The Apollonian Clockwork: On Stravinsky (Amsterdam University Press - Amsterdam Archaeological Studies)

Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger

The Apollonian Clockwork On Stravinsky

3 a

Amsterdam Academic Archive

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the apollonian clockwork

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The Amsterdam Academic Archive is an initiative of Amsterdam University Press. The series consists of scholarly titles which were no longer available, but which are still in demand in the Netherlands and abroad. Relevant sections of these publications can also be found in the repository of Amsterdam University Press: www.aup.nl/repository. At the back of this book there is a list of all the AAA titles published.

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Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger

The Apollonian Clockwork On Stravinsky translated from the dutch by jeff hamburg

3 a Amsterdam Academic Archive

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The Apollonian Clockwork. On Stravinsky by Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger was first published in English in 1989 by Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York (isbn 019 315461 7). Cover design: René Staelenberg, Amsterdam isbn 90 5356 856 5 nur 660/662 © Amsterdam University Press • Amsterdam Academic Archive, 2006 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

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preface to the AAA-edition Stravinsky demeure, as Pierre Boulez once wrote. Stravinsky remains. Stravinsky lives on, even though Stravinsky the man died in 1971. That man named Igor Fyodorovich was born near St Petersburg; he became a resident of Switzerland, France and California; he died in New York and was buried in Venice. He came into this world a Russian, lived in it a Frenchman, and departed it an American. He studied with grand old men from the nineteenth century, worked with leading artists of the twentieth, and engaged with creative spirits who continue to touch our lives in the twenty-first. He shocked the musical world with his Rite of Spring; he reinvented the musical world with his Pulcinella; he startled the musical world with his Movements. He bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus; and we petty men and women still walk under his huge legs (legacy), and peep about. Yet what do we really know of the real Stravinsky? Over the years, thanks to the efforts of many, not least the composer himself, ‘Stravinsky has become “Stravinsky”’. Stravinsky remains one of the most familiar and at the same time one of the most enigmatic figures of the past hundred years. The Apollonian Clockwork, you might say, is a journey in quest of the ‘real’ Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky. That we never really find him tells us as much about such quests as it does about Stravinsky. But as a different Louis (Robert Louis Stevenson) reminds us, to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. And this journey is certainly full of hope. We follow our Louis and Elmer to New York where they fail to learn anything directly from the ‘charming’ Vera Stravinsky and the ‘orphan’ Robert Craft, though they leave with a song in their step. We follow the pair round Lake Geneva, where they fail to find much evidence of the man who composed ‘the music for Fantasia’ there, but who later discover a truth about Dumbarton Oaks through playing ‘bad taste’ piano duet arrangements of Bach. We travel from one city of canals to another, from Amsterdam to St Petersburg, where we hear a Russian carillon made by a Dutchman. ‘Bells are always pealing in Russian music and bells are always pealing in the music of the singer’s son.’ These bells ring out at the end of their/our journey and, through them, we glimpse – darkly – something of the truth not only of ‘Stravinsky’ but also of Stravinsky. While The Apollonian Clockwork is undoubtedly a serious work of musicology, it mercifully reads as neither scientific textbook nor solemn tribute. Reading it is like wandering the streets of Venice, ‘the city [Stravinsky] loved more than any other’. There is no obvious starting or finishing point (though there’s little point starting where the maestro finished, at the island cemetery of San Michele, as he now only decomposes there). You know the main landmarks but, approaching them from an unfamiliar angle, you are continually taken aback. Sometimes, by accident, you end up where you began, but you discover a hidden gem along the way. There’s a sense of adventure and a sense of fun. Let’s not begin on the Rialto (The Rite), where all the other tourists throng, but on the quiet Calle Goldoni (Chanson russe) or in the basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paulo (Requiem Canticles). And then we might suddenly find ourselves back with the crowds in the Piazza San Marco, where orient and occident once met (the distant echo of ‘an eastern cathedral’, the opening of the Canticum Sacrum, ad honorem Sancti Marci nominis). As the

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authors point out, both Stravinsky’s journey as an émigré through the world and the compositional journey he took through the history of music followed labyrinthine paths with sidetracks and detours. Our journey with Louis and Elmer follows a similar route, similarly revelatory, similarly full of surprises at every turn. The working hypothesis of Andriessen and Schönberger is that – despite these many twists and turns, despite the many reinventions of ‘Stravinsky’ by Stravinsky and others – there remains a recognizable, albeit elusive core to his music, to which we can gain access via certain fingerprints. They introduce us to his way of thinking about chords; his understanding of octotony; his ‘utopian unison’; his rhythmic tics. We find these fingerprints in early and late works; we find them in original compositions and arrangements, between which no distinction can be made. And we find them in his attitude to other music: ‘The thing that Bach recognized in Vivaldi is the same thing that Stravinsky recognized in Bach – himself.’ Stravinsky once declared that he suffered from a rare form of kleptomania. This was his way of explaining the aspect of his music that had been labelled ‘neoclassical’. He struck a new relationship with music from the past, which, magpie-like, he stole wherever he found it and re-forged in his own image. It did not much matter what the music was, though the composers whose music he chose to plunder were those with whom he had most in common – ‘know-it-alls, money-grabbers and anally fixated hypochondriacs’. What makes Stravinsky recognizably Stravinsky, and not just pastiche Monteverdi, Bach, Pergolesi, Mozart or Tchaikovsky, is what he did with what he found. This is the central message of The Apollonian Clockwork. Andriessen and Schönberger assert that the importance of all Stravinsky’s music lies in its attitude towards already existing musical material, not in the nature of that found material itself. The true influence of Stravinsky, then, is not to be heard in those composers who merely imitate the superficial features of his style: ‘Everyone, after all, has been influenced by Stravinsky’. No. ‘The true influence of Stravinsky keeps beginning all over again.’ It is by means of a Stravinskian attitude that music has been able to renew itself, an attitude that is evident in the music of, among others, Varèse, Messiaen, Nancarrow, Carter, Birtwistle, Adams and, of course, Andriessen. Like his hero and mentor, like all good composers, Andriessen too is a kleptomaniac. In Stravinsky he hears all manner of things that he steals to use in his own music. It is these things that he tells us about in the book: ostinato basses, seventh chords, form as process rather than something already formed, Ravel, anti-Romanticism, Brechtian irony. This book is as much ‘on Andriessen’ as it is ‘on Stravinsky’. Indeed, it is a kind of palimpsest in which Andriessen and Schönberger write ‘on (top of) Stravinsky’; Stravinsky is written ‘over’, in English and Dutch. (Remember that Stravinsky claimed – dishonestly – that he began writing his Pulcinella on the Pergolesi manuscripts.) In this way our authors are more honest, more authentic (truthful) than those whose texts pretend (and inevitably fail) to be objective. Because our authors know that the writing of history can never be objective, they have some fun. Like Stravinsky, they play with the past. So let’s play. Who was the ‘Babar of the French china shop’? Who are the ‘Liberaces of Baroque music’? What is the ‘principle of the right wrong-note’? What is ‘zoonology’?

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What do Stravinsky and Disney’s Scrooge McDuck have in common? The answers to this quiz are to be found in the pages of this book. The answers will bring a smile to your face. Through laughter we are invited to look afresh at what we thought we knew about Stravinsky and the musical environments in which he lived and worked, and in which his music – even today – is received. Much has changed in our world since Het Apollinisch Uurwerk: Over Stravinsky was first published. St Petersburg was then still known as Leningrad. The ‘east’ of Stravinsky’s birth was still separated from the ‘west’ of his death by concrete wall and entrenched ideology. Since 1983 we have come to learn much about Stravinsky’s life, thanks to Stephen Walsh; we have come to learn much about Stravinsky and the Russian traditions, thanks to Richard Taruskin. You must turn to these distinguished scholars if you require chronological exegesis, thorough analysis and meticulous footnoting. But if you are only ever planning to read one work on Stravinsky, then I strongly recommend you keep reading the book you are now holding. It remains as fresh today as it was when it first appeared. It certainly tells us important things about Stravinsky’s life (his friends, colleagues and accomplices). It tells us important things about Stravinsky’s deep-rooted Russianness (via, among other creatures, Misha the bear). It also tells us a great deal about Stravinsky’s form, harmony, counterpoint, melody, rhythm and aesthetics. But above all it tells us that Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger love Stravinsky’s music. That is the true importance of this book. If, by the time you have finished reading it, not even a fleck of their shared enthusiasm has rubbed off on you, then you must have skin of leather and a heart of stone. It is a book that actually makes you want to listen to its subject’s music. And how often do we say that about a book? Jonathan Cross University of Oxford February 2006

authors’ note Since this book is an exact copy of the original edition, corrections could not be carried out. Some errors, such as ‘gr.drum’ instead of ‘bass drum’ (p. 225, Ex. 2) and ‘Zvezdolik’ instead of ‘Zvezdoliki’ (p. 294), are of minor consequence. The typographical error in the name of one of the 20th century’s main composers in the very Preface, ‘Schoneberg’ instead of ‘Schoenberg’, is, however, regretful.

For that matter, what is there to exaggerate: temperament, sensitivity, wit, humour, spontaneity, gentleness, strength, or~in the final analysi" the two characteristics of genius~nalvetc and irony; all of this he already possesses. Goethe on Haydn

Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgements arc due to the following for permission to usc copyright materiaL Musical Examples Boosey and Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd., London Petrushka, Deux poesies de Balmonl, Le Sacre du prinlemps, Le Rossignol, Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Mavra, Octet, Concerto for Piano and Wind, Oedipus Rex, Apollon musagete, I.e Baiser de fa fee, Symphony oj P~'afms, Duo concertalll, Persephone , Three Pieces for string quartet, Orpheus, Cantata, Greeting Prelude, The Rake's Progress, Etude for pianola, Madrid, Agan, Canticum Sacrum, Threni, Variations (Aldous Huxley in memoriam), Concerto in D for strings, Requiem Canticles, Tres .mcrae cantiones, La Marseillaise. Publishers B. Schott's Sohne, Mainz The Firebird, Concerto for Violin in D , leu de cartes, Concerto in E flat (Dumbarton Oaks), Symphony in C, Danses Concerlantes, Ode, Sonata for two pianos, Symphony in Three Movements. J. and W. Chester/Edition Wilhelm Hansen London Ltd. Three Easy Pieces, Five Easy Pieces for piano duct, Les Noces (1919 and 1923 versions), L'Histoire du soldat, Song of the Volga Boatmen, Concertina for string quartet, Les cinq doigts.

Rob. Forberg-P. Jurgenson Musikvcrlag Le Roi des aoiles. Mercury Music The Star-Spangled Ranner

(© 1941).

Charling Music Corp. Ebony Concerto (© 1946). Quotations Faber and Faber, London I. Stmvinsky and R. Craft: Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (1959);

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vii

Memories and Commentaries (1 960); Expositions and DCI·eioprn cnlS (1%2) ; Dialogues and a Diary (1968); Th emes and Con clusion5 ( 1972). Hutchinson o f Londo n V. Stravin sky and R. Craft: Stra vinsky in Pictures and Documents (1 979 ). Illustration s page

4 8 19

23

51

54 50 69

95 11 8 129

143 148

149 151 159 178

185 186

194 213

259

PhotO by Hans van den Bogaard. from Jgor and Vera Stravin sky: A Photograph Album (Thames and Hudson, London, 1982). ' L, access roads, cloverleafs. converging and me rging motorways ; each route has characteristics of the ot he r routes, bu l no two routes cou ld e ver be exchanged. The view from the road is always the some but in a differe nt way; always diffe rent in the same woy .

Orpheus. As frie nds of the Greek singer offer their sympathy at his rece nt widowerhood. they dance a n A ir dc da nse together 10 Ihe wdl-ma nne red . almost couflly elegy pla yed by a solo violin , tec te ring between two adjacent notes-still tottering since the same dilemma a year earlier in the Concerto in D for strings . O r: thc Angel of Death. the guide on the route to Hades, foresh:O§ "'i:C-~ ..~~ ',,'E::::n ' . ' r""

Apn llnn musagCtf" E!l!

For Stravinsky, pandi atonicism is strict diatonicism wi th notes that belong to the key hut are, although institulionalized , none the Ic s~ forei gn to the chord . In the example from Apollon, all the notes belong [0 the key of D major (with the exception o f t he 10wCJcd seventh , C,-sec be low . paragraph 4 .2) . But on no beat, cxcept the lasl o ne, docs a rcgul.) and published in HolI"mi [trans.].

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Probably not for the 'right' reasons, as formulated by, of all people, Schoenberg C... it is all negative: unusual theatre, unusual setting, unusual resolution of the action, unusual vocal writing, unusual acting, unusual melody, unusual harmony, unusual counterpoint, unusual instrumentation'), but for the 'wrong' reasons, as accurately expressed-as often occurred in Holland where Stravinsky was concerned-by Willem Pijper: 2 'If the writer of this action less opera had previously only written choral music for song competitions or if he had busied himself with arranging potpourris for wind bands. even then one would have had to call this opera-oratorio a scandalous pasticcio the work of an incompetent craftsman composed in a muddled artistic conscience.' Stravinsky's behaviour during the fifteen years before the Second World War is characterized by the cynicism of the dethroned god who would rather be misunderstood than vilified. As fate would have it, the French citiz.en (since 1929) had most success in America while the American citizen Stravinsky in the fifties and sixties was most praised in Europe. Stravinsky's situation was typified by his desire to take complete control. He began an active performing career as conductor and pianist of his own works in 1924. The fact that conducting remained up to the end of his life his largest source of income says something about the social position of composers and sheds some light on Stravinsky's deep-rooted hatred of conductors, easily illustrated by countless amusing anecdotes. A side-effect of this performing career was a decreased production in the thirties (,merely' cleven works, including 'merely' four major pieces: Symphony of Psalms, Persephone, the Concerto for Two Solo Pianos and Symphony in C). Also typical of his situation was the desire to preface every new composition-starting with the one-act Mavra and the Octet (from 1922 and 1923, respectivcly)-with a lecture, an interview. a statement, a radio-talk, or a newspaper article. Moreover, his situation was typified by his writing an autobiography, Chroniques de ma vie (vol. 1, 1935; vol. 2, 1936), prompted by the desire to resolve misunderstandings about himself and his works. The autobiography may. weB be reliable,) but the tone 'consistently. contradicts what Stravinsky thought, felt, and said at early periods of his life' (Craft, PD). The book, which might be considered modern for its day because of what is , Willcm Pijpcr (1H'1.J--1<J47j. Dutch coml"'"cr and crilic [lran,.[. ) That i,1 fe lt· ( PD) . The rools o f Siravinsky's later aesthetic 'tncory' arc found in these kinds o f a necdotal, mainly apodictic statements. Merely to for mulale this 'tneory' typifies his undermined position. In 1942 six ler.:tures that the composer had given three years earlier at Harvard University were published under the title Poerique musicale: it is the !>omewhat r.:rampcd ~t a gin g of what began as a colourful and unordered procession of aphorisms. I:u ms-mots, insights, and p

2~

.. -

-_._-

.-

::j

--

nobody would have remarked: 'A bit too much like Bartok.' And if this bar had turned up (which would have been highly unlikely in America): Ex. 3

Of

".'

no one would have said: 'It sounds like Boulez. Or Stockhausen.' At most: 'Very interesting'. And supposing this har was played (which would have been very likely in America): , ..,.. Ex. 4

nobody would have thought: 'Sounds like Hindemith'. At most: 'A liltle boring, that bar'. Rut if the following har were to turn up: Ex. 5

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On. In.fluence

everyone would have jumped up all at once and shouted: 'You can't do that! That's too much like Stravinsky!' (How can this he? A lengthy account of general characteristics and personal techniques will not help. Perhaps the answer is very simple. The last of the five musical examples is the most interesting. In no other example is tonality dealt with so 'dialectically'. The other examples arc either chromatic or diatonic-in any case, unambiguous. But the last example suggests different musical inclinations. It is tonaL but at the same time non-tonal. The music can take off in any direction, which is not the case with the other examples.) Fortunately, Fine and Shapero and all the others did not worry too much about accusations of epigonism. Everyone, after all, has been influenced by Stravinsky; Milhaud, Gershwin, Prokofiev, Poulcne, Dc Falla. Lutoslawski. Henze, Blacher, Britten, Walton, Khachaturian, Anthcil, Stan Kenton, Frank Zappa , Piazzolla, Dallapiccola, Yarese, Shostakovich, Ravel, Dutilleux, Casella, Luigi Russolo, Petrassi, Nabokov, Orff. Messiaen, Conrad Beck, Willy Burkhard, Tcherepnin, Egk, Fortner, Willem Pijper, Thelonius Monk, Bernd Alois Zimmerman. And what about all those little Sacres composed between 1920 and 194() in the Soviet Union , Poland, Hungary, up to and including the Netherlands: umpa, umpa-pa, um, strings thumping away, never enough time-signature changes. No, to say that a piece of music sounds like Stravinsky every once in a while does not really say much. Put more strongly: a genuine Stravinsky school cannot, by definition, exist, since Stravinsky's music has not yielded a musical system that other composers can usc. Stravinsky's inlluenee can be seen rather in a specific attitude towards already existing musical material. This attitude can best be described as the (historical) realization that music is about other music and is not primarily suited to express personal emotions; that new music implies the existcnce of other music; that music is only music-Orpheus may well be able to coax stones into dancing, but he will never be able to get his woman back. On the horizon of this description looms the concept of classicism. Not as a historical style, but as the rationalization of an artistic attitude. Classical in this instance means music in which the composer creates only the form 'hut leaves the finding of some content in this form to "the listener's power of imagination" '. '. the listener, too, must autonomously collaborate at fulfilment.' Romanticism imputes to music 'concrete content, condemning the listener to passivity'. 'Where music makes usc of such intensified means that it despotically sweeps the listener under its spell and robs him of his own power of imagination, it ceases to be "music"-that is, it oversteps the

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boundary of what in the classical sense is allowable. ' (Friedrich Blume in Die Musik in Geschichte lind Gegenwurt.) Such a description comes closer to forming a theoretical basis of music similiar to Stravinsky's than docs an analysis of the pandiatonidsm in the Sonata for Piano Four Hands by Shapero. In this regard, classicism is radical. It manifests itself in art as avant-garde and defines the attitude of the artist who holds back, distances his work from the audience, withholds information. This attitude is diametrically opposed to that of a quiz show compere, a chat-show host, leaders of advertising campaigns, and the people who make recommendations in TV adverts. Classicism is not searching for balance and harmony, eclecticism, the golden mean, the beauty of a dinner-jacket and white shirt, 'just act naturally and that's crazy enough'. Precisely what a TV personality does: he conspicuous by not being conspicuous. Just like composers such as Henkemans, I Lutoslawski, and Henze at their worst: music in dinner-jacket, music that orchestra directors love_

Stravinsky'S classicism is always slightly irritating, the music is unfinished. 'The music calls for action, not consideration,' says Wim Markus. Once again, this sounds like the encyclopedic words of Friedrich Blume. But it cannot be emphasized enough: renewal is concealed in the old. It hides itself. Only a sharp sleuth will discover it and thereby change history. The true influence of Stravinsky keeps beginning all over again. L Han< HcnkemanI)6....70). OU lcll comJXlM'r and pedagogue . l c ~c ~r ,)f. ~""mg 'llhcM.. Louis And rie s""n. Jan van Vlii"",n. Peter !:ichul. and Misha Mcngcl bc rg rtr~o ~.J.

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its continuous rhythmic figure in the accompaniment and its tonal character, as if it were a duet from a 'classical' opera:) What is different about the Cantata is the method of composition. Thinking serially: starting with a tone-row means, in the first place, thinking contrapuntally. To Stravinsky, serial counterpoint implied specifically an ancient composition technique, not a new one. Counterpoint belongs with modes, not with tonal or chromatic music. Counterpoint is modal, pre-tonal, Palestrina, Obrecht. The modes form the material of the melody, or in this case, the cant us firm us, and the cantus firmus forms the basis of contrapuntal thinking. This is why similarities in Stravinsky's serial and non-serial music and in his polyphonic and homophonic music can be found in the construction of the melody. Melodic thinking is what guaranteed continuity during the musical upheavals at the beginning of the seventeenth century-the transition from modality to tonality, from counterpoint to monody, from vocal to instrumental music. It is precisely in this period that the cantata, along with the opera, developed as a new musical form. The early cantatas arc compositions for solo voices (with or without chorus) and instruments and consist of different movements which alternate between polyphony and monody: monody-the medium of expression par excellence in baroque music-is reserved for the movements with solo voices. From the outset, the cantata developed along two lines: the secular and the religious. The secular cantatas had their roots in the madrigaL Monteverdi, not one to have scruples when it came to money or fashion, quickly added a basso continuo part to the second printing of his a cappella madrigals. Now that was modern music. Similarly, the religious cantatas were no more than a series of motets with an added basso continuo. Docs not composing really mean 'putting together'? But it was not long before real cantatas were being written. The first results of this new discovery show similarities to Stravinsky's Cantata. The texts are, in contrast to the texts of motets for example, strophic, usually ballad-like poems, either religious or secular (or, typical of the Renaissance, both at the same time). Tbey are regularly interrupted by refrains, whose contents are outside the domain of the main texts; these refrains are called ritornelli. Many of the strophes have the same bass. Homophony and polyphony arc alternated each movement. As far as form goes, Stravinsky's Cantata refers to the discovery of the cantata form, but musically refers to a (somewhat) earlier world about 1,400 miles north-west of Italy: the England of Elizabeth I, Shakespeare, and John Dowland. Dowland was himself in Italy with the idea of studying with the madrigalist Marenzio (a plan defeated by a chance meeting with some compatriots who were conspiring against the queen). After being dismissed

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from his post at the Danish court for licentious behaviour, he finally returned home. Dowland was a brilliant composer and lutenist, a know-it-all, just like William Byrd, twenty years his senior. Affluence under the regime of Elizabeth I (woollen mills, the ending of religious conflict. the beginning of colonization , the organization of the welfare system) gave rise to many good composers: since where affluence is, art follows. These composers wrote, besides consort music, madrigals and music for virginal, airs and catches. Catches were canzonas for more than one part, frequently for solo voice and canonically accompanying instruments. Affluence gives rise not only to art, but to luxury and refinement as well, and thereby refinement in art. Dowland's airs arc endowed with harmonic and melodic jewels not dared for the next 300 years of history---cxtremely sophisticated settings of dissonances (a minor third in the melody, a major third in the accompanying chord, just like, well, 250 years later, Chopin used), contrapuntal diamonds not sweatingly extracted in the mines, as in the German motets; no, merely found lying in an overflowing treasure-chest. This is the world to which the two ricercare in Stravinsky'S Cantata refer. Come kiss me, sweet, and kill me. So shall your hear! be cased, And I shall rest content and dic well pleased. Words Gesualdo could also have written-between being flogged. The text of the Cantata consists of four beautiful poems in which religious and erotic emotions melt into a sublimated unity. This sounds high-flown, though the poems arc not in the least. 'To-morrow shall be my dancing day' is not about a fifteen-year-old girl trying to get to sleep the night before her first ball; no, this is God's Only Son Himself speaking, with a delicate smile on his lips. Death, too, is no longer the ultimate sacrifice for humanity, but merely a gesture towards the beloved: Then on thc cross hang'd I was, Where a spear to my heart did glance , There issu'd forth both water and blood, To call, to call my true love to my dance.

'The Lyke-wake Dirges' A 'Lyke-wake Dirge' precedes and follows each of the two ricercarc and the duet of the Cantat~, so that one gets the impression that the dirges have the main role. The dirges arc less 'Elizabethan' than the ricercare. More timeless,

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1952-Cantutu

a barely moving musical continuum, they seem like an evocation of the "'Totenklage n" [dirges] so ehaructc ristic of the Burgundia n-Netherlands r culture at the e nd o f the Middle Ages' (Lindlar). The women arc guurding the corpse. What arc the men doing then? Diggillg the gnwe? Composing? When good music is about death , and especiall y about overcoming death by way of- what clsc-Io\'e (Th e Rake 's Progress). women sing (or preferably children, such as in Faure's Requiem or Bach's Passions). and they sing in the third church mode. Ihe Phrygian. The e ll/uala. as in the medieval TOienklagen, begins with the descending tetraehord cha racteristic of this mode (Ex. I). More characteristic of the Phrygia n mode is the ascending minor second with which the scale begin!>-unique among the modes. EK. ]

The association of this scale with sadness, death , and the fear of death must have its origin in a distant past. The Ph rygian lame nt also appears in Spanish flamenco . probably borrowed from Arabian music which can be traced back to Jewish synagogue music-in all probability the. form ula has an Old Testame nt o ri gin. The instrumental entry preceding the descending melody (Ex . 2. which in turn is the 'intonazione ' for the melody with whic h the women's chorus begins) sums up the two characteristics of the Phrygia n mode. EK.2

I. The upper voice, a descending and the n ascending major second , is, apaTl from the Phrygian pcntachord to which it belongs. a melodic key in Stravinsk y'~ music, in earl y and late works, in the beginning, middle. or end of pieres, usually as a 'chorale', as a Song of Songs, from the Sucre up to and including the Requiem Canticles. 2. The Phrygian formula E- F-E is hidde n, thou gh it sou nds more em phatic than is suggested in the cxample, being the lowcst and loudest notes of the most penc trating instrument in the ensemble, the cor anglais (Ex. 3). Ex.3

J952~Ca n t"I\U

107

The Phrygian second is also a melodic key in Stravinsky's music, from the mother's lament at having 10 relinqu ish he r daughter in 'Jcs Noceof to the ope ning of Threni, from the v(lriation theme of the Octet to the descending Phrygian scales at the end of the first movement of the Concerto for Two Solo Pianos, and at the beginning of O rpheus. But the genuine Hades appears in Symphony in C. (Ex. 4) . Ex . 4

The third a nd most impo rtant aspect o f the open ing bars of the Canlata is the pitch collection . The complete pitch collection forms a hexachord On E (Ex. 5). To analyse the pitch material by means of six· note groups can help to clarify the riddle that is pmed to the listener by the inexplicable beauty of the piece. This is as true for a melodic as it is for a harmonic analysis. Ex . 5

ili" ...'-·._-,..:r: .... -~ • ~."

As fa r as the melody is conce rned , a hex achordal structure rela tes the eleven-tone row (almost twelve· tone) of the tenor aria (Ricercar II , Ex. 6) to the simple melody in C major in the beginning of the soprano aria 'The maidens came' (Riccrcar II. Ex . 7). EJI:.6

Ex. 7 The hcxachord of the soprano aria becomes com pressed in the opening bars of the tenor aria, from V2 1 1 1 'I.! to Vz 1 1f2 '/2 'Ii (Ex. 8). Ex. K

I...- "'-"'->~~ -;

. - --

Inst(;ad o f being explained as triads (simple stacking of simple thirds) wi th added tones, the harmony can be better explained as being part of a hex achordal system. So, too, c.:u n the chords of Example 9. taken from the second line of the opening chorus, the first 'Lyke-wake Dirge'.

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h .9

It would be obvious to treat tne fir:,! chord as a G major triad with a Hollywood major seventh lind the second as a G major triad with u New Orlean's blue note F, but one could also conside r tllc harmony to be thc alternation between the (as yet incomplete) hexuchord (Ex. lOa) and th e (complete) hcxaChord (Ex. IOh) . Ex, lOa

Ex. lOb

Making the n the lowest note of a hcxachnrti instead of G as a fundame ntal of a major triad has a few musk:a l advantages. 'Ole li stener must place the music in a Phrygian contexl, thereby hearing more clearly the rcl:uionship between the musical material of the various movements and relieving the music of conventional, tonal references. This laner is especially advantageous, since the Call1ara alludes 10 the world of pre-lOnal music in which harmony is primarily a result of the congrueJlce o f mciodies. The signific.... ...I~~ -iI::.'!:t. j

(i) Dlimbtlr/oll Oak.1 (19:\8) 0

OctOtOIlY

231

In each of the dominant ninth chords in Example 4, two successive major triads (fro m Example 2) can be differentiated. The combination of two nonsuccessive major triads gives rise to another chord-the dominant ninth chord (minor ninth) with added tritone (Ex. 8). Ex. 8

This chord, probably only in the United States still called bitonal , has become known as the Petrushka chord (Ex. 9). Ex. 9

'The dissonant combination of C and Fl': paradoxically, the customary description of lhe Petrushka chord emphasizes its most traditional aspect . What is new about it is not necessarily the structure of the chord, but the fact that the combination of two major triads separated by a tcito ne has been removed from the context of late romantic chromaticism and roving harmonies (Scriabin). instead of a B ~) gives The chord's anti-tonal notation (for example , an visual expression to the becoming autonomous of what used to be an augmented six-four-th ree chord. The Petrushka chord is not a harmonic function but an objet sonore avant fa leure. The harmonic structure of the Petrushka chord emanates from a development that goes back to the beginning of the nineteenth century . But the Petrushka chord is also a chord taken from The Firebird. The difference between the two chords is a djfference of function , also reflected in the notation: what in Pelrushka is the combinalion of two independent triads is in The Firebird still a ' tonally" notated seventh chord with appoggiaturas (Ex. 10). Only after many pages and just as many adventures does the 'Firebird chord' betray its roots: the succession of the two chords of which it is composed (Ex . 11).

A'

Ex. 10

The F;rebird, bar 11

Octotany

232 Ex , II

n,t" Firt'bifll ~ This succession of two triads separated by a (rito ne (the second one in this case is a passing chord) is a. harmonic piquancy hclo ngin g 10 the groomed f~iry·tale world of latc nineteenth-century Russian, especially 51 PeteNburg, dramatic music. There are a plethora of exampl es in Rimsky-Korsakov

(E,. 12). Ex . 12

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Rim~ ky- J o nly as prepara tion-----lhc un suspected executio n o f Scri.. bin's Prefatory Act ion-for the following cho rus, for thc ' new'.) When a bare major triad with an added minor third appears in bars 1- 23, it is an exception to the rule of parilllcl chords anu strongly octotonic-tinted ehro matj ci~m . Oclotonic chords funcTion as musica l punctuations (bars 7- 8,

1912-Lc Roi des Uoiles (Zvezdoliki)

245

11. and 23). sometimes also as points of departure for more advanced harmonic experiments (Ex. 3). E;(. "

f.e Rui dcs ,'foil".,. bars 15-17

What is heard in bars 15-17 is, at the same time, both the consequential application of the octolonic principle and its own undermining: hardly any chords sound octotonic, though all the chords are comprised of notes from one of the three octotonic scales: I 1-8 chord number

11-12 9

\3 III

scale 2 scale 1 14: scale 3

The 'wrong' bass notes B band G, the 'wrong' soprano E in the orchestra, and the 'wrong" C_ twice in the choir indicate that Stravinsky-unlike his Dutch colleagues almost half a century later 2-did not think horizontally in synthetically structured modes, but intuitively experimented with late romantic harmonics. Upon reaching the chorale, the octotony is done away with. The octotonic chords that remain (and that never really disappear during the succeeding forty years) arc uprooted, functioning only as passing chords. The only genuine octotonic-tinted harmonic sequence (the four dominant seventh chords a minor third apart in har 29) occurs not in the chorale itself, hut in the solemn hymn for male voices. The rest is prophecy: octotony as apposition; bare major triads with added major seconds (bars 252, 28\ 3( 1). with added minor seconds (bar 302 ), or with added minor thirds (241, 27 1 . .1, 28 1 , 303, 31 1, I Sec ·Octotony". p. 228]lTans_]. , Sec ai,,, ·Octotony·. p. 22H, e'pecially fO()![)Ole, 2, 3, an() 4]lran'l_

246

1912-Le Rai des etoiles (Zvezdoliki)

32 2), and pandiatonicism (33 2 , the final chord of the chorale) arc what stand out (Ex. 4), Ex. 4

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Between the Scriabincsque twilight and the Debussi:m afternoon, Time forgets the hour. For, when the King of the Stars finally speaks 'Do you keep the word?' and 'we' shout 'We do', the granite chords appear, unambiguously,

1912-Le Roi des €toiles (Zvezdoliki)

247

for the first time, th