Miniature essays: Igor Stravinsky

by Anonymous

IGOR STRAVINSKY

Igor Stravinsky was born at Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg, on June 5th (18th), 1882. His father, an operatic singer, who won great favour with the public of the Russian capital at the Maryinsky Theatre, soon discovered remarkable musical gifts in the boy, which he did not neglect to develop, although he wished him to grow up to a legal career. In accordance with this plan, Igor Stravinsky, on having reached adolescence, entered the University of St. Petersburg and devoted himself to the study of jurisprudence, not without periodical and almost irresistible impulsions to abandon it for music. He had thus reached the age of twenty-two, when a meeting with Rimsky-Korsakov, who saw and appreciated the young man's astonishing talent, proved the decisive event of his life. Rimsky-Korsakov declared himself willing to accept him as a pupil.

The direct outcome of Rimsky-Korsakov's tuition was, first of all, a Symphony, begun in 1905 and finished in 1907. This was succeeded by "Faun and Shepherdess," a song-cycle with orchestra, and two orchestral works, "Fireworks" and "Scherzo fantastique." The latter was the means of bringing about a meeting that was destined to direct Stravinsky's activities into a new channel: he made the acquaintance of Serge Diaghilev, who was struck by the vitality and colour of the work he had heard, and who induced him to set to music one of the ballets he proposed to produce. This was the "Firebird" (1910), which was followed in due course by "Petrushka" (1911) and "Le Sacre du Printemps" (1913). Next came an opera, begun some years earlier, "The Nightingale," finished in 1914, the second and third acts of which were later converted into the symphonic poem, "The Song of the Nightingale" (1917). Stravinsky left Russia at an early stage of his career and has since lived alternately in Paris and on the shores of the Lake of Geneva.

It is almost impossible to-day to consider the work of Igor Stravinsky with the detachment that is the first requisite of a judicious appreciation, and to avoid taking part in the violent controversy to which it has given rise, a controversy that is in itself a testimony to its vitality, for Stravinsky's music is so characteristic an expression of the artistic tendencies of our time that even those who most dislike it cannot pass it by in silence. It is perhaps hardly paradoxical to assert that fundamentally all the critics agree as to its significance, and that they differ merely in the point of view from which they regard it.

There have been few composers whose development has been as rapid and as far-reaching as that of Stravinsky, and this is probably the chief reason why his later works so completely baffle anyone who is not intimately acquainted with those that precede them. For it cannot be too strongly emphasized that, disjointed as Stravinsky's output may appear to the superficial observer, it reveals a gradual and very logical transformation, in the course of which each work falls into its place and contributes something to an evolution—so often mistaken for revolution—which is only more difficult to follow than that of most other composers because it is so much more rapid. Stravinsky has covered, within a decade, a stretch of ground which most others would have taken fifty years to traverse, if indeed they would have traversed it at all. Small wonder that he leaves many of those who endeavour to follow him in a state of breathless vexation by the wayside.

The development began immediately after the Symphony, Stravinsky's first work, and the only example of his availing himself of a classical form for the expression of his ideas, which were even then sufficiently original to force upon him the realization of the necessity of creating new and more elastic moulds. The next works, in fact, "Faun and Shepherdess," "Fireworks" and "Scherzo fantastique," already give an impression of far greater spontaneity and, despite the still apparent outside influences, especially Rimsky-Korsakov's, of greater individuality. Rimsky-Korsakov's sway over his pupil was, even at this early stage, confined to a certain picturesqueness that soon became too obvious for Stravinsky, and to the example of the master's glowing orchestration, an inheritance destined to bear compound interest in the pupil's hands. In the "Firebird" this influence is seen for the last time and in a greatly diminished degree, being now restricted to the characteristic national treatment of the thematic material. It may be remarked in passing that the national element is a secondary matter in Stravinsky's music, and that his personal expression always predominates; he is above all a musician, and only incidentally a Russian musician, just as Poushkin was first and foremost a poet, who only by the accident of his birth happened to express himself in the Russian language. Yet the national idiom in Stravinsky is second only to his universally human expression, or we should never have had such a work as "Petrushka." In this ballet, still regarded as his masterpiece by those who are unable to follow him beyond it, he certainly reached full maturity and completely revealed his personality. To consider the music of "Petrushka," as the casual listener might be tempted to do, as merely descriptive, is to mistake its purpose entirely. With Stravinsky, as we may already see in the "Firebird," where it is narrative rather than illustrative, music is never subservient to anything else, even when it is allied to literary, histrionic or choreographic conceptions. It is a separate organism and always remains absolute music that makes its appeal to the senses rather than to the intellect. It is not explicative, but parallel, it is a stimulant that calls forth other ideas; hence the possibility of giving "Le Sacre du Printemps" two entirely different choreographic settings. The tendency to provide pure music to a scenario with which it is analogous in feeling, but from which it remains nevertheless independent, reaches its culmination in "L'Histoire du Soldat" and in "Renard." That the music of the former, for instance, is capable of being enjoyed separately, as music pure and simple, has been proved by more than one concert performance, and will be experienced by those who play at home the composer's own Trio arrangement (for piano, violin and clarinet), or the piano transcription of some of the principal numbers.

A very remarkable feature of "L'Histoire du Soldat" is the manner in which Stravinsky explores the possibilities of various forms of popular music—not the folk-song, but the music of the fair, the ballroom, or the music-hall—which he converts into art-forms that are lifted out of their original functions. The Waltz, the Tango, the Rag, become in his hands much the same musical assets that the Allemande, the Courante, the Sarabande, became in the hands of the old masters. Other examples of this conversion of vulgar forms of music may be found in the "Piano Rag Music," in the "Ragtime" for small orchestra or piano, in the two sets of easy pieces for piano duet, and in the diminutive piano pieces for children, "Les Cinq Doigts."

It is difficult to imagine that the principle of absolute music can be realized where it is a question of the setting of words; yet Stravinsky has succeeded in upholding his ideal even in such works as the "Berceuses du Chat," the "Pribaoutki," the "Four Chants Russes" and the "Three Histoires pour Enfants." This explains at once the otherwise perhaps inexplicable choice of words that have no literary significance. To set a great poet's words to music has become for Stravinsky an absurdity, because to him the verses themselves are already a completely and independently satisfying equivalent of musical emotion. His aim is not to write music that performs the functions of applied art, and he is therefore on the look-out for texts that are too insignificant or naïve in themselves, such as the little popular Russian verses he has chosen. They made their appeal to him because of their sonorous and rhythmic, not because of any literary quality; they are potential, foreseeing all sorts of possibilities which they leave to the composer to realize. Stravinsky is sociable and direct; he writes simply for the enjoyment of player and hearer alike.

The one quality of Stravinsky's art that no critic has ventured to dispute is his consummate mastery of every instrumental resource. His combinations of tone-colour always hold surprises in store for us, which curiously enough do not seem to wear off even after repeated hearing. One of the secrets of the extraordinary resonance that astonishes the hearer is the fact that Stravinsky writes for each instrument individually as if he were himself a virtuoso on it; he always gives it exactly the kind of music to play that suits its particular character. He does not transfer the same phrase from one instrument to another unless he is sure that it is congenial to both, and he generally prefers to give each one something entirely different to do, something that invariably goes to the very root of its idiosyncrasy. This tendency results in a subtle blending of different rays of colour and degrees of light and shade, in a kind of dynamic (as distinct from harmonic) chord formation. In the later works, this manner of individualizing each instrument has become still more interesting because Stravinsky has more closely adapted his medium to his purpose. He distributes his chords among instruments of very different character instead of aiming at unity of colour, and he thus helps us to hear each of the simultaneously sounding notes as a separate value. "L'Histoire du Soldat" and the "Ragtime" give an impression of extraordinary plasticity; we have here a parallel to the three-dimensional art of the sculptor rather than to the deceptive perspective of the painter's canvas. But Stravinsky can at will abandon the three dimensions and give us a perfectly satisfying study in mere contour, such as we get in the three pieces for solo clarinet.