Strawinsky: A New Composer
Strawinsky: A New Composer
IN America we are not accustomed to look to performances of the ballet, which, after all, is not an institution with us, for musical manna. There have doubtless been ballets given here with music by composers whose names occur in Grove’s Dictionary, sometimes performed by a fairly good band, but we have not expected, or received, revelations on these occasions. Since the Russian Ballet (the organization directed by Serge de Diaghilew) has travelled to and fro in Europe, Paris, and more especially London, have learned a thing or two in this respect. For much of the most interesting of the modern music has been brought to these cities by the Russians, who include not only ballet but also opera in their répertoire. They are responsible for the productions, outside of Russia, of Moussorgsky’s two operas,Boris GodunowandLa Khovanchina(this latter music-drama was not produced by the Imperial Theatres in Russia until over twenty years after its publication in the Rimsky-Korsakow version. Its presentation at Moscow took place after its Paris and London performances, and at Petrogradonly a month or so before!); Rimsky-Korsakow’s operas,Ivan the Terrible,A Night in May, andThe Golden Cock; and Borodine’sPrince Igor. As for ballets, Richard Strauss wroteThe Legend of Josephfor these dancers; Maurice Ravel,Daphnis et Chloë; Debussy,Jeux; Reynaldo Hahn,Le Dieu Bleu; Paul Dukas,La Péri(to be sure, this work was finally produced under other auspices; withdrawn by the composer from the Russians a few days before the date set for the first performance, on the ground that insufficient time had been allotted for rehearsals); and Tcherepnine,NarcisseandLe Pavilion d’Armide; but most important of all are the three ballets (and the lyric drama) contributed by Igor Strawinsky, who has, in a sense, developed a new medium out of the orchestra by writing a new language for it, although it may be plainly seen that he is the logical descendant of the really Russian composers (brushing aside the Tschaikowsky-Rubinstein interlude; nationalism was, of course, no object with these musicians). There are suggestions of Strawinsky’s style so far back as Glinka, in the Oriental dances ofRusslan and Luidmilla. You will find the germs of his method in Borodine’s symphonies; fromMoussorgsky to Strawinsky is but a step, especially if you refer to the original text ofBoris Godunowand not the Rimsky-Korsakow version. In fact, Strawinsky, in spite of his radical departures from academic methods, is the inevitable defender of the faith of the famous “Five” whose slogan was “Nationalism and Truth.” As all real progress in art is dependent, in a measure, on the past, it is necessary to establish this fact.
My personal impressions of this young Russian’s music and its effect on me are very strong. I attended the first performance in Paris of Strawinsky’s anarchistic (against the canons of academic art) ballet,The Sacrifice to the Spring, in which primitive emotions are both depicted and aroused by a dependence on barbarous rhythm, in which melody and harmony, as even so late a composer as Richard Strauss understands them, do not enter. A certain part of the audience, thrilled by what it considered a blasphemous attempt to destroy music as an art, and swept away with wrath, began very soon after the rise of the curtain to whistle, to make cat-calls, and to offer audible suggestions as to how the performance should proceed. Others of us, who liked the music and feltthat the principles of free speech were at stake, bellowed defiance. It was war over art for the rest of the evening and the orchestra played on unheard, except occasionally when a slight lull occurred. The figures on the stage danced in time to music they had to imagine they heard and beautifully out of rhythm with the uproar in the auditorium. I was sitting in a box in which I had rented one seat. Three ladies sat in front of me and a young man occupied the place behind me. He stood up during the course of the ballet to enable himself to see more clearly. The intense excitement under which he was laboring, thanks to the potent force of the music, betrayed itself presently when he began to beat rhythmically on the top of my head with his fists. My emotion was so great that I did not feel the blows for some time. They were perfectly synchronized with the beat of the music. When I did, I turned around. His apology was sincere. We had both been carried beyond ourselves. Later, when the public’s attitude had assumed a more formal aspect, I had a better opportunity for studying the score of this ballet.
My second personal impression is a memory ofan evening a few nights later, when I attended a performance of Strawinsky’s earlier ballet,Petrouchka.Petrouchkais another kind of entertainment. It was a success with the public from the beginning, and is still an important feature in the répertoire of the Russian Ballet. It is byPetrouchka, in fact, that Strawinsky will be introduced to New York by the Russians during the current season.... The curtains had closed on these pathetic scenes from the Russian carnival. They were drawn back to disclose Karsavina and Nijinsky. Presently a third figure appeared, very thin and short, with a Jewish profile (I do not know, however, that Strawinsky is a Jew). Dragged on the stage by Nijinsky, pale, awkward, and timid, his near-sighted eyes blinded by the footlights, the composer bowed his acknowledgments to the applause, nervously fingering his eyeglasses. This account would be incomplete without a reference to his dress, as irreproachable in fit and texture as that of Arturo Toscanini.
A London experience is also worth the telling. It happened after the first performance there ofThe Nightingale, a lyric drama to set a pace in the race towards the future. There was a longintermission after this short opera before the continuation of the bill, which included a performance ofThe Legend of Joseph, the composer himself conducting, and Steinberg’sMidas. In the foyer I met my friend Alfred Hertz. Those who know this conductor are familiar with his moods. Tired, after a rehearsal ofParsifal, or excited before the performance of a work which he is about to conduct for the first time, he becomesdistraitand unconversational to a degree which would not seem possible in a man who ordinarily is as fond of anecdote as he is of Viennese pastry. I recognized his mood on this occasion. Mopping his brow (it was June), he was good enough to explain.
“I can’t stay here any longer,” he said. “It’s very embarrassing. Strauss asked me to come. I am here as his guest to hearThe Legend of Joseph, but I can’t listen to it. I’m too tired—I am exhausted. I have never heard such extraordinary music. I have never been so moved, so excited before at the performance of a new opera.... Oh, if I could have the privilege of introducing that work to New York, then I should be happy!”
I am very glad to quote these words to the lasting honor of one who realized at once the pleasurethat Strawinsky’s music, quite in a new mode, would give to the coming generation, and to a few in the present.
M. D. Calvocoressi, I believe, had the honor of signing the first article in English about Strawinsky, shortly after the production ofThe Firebirdin Paris. Mr. Calvocoressi is to musicians what Mr. George Moore, who introduced Paul Verlaine, Jules Laforgue, and Arthur Rimbaud to English readers, has been to poets—an appreciator of contemporaries. This is a rare trait, one not possessed by John Runciman of the “Saturday Review” or by several other prominent critics, whose names instantly spring to mind. The initial article in English about the young Russian composer appeared in the London “Musical Times” for August 1, 1911. Since then Mr. Calvocoressi has written much on the subject, and a good deal of his information seems to have been gleaned from headquarters, since he quotes Strawinsky freely. (This critic is, of course, particularly interested in Russian music. He translated Balakirew’s songs into French, and wrote a life of Moussorgsky.) With the words of the composer as a guide, Mr. Calvocoressi has made a most interesting discovery,that in the lyric-drama music of this young man “working-out” plays no part. There is no development in the music ofThe Nightingale; the music simply expresses what the text dictates it shall express as it goes along. (In this respect, of course, Strawinsky is but following an ukase of the “Five” to its logical conclusion; they, in their desire to create a national school, chose as the best means of banishing any suggestion of Wagner, whose theories were generally being blindly accepted and adopted by composers of music-dramas at this epoch, the banning of the use of theleitmotiv. However, they repeated themes and melodies, and Moussorgsky inBorisbrings back the bells that served to ring in Boris’s coronation, in broken rhythm to ring out his life.)
In regard to this matter Strawinsky has put himself on record as saying, “I want to suggest neither situations nor emotions, but simply to manifest, to express them. I think there is in what are called ‘impressionist’ methods a certain amount of hypocrisy, or at least a tendency towards vagueness and ambiguity. That I shun above all things, and that, perhaps, is the reason why my methods differ as much from those of the impressionists asthey differ from academic conventional methods. Though I often find it extremely hard to do so, I always aim at straightforward expression in its simplest form. I have no use for ‘working-out’ in dramatic or lyric music. The one essential thing is to feel and to convey one’s feelings.”
This, of course, is a more elaborate version of what Moussorgsky said, “Plain truth, however unpalatable, and nothing more. No half measures; ornamentation is superfluity.”
In one of Mr. Calvocoressi’s recent articles about Strawinsky that critic says, in lines which illuminate: “According to the modern conception of the lyric drama, the chief quality of dramatic music is terseness—a quality most uncommon in all kinds of music, and which many will, not altogether wrongly, think almost incompatible with the very essence of musical art. The principle of music as generally understood appears to be amplification, repetition.
“At all events, the art of music has always consisted chiefly in that of ‘working-out.’ And it is but of late that a number of music-makers and music-expounders have raised an outcry against prolixity and redundance in music: an outcry, itmust be added, that for the present does not find much echo among the majority of art judges nor of the public.
“The first of great musicians to abjure the principle of formal, elaborate ‘working-out’ in dramatic and lyric music was Moussorgsky. A striking peculiarity of his best songs and of his masterpiece,Boris Godunow, is the absolute lack, not only of anything resembling tautology or amplification, per se, but of all that is not absolutely essential to direct expression (including many devices which no other musician of the time would have dreamt of leaving out), even if the omission be in defiance of tonal construction and balance.
“For instance, the song,The Orphan, ends very dramatically on the suspensive harmony of the dominant.Death’s Lullaby, which depicts a dialogue between a horror-stricken mother and Death, who comes to take away a child, ends abruptly on the burden of Death’s last utterance, with which the composer’s intention is fulfilled. He never gives a thought to the practice of bringing back the main key which would have led him either to an inappropriate modulation or to a superfluous addition. Similarly,Boris Godunow, in the authenticversion, ends, without even a cadence, on a chord that hardly leaves the impression of the tonic.”
Mr. Calvocoressi points out the fact that there are few passages for orchestra alone inBorisoutside of thepolonaiseand the very brief preludes to the acts, and he asks us to observe the working of the same principle inPelléas et Mélisande, in which it is evident that Debussy was influenced by Moussorgsky. Schoenberg was the first to apply this principle to orchestral music. However, if an opera-goer finds much to enjoy in the dramas of Moussorgsky and Strawinsky, it does not necessarily follow that all the value of a work likeDie Walküredisappears, to his ears. The two principles of art are different; each, perhaps, is equally valid.
“But the fact is that a new factor has appeared in the domain of dramatic music, which is now entering a new path; and consequently a new order of artistic pleasure may be the outcome of this stage of evolution. The first consequence, of course, is a greater differentiation between the style of dramatic music and the style of instrumental music; unquestionably a progress, since itwidens the range of methods and gives greater freedom to the composer’s imagination.”
All of this is very stimulating, and very true; still, it cannot be said that audiences as a whole grasp Strawinsky’s intention, as it is exploited inThe Nightingale, so readily as they do Moussorgsky’s as manifested inBoris Godunow. Rimsky-Korsakow’s emendations of the latter work, which one critic has labeled as mutilations, may be responsible for the greater public reaction. But the success ofBoriswas by no means immediate. Produced in Petrograd in 1874, it was not heard in Paris until nearly thirty years later, nor in New York until 1913. Musicians, in the meantime, had had access to the score, and had adopted some of the Moussorgsky idiom as their own. WhenBoriswas at last produced here it was not, therefore, the utter novelty thatThe Nightingalenow seems. The very principle of the new music demands a greater effort at concentration than can be expected of most audiences when they are listening to music, as many ears catch the meaning of a phrase only after it has been repeated a convenient number of times. This is one of the chief reasons for the popular success ofThe Ringdramas. It seems incredible, and impertinent, to the average audience that a composer should have had the idea of expressing himself without repeating himself. A catalogue of representative themes would be of no use to a prospective auditor ofThe Nightingale. Now, there are two advantages to this method, aside from the implied advantage of an improvement in effect: First, it makes for a very short opera (The Nightingale, in three acts, is so short that at its early performances it was given in a bill with two ballets, one of which,The Legend of Joseph, runs for over an hour); second, the audience is not called upon to listen intellectually (nor should it be, at the performance of an opera). The only intention of the composer is to make his listenersfeeleach situation he illustrates with his music. It may be said that Wagner’s intention was the same, and thereby lies the difficulty in training listeners to understand the new principle. Wagner’s way is easier for them because they can get the emotional feelingthrough the intellect. The repetition of themes would not in itself assure an effect, but the labeling of these themes does just that, so that whenever the Swordmotifor the Siegfriedmotifoccurs, themindofthe listener, knowing the name of the theme, is perfectly prepared to create the emotional reaction demanded by the composer. Strawinsky appeals directly to the emotions. On the listener who expects a theme to reappear again and again he makes only the impression of being a noise-maker (in the sense of a worker in dissonance;The Nightingaleis most continent in sound). But on the open-minded auditor his effect is usually astounding.
The story of the music-drama closely follows the Hans Andersen tale. In the first act a deputation from the Chinese Emperor’s court, headed by the kitchen-maid, seeks the nightingale in its grove. The Imperial Chancellor, the Bonze, and a number of courtiers are included in this strange procession, which follows the kitchen-maid, as she alone knows the bird’s song, to request the nightingale to come to the court to cheer up the melancholy ruler. Although loath to leave its quiet groves, the bird agrees to go.
In the second act the nightingale’s arrival has stirred the Emperor’s jaded senses. However, the present of a mechanical bird which comes from Japan diverts his attention. In the meantime, thereal nightingale has disappeared. The Emperor orders the little brown songster banished from all China, while he places the mechanical toy by his bedside.
Death stands in the Emperor’s bedchamber in the third act. Torn by his aching conscience, the dying ruler calls in vain for his musicians to make him forget. But the nightingale returns and so charms Death with its songs that he agrees to allow the Emperor his life. The Emperor revives and offers his saviour a place at court, but the bird refuses and returns to its woodland haunts with the promise that it will sing each evening. Now the courtiers enter, prepared to find the Emperor dead. They are astounded when he sits up in bed and bids them “Good-morning!”
All the symbolism, all the undercurrents of suggestion contained in the text are never explicitly referred to except in the brief utterances of a minor character, the fisherman, who sings a prophecy or an explanation at the beginning and end of each act, foretelling the delight that will be caused by the songs of the bird, the distress that will follow its departure, and its final victory over Death.
The book offers exceptional opportunities for excursions into imitative music such as Richard Strauss, to name one composer, would take delight in expanding into pages of detail, as many of the diverting incidents of Andersen’s tale are carried over into the drama. In the first act, for example, the courtiers mistake the croaking of frogs and the lowing of cattle for the song of the bird; in the second act the ladies of the court fill their mouths with water and gargle in an attempt to imitate the nightingale’s trill. These distractions do not serve to steer Strawinsky from his direct course. He notices them, of course, but in the briefest and most concise manner.
The score ofThe Nightingalecalls for a large orchestra, although for a continent use of it. The list of instruments includes wood-winds by threes, with a piccolo, clarinet, bass clarinet, and double-bassoon, three trombones, tuba, and two cornets besides the usual two trumpets; two harps, two glockenspiels, a celesta, a pianoforte (this part is very important), and the whole of the usual percussion, to which are added small antique cymbals. The parts of the nightingale and the fisherman are also sung from the orchestra pit.
The work was begun in 1909 (this date is disputed) and completed in 1914, when it received its first hearing in Paris in May. Strawinsky seems to have found difficulty in composing it. “I can write,” he is reported to have said, “music to words, viz., songs; or music to action, viz., ballets. But the coöperation of music, words, and action is a thing that daily becomes more inadmissible to my mind. And even should I finishThe Nightingale, I do not think I shall ever attempt to write another work of that kind.”
Igor Strawinsky was born June 17 (June 5, Russian style), 1882, at Oranienbaum, near Petrograd. This date has been in dispute, and various authors have disagreed about it. My authority is Mr. Strawinsky himself. He was the son of a court-singer and was destined to study law. But, working assiduously with a pupil of Rubinstein, he became a remarkable pianist from the age of nine. He encountered Rimsky-Korsakow at Heidelberg in 1902 (when he was 20), and that Russian composer had a great influence on his career, although very little on his musical style. During this period Strawinsky attended concerts, visited museums, and delved in literature. Everything in the world of art issaid to have awakened his curiosity. In 1903 he wrote theallegroof a sonata for the piano, of which theandante,scherzoandfinalewere completed the following year. Rimsky-Korsakow had accepted him as a pupil, and while the young man alarmed the older composer to some extent, he secretly predicted great success for the only one of his pupils who showed revolutionary tendencies. Strawinsky says that the composer ofSheherazadestruggled valiantly with himself at this period in an effort not to restrict what might be beautiful in his pupil’s anarchic methods, at the same time wishing to preserve his own ideals. In 1905-6 Strawinsky worked at orchestration, and during this period, as an exercise, he orchestrated his master’s opera,Pan Voyevode, from the piano score. Subsequently his work was corrected by comparison with Rimsky-Korsakow’s own scoring, recently completed. This might have been a dangerous exercise for a “sedulous ape,” but Strawinsky was not that. He also orchestrated marches of Schubert and sonatas of Beethoven. His friends at this time were the group surrounding Rimsky-Korsakow, Chaliapine, César Cui, Glazunow, and Blumenfeld, thechef d’orchestre. Strawinsky was married January 11, 1906.
Soon after his marriage he terminated his symphony in E flat (1905-7). It was performed in 1907, and was published later by Jurgenson. A song with orchestral accompaniment,Le Faune et la Bergère, dates from this period (1906), and in 1908 he completed hisScherzo Fantastique, which was inspired by a reading of Maeterlinck’s “Life of the Bee.” This has been played in Paris. Edward Burlingham Hill says of it: “In its long passages for staccato strings, divided into melodic phrases for wood-wind instruments and in fanciful figures for wind instruments, celesta, and harps, one can imagine the sinuous and yielding swaying of bees, iridescent with color, and pulsing with life.” I do not think this work has been played in America. New York has not heard it. He set two poems of Gorodetzki to music in 1908. When Rimsky-Korsakow’s daughter married Maximilien Steinberg in 1908, Strawinsky sentFireworksas a wedding present, but before the post had delivered the gift the older composer was dead. As a tribute to his master’s memory Strawinsky composed theChant Funèbre, performed at the Belaïeff concerts.Fireworkshas been played in New York both by the Russian and the New York Philharmonic Societies. Four piano études,written in the summer of 1908, have stood on my piano for some time. They are interesting. Vuillermoz says that Strawinsky beganThe Nightingalein this year; Calvocoressi’s date is 1910; the programme at the first performance gave the date as 1909.
About this time an incident occurred which considerably changed the young composer’s outlook, and which brought him to the attention of a larger world. He was “discovered” by the director of the Russian Ballet, Serge de Diaghilew, and commissioned to write a ballet on a Russian folk-story scenario fashioned by Michel Fokine. Leon Bakst and Golovine, the painters, completed the collaboration. The work,The Firebird, was terminated May 18, 1910, and produced three weeks later. The first sketches for this ballet must have been written before the death of Rimsky-Korsakow, if we are to believe a very delightful story told somewhere by Calvocoressi. On hearing Strawinsky play some bars ofThe Firebird, the older composer is quoted as saying: “Look here, stop playing that horrid thing; otherwise I might begin to enjoy it!” The production ofThe Firebirdestablished the composer’s reputation in Paris, and thevery impressionists whose methods he has dubbed “hypocritical” were among the first to sign themselves his admirers. Of these Maurice Ravel was the leader.Petrouchkawas completed just a year later (May 26, 1911), and its production by the Russian Ballet gave his fame a firm hold with the public. His third choreographic drama,The Sacrifice to the Spring, followed in 1913, and his opera,The Nightingale, in 1914. Several songs, includingLe petit MyosotisandLe Pigeon, are other products of recent years.[A]
It is astonishing to learn thatThe Nightingalewas begun so early in the composer’s career, but it is still more astonishing to discover that the first sketches ofThe Sacrifice to the Springwere written beforePetrouchkawas conceived. That ballet, which achieved the great honor of being hissed in Paris (I have described the incident earlier in this article), is the work on which, withThe Nightingale, rests his chief claim to being a composer with something new to say. The work differs from most of the mimed dramas given by the Russians in that it is practically without a fable. The scenes take place in barbaric Russia, long beforethe Christian era, and we are introduced to rites connected with the worship of the soil and the springtide; after a series of ritual dances, one of the younger maidens is chosen as a sacrifice to the spring, whereupon she spares her friends the trouble of killing her by dancing herself to death. This exceedingly angular dance, the expression of religious hysteria, marvelously conceived by Nijinsky and thrice marvelously carried out by Mlle. Piltz, was one of the causes for the outbreaks at the early performances of the ballet.
The lack of a fable, the early and uncertain setting of the action, offered Strawinsky an opportunity which he seized with avidity. The music is not descriptive, it is rhythmical. All rhythms are beaten into the ears, one after another, and sometimes with complexities which seem decidedly unrhythmic on paper, but when carried out in performance assume a regularity of beat which a simple four-four time could not equal. H. E. Krehbiel, in his valuable book, “Afro-American Folksongs,” describes the tremendous effect made on him by the intricate rhythms (which he tried in vain to note down) of the musicians of African tribes at the World’s Fair in Chicago. The rhythmiceffect ofThe Sacrifice to the Springis as powerful and complex. It is interesting to remember, in this connection, that the ancient Greeks accorded rhythm a higher place than either melody or harmony. Strawinsky describes the dawn of a spring morning in a few measures at the beginning of the prelude (here, it must be admitted, there is a startling reminder ofl’Après-midi d’un Faune), and then he settles down to the business, and art, of providing material for dances. This he has done with consummate effect. In many cases his chord-formations could not be described in academic terms; the instruments employed add to the strangeness of the sounds. I remember one passage in which the entire corps of dancers is engaged in shivering, trembling from head to toe, to music which trembles also. It makes my flesh creep even to think of it again. At the beginning of the ballet the adolescents pound the earth with their feet, while a little old woman runs in and out between their legs, to the reiterated beat of a chord of F flat, A flat, C flat, F flat; G, B flat, D flat, and E flat, all in the bass (begin from below and read in order), while an occasional flute or a piccolo screams its way in high treble. Try thison your piano. “He has had recourse,” writes Edward Burlingham Hill, “to a violently revolutionary style which is difficult to reduce to a systematic analysis. Chords employing minor and major triads simultaneously in different octaves, figures in double thirds, strange aggregations of notes that can hardly be described as chords, even with critical license, are the ingredients of this unusual style.” M. Montagu-Nathan, in his “Short History of Russian Music,” says: “In criticising the work, the mistake was made of suggesting that Strawinsky’s music had gone back to an elemental stage in an endeavor to provide an appropriate setting for the pre-historic. In reality, of course, the movement was forward, in that music was used in a sphere to which it had hitherto been strange. That is progress. A composer who sets ‘The Creation’ to living music is just as progressive as another who takes ‘The Last Judgment’ as his theme.”
Strawinsky seems to meet his problems according to their nature with an inevitable sense of the fitness of things. He has set, inPetrouchka, a story of the Russian fair; the leading characters are puppets; the period, 1830. The music is realistic in tone, in some instances intentionally vulgar.It has been pointed out that the themes of the nurses’ dance, the dance of thecochers, and the Russian dance in the first scene, are founded on Russian folk-tunes. There is all through the piece an implied tone of a village carnival; the accordion and hurdy-gurdy are never very far away, in suggestion at least. The dancer, personified by Mme. Karsavina, trips her lightest measures to the fanfare of a cornet, and Petrouchka sobs out his heart to the empty sky to the screaming of a piccolo. There are tunes, real tunes, the piece abounds in them, and the whole is wrapped in an atmosphere of realism and truth which gives music the tone of originality. Incidentally, there is a triangle solo in the score.
M. Montagu-Nathan says: “The carnival music is a sheer joy, and the incidents making a demand upon music as a descriptive medium have been treated not merely with marvelous skill but with unfailing instinct for the true satiric touch.Petrouchkais, in fact, the musical presentment of Russian fantastic humor in the second generation. There is none of the heavy scoring once thought necessary to reveal the humorous possibilities of some particular situation; Strawinsky lives in aworld which has learned to take things for granted, and his method is elliptical. This perception of proportion in humor is one of the surest indications of refinement, andPetrouchkanot only testifies to the composer’s possession of this quality, but provides an assurance that he has a technical equipment which can hardly betray him.”
The fable is one of love and hate in that fanciful domain in which we become aware of the existence of a soul hitherto considered absent from such a corporeal habitation. Among the mingled crowd of merry-makers and mountebanks at the carnival is a showman, practiced in the black arts. In his booth he exposes his animated dolls: the dancer, flanked by Petrouchka, the simple fool, and the fierce Moor. The three enact a tragedy of jealousy which terminates in the “shedding of Petrouchka’s vital sawdust.”
The Firebirdstirred another cell in the imagination of this young Russian giant. Again he is dealing with a Russian folk-tale, but it is a fairy story this time, not a vulgar story of country life; he has manipulated his orchestra into a thousand gorgeous colors to illustrate it. The instrumentsrevolve their tones kaleidoscopically, reflecting the myriad hues with which Golovine and Bakst have invested the scene. The rhythms are exotic; the harmonies and the melodies of the utmost brilliancy. One of the dances of the Firebird has a haunting melancholy about it which seems to have been wafted from the steppes.
The Firebird in the beginning of the action falls a prey to the young Prince Ivan; as the price of her freedom she offers him one of her plumes, which he accepts while she flies away into the soft blue shadows of the night. Dawn breaks, and Ivan finds himself in front of a magic castle, from the gates of which troop out a group of white-robed maidens. They indicate by means of their leader, Tsarevna, with whom Ivan at once falls in love, that he must not venture inside, but as soon as they have left him he rashly pushes back the great gate in front of him. There is a crash and in a moment out rushes pell-mell a huddled mass of slaves, dancers, men in armor, and buffoons, who surround him and drive him dizzy with their chatter. The uproar works up to acrescendoof frenzy when the monstrous figure of Kostchei, the Immortal, the lord of the castle, stalks out to quell the din.Kostchei has already turned others into stone, but over Ivan he has no power; the Firebird’s plume protects him, and on his brandishing it before the terror-stricken god the bird herself appears. At first she makes the crowd dance; then she lulls them to sleep and shows Ivan where the egg containing Kostchei’s soul is concealed. He brings it out and smashes it. The old god crumbles to pieces, the stones are brought to life, and the lovers’ hands are joined. The character of Kostchei is an important one in Russian folk-lore; he is the subject of an opera by Rimsky-Korsakow. Ralston, in his “Russian Folk-Tales,” thus describes him: “Kostchei is merely one of the many incarnations of the dark spirit.... Sometimes he is described as altogether serpent-like in form; sometimes he seems to be of a mixed nature, partly human and partly ophidian; but in some stories he is apparently framed after the fashion of a man.... He is called ‘immortal’ or ‘deathless’ because of his superiority to the ordinary laws of existence.... Sometimes his ‘death’—that is, the object with which his life is indisputably connected—does not exist within his body.” It may be seen that in almost every instance Strawinsky has followedthe lead of the “Five” in choosing material closely associated with Russian folk-lore.
There came a reaction after the foundation of the Russian national school by the “Five” (Cui, Borodine, Rimsky-Korsakow, Balakirew and Moussorgsky), and the result of foreign influence was felt. These composers had worked, as most of the Russian novelists have worked, with a sense of the soil from which they had sprung; their compositions are redolent with the mode and manner of folk-music. They chose, in most instances, Russian subjects for their operas. Moussorgsky in particular effected a tremendous revolution in style, developing a manner in which ornamentation and affectation played no part; a tense simplicity and sincerity marked all his music, which never asked alms of conventional rules of composition. (I am willing to say this quite in the face of Mr. Runciman, who recently stated in the “Saturday Review” that there were only two Russian compositions of any importance, a symphony by Borodine and Tschaikowsky’s fourth symphony. “Any other two pieces of Russian music are as alike as two mushrooms.”) Rubinstein and Tschaikowsky were the leaders of the opposition, whose music is moreakin to that of other nations. They actually succeeded, for a number of years, in establishing themselves in England, France, and America as the representative Russian composers. And naturally their immediate success was greater, even in their own country, where individuals were trying to free themselves from the curse of their birthright, struggling up from the soil; culture was growing. John Reed tells a wonderful story of a Serbian peasant who, having assimilated some culture (in SerbiaKulturis about twenty years old), was reminded by the fields of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. So the Russians, learning French, were a thousand times more impressed withsalonmusic than they were with the work of their more national composers. Moussorgsky, of course, has only recently been dragged out of his retirement, even now in somewhat modified form. (Neither of his operas is produced as he wrote it; he died leaving the orchestration ofLa Khovanchinaunfinished; Rimsky-Korsakow reorchestratedBoris—a needless task, perhaps a desecration; he also wrote a good deal of the orchestration ofLa Khovanchina; the work was completed by Maurice Ravel and Strawinsky in a more reverent spirit.) Strawinskyis the new giant upon whom has fallen the mantle of Russian nationalism. His work is based, primarily, on the work of the “Five,” all of whom are dead. That he reminds one occasionally of the modern Frenchmen only means that they, too, have learned their lessons from Borodine and Moussorgsky; Debussy’s debt to Moussorgsky has frequently been acknowledged; it is obvious if one comparesPelléas et MélisandewithBoris Godunow. Strawinsky’s love of Oriental color is possibly an inheritance from his master, Rimsky-Korsakow.
This young Russian has appeared in an epoch in which the ambition of most composers seems to be to dream, to write their symbolic visions in terms of the mist, to harmonize the imperceptible. Strawinsky sweeps away this vague atmosphere with one gesture; his idea of movement is Dionysian; he overwhelms us with his speed. One critic has referred to him as the “whirling dervish of his art.” His gifts to future composers are his conciseness, his development of the complexities of rhythm, and his invention of chord-formation. His use of dissonance is an art in itself. Richard Strauss has employed dissonance in obvious development of Richard Wagner’s polyphonic andchromatic style. Pushed to its furthest, his system is one of inversion. With Strawinsky the use of dissonance is invention itself. He improvises new chords, while Strauss is taking recognized chords apart to make something else of them. So this new figure stands for something in advance of what has already been expressed. He is, perhaps, the most vital of the modern forces in the music world.
August 6, 1915.
August 6, 1915.
Here is the complete bibliography of Strawinsky’s works (the list has been revised and edited by the composer himself): Symphony in E flat, op. 1, 1905-1907 (Jurgenson);Le Faune et la Bergère, voice and orchestra, op. 2, 1907 (Belaïeff);Scherzo Fantastiquefor orchestra, op. 3, 1907-8 (Jurgenson);Fireworks, for orchestra, op. 4, 1908 (Schott);Funeral Hymnfor the death of Rimsky-Korsakow, op. 5, 1908 (MS.); Four Études for the piano, op. 6, 1908 (Jurgenson); Two Melodies (words by Gorodetzski), voice and piano, op. 7, 1908 (Jurgenson);The Firebird, “Conte dansé,” 1909-10 (Jurgenson); Two Melodies (words by Verlaine), voice and piano, 1910 (Jurgenson);Petrouchka, burlesque scenes in four tableaux, 1910-11 (Russischer Musik-Verlag); Two Melodies (words by Balmont), for voice and piano, 1911 (Russischer Musik-Verlag);Les Roi des Étoiles(words by Balmont), for chorus and orchestra, 1911 (Russischer Musik-Verlag);The Sacrifice to the Spring, tableaux of Pagan Russia, in two parts, 1911-13 (Russischer Musik-Verlag); Three Melodies (Japanese poems), for voice and small orchestra, 1912,(Russischer Musik-Verlag);Souvenir de ma Jeunesse, three children’s songs for voice and piano, 1913 (Russischer Musik-Verlag);The Nightingale, opera in three acts, 1909-14 (Russischer Musik-Verlag).Recent works include three pieces for string quartet (MSS.), played by the Flonzaley Quartet in New York, November 30, 1915; and a new ballet in two parts, for the Russian Ballet, entitledLes Noces villageoises.Strawinsky has also orchestrated a melody of Beethoven, some of the works of Grieg and Chopin, and the song of the Boyard Chaklovity fromLa Khovanchinaof Moussorgsky. With the aid of notes left by the composer he wrote the final chorus ofLa Khovanchina.
Here is the complete bibliography of Strawinsky’s works (the list has been revised and edited by the composer himself): Symphony in E flat, op. 1, 1905-1907 (Jurgenson);Le Faune et la Bergère, voice and orchestra, op. 2, 1907 (Belaïeff);Scherzo Fantastiquefor orchestra, op. 3, 1907-8 (Jurgenson);Fireworks, for orchestra, op. 4, 1908 (Schott);Funeral Hymnfor the death of Rimsky-Korsakow, op. 5, 1908 (MS.); Four Études for the piano, op. 6, 1908 (Jurgenson); Two Melodies (words by Gorodetzski), voice and piano, op. 7, 1908 (Jurgenson);The Firebird, “Conte dansé,” 1909-10 (Jurgenson); Two Melodies (words by Verlaine), voice and piano, 1910 (Jurgenson);Petrouchka, burlesque scenes in four tableaux, 1910-11 (Russischer Musik-Verlag); Two Melodies (words by Balmont), for voice and piano, 1911 (Russischer Musik-Verlag);Les Roi des Étoiles(words by Balmont), for chorus and orchestra, 1911 (Russischer Musik-Verlag);The Sacrifice to the Spring, tableaux of Pagan Russia, in two parts, 1911-13 (Russischer Musik-Verlag); Three Melodies (Japanese poems), for voice and small orchestra, 1912,(Russischer Musik-Verlag);Souvenir de ma Jeunesse, three children’s songs for voice and piano, 1913 (Russischer Musik-Verlag);The Nightingale, opera in three acts, 1909-14 (Russischer Musik-Verlag).
Recent works include three pieces for string quartet (MSS.), played by the Flonzaley Quartet in New York, November 30, 1915; and a new ballet in two parts, for the Russian Ballet, entitledLes Noces villageoises.
Strawinsky has also orchestrated a melody of Beethoven, some of the works of Grieg and Chopin, and the song of the Boyard Chaklovity fromLa Khovanchinaof Moussorgsky. With the aid of notes left by the composer he wrote the final chorus ofLa Khovanchina.