire;
instead, in 1905, he began to take twice-weekly private tutelage
from Rimsky-Korsakov, who became like a second father to him. These
lessons continued until 1908.
In 1905 he was betrothed to his cousin Katerina Nossenko, whom he
had known since early childhood. They were married on 23 January
1906, and their first two children, Fyodor and Ludmilla, were born
in 1907 and 1908 respectively.
In 1909,
his (Fireworks), was performed in Saint Petersburg, where it was
heard by Sergei Diaghilev, the
director of the Ballets Russes in
Paris
. Diaghilev was sufficiently impressed to
commission Stravinsky to carry out some orchestrations, and then to
compose a full-length ballet score,
The
Firebird.
Switzerland
Igor Stravinsky.
Stravinsky travelled to Paris in 1910 to attend the premiere of
The Firebird. His family soon joined him, and decided to
remain in the West for a time.
He moved to Switzerland
, where he lived until 1920 in Clarens
and Lausanne
.
During this time he composed three further works for the Ballets
Russes—
Petrushka (1911),
written in Lausanne, and
The Rite
of Spring (1913) and
Pulcinella, both written in
Clarens.
While the Stravinskys were in Switzerland, their second son,
Soulima (who later became a minor
composer), was born in 1910; and their second daughter, Maria
Milena, was born in 1913. During this last pregnancy, Katerina was
found to have
tuberculosis, and she was
placed in a Swiss sanatorium for her confinement. After a brief
return to Russia in July 1914 to collect research materials for
Les Noces, Stravinsky left his
homeland and returned to Switzerland just before the outbreak of
World War I brought about the closure of
the borders. He was not to return to Russia for nearly fifty years.
Stravinsky was one of the few Eastern Orthodox or Russian Orthodox
community representatives living in Switzerland at that time and is
still remembered as such in Switzerland to date.
He had a significant artistic relationship with the Swiss
philanthropist
Werner Reinhart. He
approached Reinhart for financial assistance when he was writing
Histoire du soldat (The
Soldier’s Tale).
The first performance was conducted by
Ernest Ansermet on 28 September
1918, at the Theatre Municipal de Lausanne.
Werner Reinhart sponsored and to a large degree underwrote this
performance. In gratitude, Stravinsky dedicated the work to
Reinhart, and even gave him the original manuscript.Reinhart
continued his support of Stravinsky's work in 1919 by funding a
series of concerts of his recent chamber music. These included a
suite of five numbers from
The Soldier's Tale, arranged
for clarinet, violin, and piano, which was a nod to Reinhart, who
was an excellent amateur clarinettist. The suite was first
performed on 8 November 1919, in Lausanne, long before the
better-known suite for the seven original instruments became widely
known. In gratitude for Reinhart’s ongoing support, Stravinsky
dedicated his
Three Pieces for Clarinet (composed
October–November 1918) to Reinhart.
Reinhart later founded a music library of
Stravinskiana at his home in Winterthur
.
France
Stravinsky
moved to France
in 1920,
where he formed a business and musical relationship with the French
piano manufacturer Pleyel. Pleyel essentially acted as his
agent in collecting mechanical royalties for his works, and in
return provided him with a monthly income and a studio space in
which to work and to entertain friends and business
acquaintances.
Stravinsky also arranged (and to some extent re-composed) many of
his early works for the Pleyela, Pleyel's brand of
player piano. Stravinsky did so in a way that
made full use of the piano's 88 notes, without regard for the
number or span of human fingers and hands. These were not recorded
rolls, but were instead marked up from a combination of manuscript
fragments and handwritten notes by the French musician, Jacques
Larmanjat (musical director of Pleyel's roll department). While
many of these works are now part of the standard repertoire, at the
time many orchestras found his music beyond their capabilities and
unfathomable. Major compositions issued on Pleyela
piano rolls include
The Rite of Spring,
Petrushka,
Firebird, and
Song of the
Nightingale. During the 1920s he also recorded Duo-Art rolls
for the Aeolian Company in both London and New York, not all of
which survive.
After a
short stay near Paris, Stravinsky
moved with his family to the south of France. He returned to
Paris in 1934, to live at the rue Faubourg-St. Honoré. Stravinsky
later remembered this as his last and unhappiest European address;
his wife's tuberculosis infected his eldest daughter Ludmila, and
Stravinsky himself. Ludmila died in 1938, Katerina in the following
year. Stravinsky spent five months in hospital, during which time
his mother also died.
Although his marriage to Katerina endured for 33 years,
Vera de Bosset (1888–1982), the true love of
his life and later his partner until his death, became his second
wife. When Stravinsky met Vera in Paris in February 1921, she was
married to the painter and stage designer
Serge Sudeikin; however, they soon began an
affair which led to her leaving her husband. From then until
Katerina's death from cancer in 1939, Stravinsky led a double life,
spending some of his time with his first family and the rest with
Vera. Katerina soon learned of the relationship and accepted it as
inevitable and permanent. He became a French citizen in 1934.
During
his latter years in Paris, Stravinsky had developed professional
relationships with key people in the United States
; he was already working on the Symphony in C for the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra, and had agreed to lecture at Harvard
during the academic year of 1939–40. When
World War II broke out in September
1939, Stravinsky moved to the United States.
Vera followed him
early in the next year and they were married in Bedford, MA
, USA, on 9 March 1940.
America
Stravinsky settled down in the Los Angeles
area (1260 North Wetherly Drive, West
Hollywood
) where, in
the end, he spent more time as a resident than any other city
during his lifetime. He became a
naturalized citizen in 1946.
Stravinsky had adapted to life in France, but moving to America at
the age of 58 was a very different prospect. For a time, he
preserved a ring of
emigré Russian
friends and contacts, but eventually found that this did not
sustain his intellectual and professional life. He was drawn to the
growing cultural life of Los Angeles, especially during World War
II, when so many writers, musicians, composers, and conductors
settled in the area; these included
Otto
Klemperer,
Thomas Mann,
Franz Werfel,
George Balanchine and
Arthur Rubinstein. He lived fairly near to
Arnold Schoenberg, though he did
not have a close relationship with him. Bernard Holland notes that
he was especially fond of British writers who often visited him in
Beverly Hills, "like
W. H. Auden,
Christopher Isherwood,
Dylan Thomas (who shared the composer's taste
for hard spirits) and, especially,
Aldous
Huxley, with whom Stravinsky spoke in French."
He settled into life
in Los Angeles and sometimes conducted concerts with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at the
famous Hollywood
Bowl
as well as throughout the U.S. When he
planned to write an opera with W. H. Auden, the need to acquire
more familiarity with the
English-speaking world coincided with his
meeting the conductor and
musicologist
Robert Craft. Craft lived with
Stravinsky until the composer's death, acting as interpreter,
chronicler, assistant conductor, and
factotum for countless musical and social
tasks.
On April
15, 1940, Stravinsky's unconventional major seventh chord in his
arrangement of the Star-Spangled
Banner led to his arrest by the Boston
police for
violating a federal law that prohibited the reharmonization of the
National Anthem.
In 1959, Stravinsky was awarded the
Sonning Award, Denmark's highest musical
honour.
In 1962, he accepted an invitation to return
to Leningrad
(today known as Saint Petersburg) for a series of
concerts. He spent more than two hours speaking with
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev,
who urged him to return to the Soviet Union
. Despite the invitation, Stravinsky remained
settled in the West.
It was during the 1960s that Stravinsky became mentor for
Warren Zevon. Zevon occasionally studied
Classical music in Stravinsky's home.
In 1969,
he moved to New
York
where he lived his last years at the Essex
House
. Two years later, he died at the age of 88 in
New York City and was buried in Venice
on the
cemetery island of San Michele
. His grave is close to the tomb of his
long-time collaborator
Sergei
Diaghilev. Stravinsky's professional life had encompassed most
of the 20th century, including many of its modern classical music
styles, and he influenced composers both during and after his
lifetime.
He has a star on the Hollywood
Walk of Fame
at 6340 Hollywood Boulevard and posthumously
received the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement in
1987.
Personality
Stravinsky displayed an inexhaustible desire to explore and learn
about art, literature, and life. This desire manifested itself in
several of his Paris collaborations. Not only was he the principal
composer for
Sergei Diaghilev's
Ballets Russes, but he also collaborated with
Pablo Picasso (
Pulcinella, 1920),
Jean Cocteau ( , 1927) and
George Balanchine ( , 1928). His taste in
literature was wide, and reflected his constant desire for new
discoveries. The texts and literary sources for his work began with
a period of interest in
Russian folklore,
progressed to classical authors and the
Latin
liturgy, and moved on to contemporary France (
André Gide, in
Persephone) and
eventually English literature, including Auden,
T. S. Eliot and
medieval
English verse. At the end of his life, he set
Hebrew scripture
in
Abraham and Isaac.
Patronage was never far away. In the early 1920s,
Leopold Stokowski gave Stravinsky regular
support through a pseudonymous "benefactor". The composer was also
able to attract commissions: most of his work from
The
Firebird onwards was written for specific occasions and was
paid for generously.
Stravinsky proved adept at playing the part of "man of the world",
acquiring a keen instinct for business matters and appearing
relaxed and comfortable in many of the world's major cities.
Paris, Venice, Berlin
, London
, Amsterdam
and New York
City
all hosted successful appearances as pianist and
conductor. Most people who knew him through dealings
connected with performances spoke of him as polite, courteous and
helpful. For example,
Otto Klemperer,
who knew
Arnold Schoenberg well,
said that he always found Stravinsky much more co-operative and
easy to deal with. At the same time, he had a marked disregard for
those he perceived to be his social inferiors:
Robert Craft was embarrassed by his habit of
tapping a glass with a fork and loudly demanding attention in
restaurants.
Although a notorious philanderer (who was rumoured to have affairs
with high-profile partners such as
Coco
Chanel ), Stravinsky was also a family man who devoted
considerable amounts of his time and expenditure to his sons and
daughters.
Stravinsky was also a devout member of the
Russian Orthodox Church all
throughout his life, remarking at one time, "Music praises God.
Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the
church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest
ornament."
Stylistic periods
Stravinsky's career may be divided roughly into three stylistic
periods.
'Russian' Period (circa 1908–1919)
The first period (excluding some early minor works) began with
Feu d'artifice and achieved prominence with the three
ballets composed for Diaghilev. These
three works have several characteristics in common: they are scored
for an extremely large orchestra; they use Russian
folk themes and motifs; and they are influenced
by Rimsky-Korsakov's imaginative scoring and instrumentation. They
also exhibit considerable stylistic development: from the , which
emphasizes certain tendencies in Rimsky-Korsakov and features
pandiatonicism conspicuously in the
third movement, to the use of
polytonality in
Petrushka, and the
intentionally brutal polyrhythms and dissonances of .
The first of the ballets, , is noted for its imaginative
orchestration, evident at the outset from the
introduction in 12/8 meter, which exploits the low register of the
double bass.
Petrushka, the first of Stravinsky's ballets
to draw on folk
mythology, is also
distinctively scored. In the third ballet,
The Rite of
Spring, the composer attempted to depict musically the
brutality of pagan Russia, which inspired the violent motifs that
recur throughout the work.
If Stravinsky's stated intention was "to send them all to hell",
then he may have rated the 1913 premiere of as a success: it is
among the most famous
classical
music riots, and Stravinsky referred to it frequently as a
"
scandale" in his autobiography. There were reports of
fistfights among the audience, and the need for a police presence
during the second act. The real extent of the tumult, however, is
open to debate, and these reports may be apocryphal.
Stravinsky later commented about the première of
The Rite:
"As for the actual performance, I am not in a position to judge, as
I left the auditorium at the first bars of the prelude, which had
at once evoked derisive laughter. I was disgusted. These
demonstrations, at first isolated, soon became general, provoking
counter-demonstrations and very quickly developing into a terrific
uproar. During the whole performance I was at
Nijinsky's side in the wings. He was standing on a
chair, screaming 'Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen'—they had their own
method of counting to keep time. Naturally the poor dancers could
hear nothing by reason of the row in the auditorium and the sound
of their own dance-steps. I had to hold Nijinsky by his clothes,
for he was furious, and ready to dash on to the stage at any moment
and create a scandal.
Diaghilev kept
ordering the electricians to turn the lights on or off, hoping in
that way to put a stop to the noise. That is all I can remember
about that first performance."
Other pieces from this period include: (
The Nightingale);
Renard (1916); ( ) (1918); and (
The Wedding)
(1923).
Neoclassical Period (circa 1920–1954)
The next phase of Stravinsky's compositional style extended from
roughly 1920, when he adopted a musical idiom similar to that of
the
Classical period, until
1954, when he turned to
twelve-tone serialism.
Pulcinella (1920) and the
Octet (1923) for wind instruments are Stravinsky's first
compositions to feature his re-examination of the classical music
of
Mozart and
Bach and their contemporaries. For
this "
neo-classical" style
Stravinsky abandoned the large orchestras demanded by the ballets,
and turned instead largely to wind instruments, the piano, and
choral and chamber works.
Other works such as (1927), (1928, for the Russian Ballet) and the
Dumbarton
Oaks Concerto (1937–38) continued this re-thinking of
eighteenth-century musical styles.
Works from this period include the three symphonies: the
(
Symphony of Psalms) (1930),
Symphony in C (1940)
and
Symphony in Three Movements (1945).
Apollon,
Persephone (1933) and
Orpheus (1947) exemplify
not only Stravinsky's return to music of the Classical period, but
also his exploration of themes from the ancient Classical world
such as
Greek mythology.
Stravinsky completed his last neo-classical work, the opera
The Rake's Progress, in
1951, to a libretto by
W. H. Auden based on the
etchings of
Hogarth. It was almost
ignored after it was staged by the
Metropolitan Opera in 1953. It was
presented by the
Santa Fe Opera in
its first season in 1957 with Stravinsky in attendance, and this
marked the beginning of his long association with the company. The
music is direct but quirky; it borrows from classic tonal harmony
but also interjects surprising dissonances; it features
Stravinsky's trademark off-rhythms; and it harks back to the operas
and themes of
Monteverdi,
Gluck and
Mozart. The opera was revived by the
Metropolitan Opera in 1997.
Serial Period (1954–1968)
Stravinsky began using
serial
compositional techniques, including
dodecaphony, the twelve-tone technique
originally devised by
Arnold
Schoenberg, in the early 1950s (after Schoenberg's death).
Robert Craft encouraged this
undertaking.
He first experimented with non-twelve-tone serial technique in
small-scale vocal and chamber works such as the
Cantata
(1952), Septet (1953), and
Three Songs from Shakespeare
(1953), and his first composition to be fully based on these
non-twelve-tone serial techniques is
In Memoriam Dylan
Thomas (1954).
Agon
(1954–57) is his first work to include a twelve-tone series, and
(1955) is his first piece to contain a movement entirely based on a
tone row ("Surge, aquilo"). Stravinsky
later expanded his use of dodecaphony in works including
Threni (1958),
A Sermon, a Narrative, and a
Prayer (1961), and
The
Flood (1962), which are based on biblical texts.
Agon, written from 1954 to 1957, is a ballet choreographed
for twelve dancers. It is an important transitional composition
between Stravinsky's neo-classical period and his serial style.
Some numbers of
Agon are reminiscent of the "white-note"
tonality of his neo-classic period, while others (for example
Bransle Gay) display his re-interpretation of serial
methods.
Innovation and influence
The All Music Guide (AMG) claims that Stravinsky was "one of
music's truly epochal innovators". The most important aspect of
Stravinsky's work aside from his technical innovations, including
in rhythm and harmony, is the, "changing face," of his
compositional style while always "retaining a distinctive,
essential identity". He himself was inspired by different cultures,
languages and literatures. As a consequence, his influence on
composers both during his lifetime and after his death was, and
remains, considerable.
Composition
Stravinsky's use of
motivic
development (the use of musical figures that are repeated in
different guises throughout a composition or section of a
composition) included additive motivic development. This is where
notes are subtracted or added to a motif without regard to the
consequent changes in meter. A similar technique may be found as
early as the sixteenth century, for example in the music of
Cipriano de Rore,
Orlandus Lassus,
Carlo Gesualdo, and
Giovanni de Macque, music with which
Stravinsky exhibited considerable familiarity.
The Rite of Spring is also notable for its relentless use
of
ostinati; for example, in the eighth
note ostinato on strings accented by eight
horns in the section
Augurs of Spring
(Dances of the Young Girls). The work also contains passages
where several ostinati clash against one another.
Rhythm
Stravinsky was noted for his distinctive use of
rhythm, especially in
The Rite of
Spring.
According to
Philip Glass:
the idea of pushing the rhythms across the bar lines
[...] led the way [...] the rhythmic structure of music became much
more fluid and in a certain way spontaneous
Glass also praises Stravinsky's "primitive, offbeat rhythmic
drive".
According to Andrew J. Browne, "Stravinsky is perhaps the only
composer who has raised rhythm in itself to the dignity of
art."
Stravinsky's rhythm and vitality greatly influenced composer
Aaron Copland.
Neoclassicism
Stravinsky's first neo-classical works were the ballet
Pulcinella of 1920, and the stripped-down and delicately
scored
Octet for winds of 1923. Stravinsky may have been
preceded in his use of neoclassical devices by composers such as
Sergei Prokofiev and
Erik Satie. By the late 1920s and 1930s, the use
by composers of neoclassicism had become widespread.
Quotation
Stravinsky continued a long tradition, stretching back at least to
the fifteenth century in the form of the
quodlibet and
parody
mass, by composing pieces which elaborate on individual works
by earlier composers. An early example of this is his
Pulcinella of 1920, in which he
used music which at the time was attributed to
Giovanni Pergolesi as source
material, at times quoting it directly and at other times
reinventing it. He developed the technique further in the ballet
The Fairy's Kiss of 1928, based on the music—mostly piano
pieces—of
Tchaikovsky.
Later examples of comparable musical transformations include
Stravinsky's use of Schubert in
Circus
Polka (1942) and
Happy
Birthday to You in
Greeting Prelude (1955).
Folk material
In Stravinsky stripped folk themes to their most basic melodic
outlines, and often contorted them beyond recognition with added
notes, and other techniques including
inversion and
diminution.
Orchestra
Like many of the
late romantic
composers, Stravinsky often called for huge orchestral forces,
especially in the early ballets. His first breakthrough
The Firebird proved him the
equal of
Nikolai
Rimsky-Korsakov and lit the "fuse under the instrumental make
up of the 19th century orchestra". In
The Firebird he took
the orchestra apart and analyzed it.
The Rite of Spring on
the other hand has been characterized by
Aaron Copland as the foremost orchestral
achievement in 20th century.
Stravinsky also wrote for unique combinations of instruments in
smaller ensembles, chosen for their precise tone colours. For
example,
Histoire du
soldat (
The Soldier's Tale) is scored for
clarinet,
bassoon,
cornet,
trombone,
violin,
double
bass and
percussion, a
strikingly unusual combination for 1918.
Stravinsky occasionally exploited the extreme ranges of
instruments, most famously at the opening of the
Rite of
Spring where Stravinsky uses the extreme upper reaches of the
bassoon to simulate the symbolic "awakening" of a spring
morning.
Reception
Erik Satie wrote an article about Igor
Stravinsky that was published in
Vanity Fair (1922). Satie had
met Stravinsky for the first time in 1910. Satie's attitude towards
the Russian composer is marked by deference, as can be seen from
the letters he wrote him in 1922, preparing for the
Vanity
Fair article. With a touch of irony, he concluded one of these
letters "I admire you: are you not the Great Stravinsky? I am but
little Erik Satie." In the published article, Satie argued that
measuring the "greatness" of an artist by comparing him to other
artists, as if speaking about some "truth", is illusory: every
piece of music should be judged on its own merits, not by comparing
it to the standards of other composers. That was exactly what
Jean Cocteau had done, when commenting
deprecatingly on Stravinsky in his 1918 book .
According to the
Musical Times in 1923:
All the signs indicate a strong reaction against the
nightmare of noise and eccentricity that was one of the legacies of
the war....
What has become of the works that made up the program
of the Stravinsky concert which created such a stir a few years
ago?
Practically the whole lot are already on the shelf, and
they will remain there until a few jaded neurotics once more feel a
desire to eat ashes and fill their belly with the east
wind.
In 1935, American composer
Marc
Blitzstein compared Stravinsky to
Jacopo
Peri and
C. P. E. Bach, conceding that "There is no denying the
greatness of Stravinsky. It is just that he is not great enough".
Blitzstein's
Marxist position is that
Stravinsky's wish was to "divorce music from other streams of
life," which is "symptomatic of an escape from reality", resulting
in a "loss of stamina his new works show", naming specifically
Apollo, the
Capriccio, and
Le Baiser de la
fée.
Composer
Constant Lambert described
pieces such as (
The Soldier's Tale) as containing
"essentially cold-blooded abstraction". Lambert continued, "melodic
fragments in are completely meaningless themselves. They are merely
successions of notes that can conveniently be divided into groups
of three, five, and seven and set against other mathematical
groups", and he described the cadenza for solo drums as "musical
purity...achieved by a species of musical castration". He compared
Stravinsky's choice of "the drabbest and least significant phrases"
to
Gertrude Stein's: "Everyday they
were gay there, they were regularly gay there everyday" ("Helen
Furr and Georgine Skeene", 1922), "whose effect would be equally
appreciated by someone with no knowledge of English
whatsoever".
In his book
Philosophy of Modern Music (1949),
Theodor Adorno called Stravinsky an acrobat
and spoke of hebephrenic and psychotic traits in several of
Stravinsky's works. Contrary to a common misconception, however,
Adorno didn't think that the hebephrenic and psychotic imitations
Stravinsky's music was supposed to contain were its main fault, as
he clearly pointed out in a postscriptum added later to his
"Philosophy": Adorno's criticism of Stravinsky is more concerned
with the "turn into the positive" Stravinsky's music took
(according to Adorno) in his neoclassical works. Part of the
composer's error, in Adorno's view, was his neo-classicism, but
more important was his music's "pseudomorphism of painting,"
playing off (time-space) rather than (time-duration) of
Henri Bergson. "One trick characterizes all of
Stravinsky's formal endeavors: the effort of his music to portray
time as in a circus tableau and to present time complexes as though
they were spatial. This trick, however, soon exhausts itself." His
"rhythmic procedures closely resemble the schema of catatonic
conditions. In certain schizophrenics, the process by which the
motor apparatus becomes independent leads to infinite repetition of
gestures or words, following the decay of the ego."
Stravinsky's reception in Russia and the USSR went back and forth.
Performances of his music stopped from around 1933 until the early
1960s, at which point the official position became that one must
appreciate Stravinsky.
According to
Paul Griffiths,
The Rake's Progress "gives justification in terms of human
psychology, and of the realities of the world, for that obsessional
need to repeat and return".
While Stravinsky's music has been criticized for its range of
styles, scholars had "gradually begun to perceive unifying elements
in Stravinsky's music" by the 1980s, including a "'seriousness' of
'tone' or of 'purpose'".
Recordings
Igor Stravinsky found recordings a practical and useful tool in
preserving his own thoughts on the interpretation of his music. As
a conductor of his own music, he recorded primarily for
Columbia Records, beginning in 1928 with a
performance of the original suite from
The Firebird and
concluding in 1967 with the 1945 suite from the same ballet. In the
late 1940s, he made several recordings for
RCA Victor at the
Republic Studios in Los Angeles. Although
most of his recordings were made with studio musicians, he also
worked with the
Chicago
Symphony Orchestra, the
Cleveland Orchestra, the
CBC Symphony Orchestra,
the
New York
Philharmonic Orchestra, the
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra,
and the Bavarian Broadcasting Symphony Orchestra.
During his lifetime, Stravinsky appeared on several telecasts,
including the 1962 world premiere of
The Flood on
CBS television; although Stravinsky appeared on the
telecast, the actual performance was conducted by Robert Craft.
Numerous films and videos of the composer have been
preserved.
Notes
References
- Adorno, Theodor. 1973. Philosophy of Modern Music.
Translated by Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Blomster. New York:
Continuum. ISBN 0-8264-0138-4 Original German edition, as .
Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1949.
- Anonymous. 1940. "Musical Count". Time Magazine
(Monday, March 11).
- Berry, David Carson. 2006.
"Stravinsky, Igor." Europe 1789 to 1914: Encyclopedia of the
Age of Industry and Empire, editors-in-chief John Merriman and
Jay Winter, 4:2261–63. Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons.
- Berry, David Carson. 2008.
"The Roles of Invariance and Analogy in the Linear Design of
Stravinsky's 'Musick to Heare.'" Gamut 1/1. Accessible at
[6464].
- Blitzstein, Marc. 1935. "The Phenomenon of Stravinsky".
Musical Quarterly 21, no. 3 (July): 330–47. Reprinted
1991, Musical Quarterly 75, no. 4 (Winter): 51–69.
- Browne, Andrew J. 1930. "Aspects of Stravinsky's Work".
Music & Letters 11, no. 4 (October): 360–66. Online link accessed 2007-11-19 (subscription
access)
- Cocteau, Jean. 1918. Le Coq et l'arlequin: notes de la
musique. Paris: Éditions de la Sirène. Reprinted 1979, with a
preface by Georges Auric. Paris: Stock. ISBN 2234010810 English
edition, as Cock and Harlequin: Notes Concerning Music,
translated by Rollo H. Myers, London: Egoist Press, 1921.
- Cohen, Allen. 2004. Howard Hanson in Theory and
Practice. Westport, Conn.: Praeger Publishers. ISBN
0-313-32135-3
- Copland, Aaron. 1952. Music and Imagination.
Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
- Craft, Robert. 1993. Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life,
St Martins Press.
- Craft, Robert. 1997. Stravinsky: Chronicle of a
Friendship. Vanderbilt University Press.
- Dubal, David. 2001. The Essential Canon of Classical
Music. New York: North Point Press.
- Eksteins, Modris. 1989. Rites of Spring: The Great War and
the Modern Era. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN
0-395-49856-2 (Reprinted 1990, New York: Anchor Books ISBN
0-385-41202-9; reprinted 2000, Boston: Mariner Books ISBN
0-395-93758-2)
- Glass, Philip. 1998. “Igor Stravinsky” Time (Monday, 8
June).
- Greene, David Mason (1985). Biographical Encyclopaedia of
Composers. New York: Doubleday.
- Holland , Bernard. 2001. "Stravinsky, a Rare Bird Amid the
Palms: A Composer in California, at Ease if Not at Home", The
New York Times (11 March).
- Lambert, Constant. 1936. Music Ho! A Study of
Music in Decline. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons.
- Lawson, Rex. 1986. Stravinsky and the Pianola, in
Confronting Stravinsky, ed. Pasler. Los Angeles:
University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-05403-2.
- Lehrer, Jonah. 2007. Igor
Stravinsky and the Source of Music, in his Proust Was a
Neuroscientist. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co. ISBN
0618620109.
- Page, Tim. 2006. "Classical Music: Great Composers, a
Less-Than-Great Poser and an Operatic Impresario". Washington
Post (Sunday, 30 July): BW13.
- Robinson, Lisa. 2004. "Opera Double Bill Offers Insight into
Stravinsky's Evolution". The Juilliard Journal Online 19,
no. 7 (April). (No longer accessible as of March 2008.)
- Siegmeister, Elie (ed.). 1943. The Music Lover's
Handbook. New York:William Morrow and Company.
- Slonimsky, Nicolas. 1953.
Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers
Since Beethoven's Time. New York: Coleman-Ross. Second
edition, New York: Coleman-Ross, 1965, reprinted Washington
Paperbacks WP-52, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969,
reprinted again Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974 ISBN
0-295-78579-9, and New York: Norton, 2000 ISBN 039332009X
(pbk).
- Straus, Joseph N. 2001. Stravinsky's Late Music.
Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis 16. Cambridge, New
York, Port Melbourne, Madrid, and Cape Town: Cambridge University
Press. ISBN 0-521-80220-2 (cloth) ISBN 0-521-60288-2 (pbk)
- Stravinsky, Igor. 1936. Chronicle of My Life. London:
Gollancz. Reprinted as An Autobiography (1903–1934).
London: Marion Boyars, 1990. ISBN 0-714-51082-3. Reprinted, New
York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1998. ISBN 0-393-31856-7.
- Stravinsky, Igor, and Robert Craft. 1959. Conversations
with Igor Stravinsky. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. OCLC 896750
Reprinted Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. ISBN
0520040406
- Stravinsky, Igor, and Robert Craft. 1962. Expositions and
Developments. London: Faber & Faber.
- Stravinsky, Igor, and Robert Craft. 1960. Memories and
Commentaries. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Reprinted 1981,
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN
0-520-04402-9 Reprinted 2002, London: Faber and Faber. ISBN
0571212425
- Stravinsky, Théodore, and Denise Stravinsky. 2004.
Catherine and Igor Stravinsky: A Family Chronicle
1906–1940. New York: Schirmer Trade Books; London: Schirmer
Books. ISBN 0825672902
- Taruskin, Richard. 1996. Stravinsky and the Russian
Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through Mavra. Two vols.
Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07099-2
- Volta, Ornella. 1989. Satie Seen through His Letters.
London: Boyars. ISBN 0-7145-2980-X.
- Wallace, Hellen. 2007. Boosey & Hawkes, The Publishing
Story. London: Boosey & Hawkes. ISBN
978-0-85162-514-0.
- Walsh, Stephen. 2000. Stravinsky. A Creative
Spring: Russia and France 1882–1934. London: Jonathan
Cape.
- Walsh, Stephen. 2001. "Stravinsky, Igor." New Grove
Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd edition. London:
MacMillian.
- Wenborn, Neil. 1985. Stravinsky. London: Omnibus
Press. ISBN 0711976511.
- Zappa, Frank, and Peter Occhiogrosso. 1989. The Real Frank
Zappa Book. New York: Poseidon Press. ISBN 067163870X
(reprinted twice in 1990, New York: Fireside Books, ISBN 0671705725
and New York: Picador Books ISBN 0330316257)
Further reading
External links
Recordings
- Piano works performed by Alberto Cobo:
- Piano works performed by Felipe Martins:
- Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet, performed by Ted Gurch,
clarinet:
- No. 1
- No. 2
- No. 3
- Les Noces performed on pianola by Rex Lawson
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