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 Godunow and La 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 Petrograd only a month or so before!); Rimsky-Korsakow’s operas, Ivan the Terrible, A Night in May, and The Golden Cock; and Borodine’s Prince Igor. As for ballets, Richard Strauss wrote The Legend of Joseph for 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Reynaldo Hahn, Le Dieu Bleu; Paul Dukas, La Péri (to be sure, this work was finally produced under other auspices; withdrawn by the composer from the Russians a few days before the date set for the first performance, on the ground that insufficient time had been allotted for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, Narcisse and Le 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 of Russlan and Luidmilla. You will find the germs of his method in Borodine’s symphonies; from Moussorgsky to Strawinsky is but a step, especially if you refer to the original text of Boris Godunow and 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 felt that 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 of an evening a few nights later, when I attended a performance of Strawinsky’s earlier ballet, Petrouchka. Petrouchka is 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 by Petrouchka, 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 of The Nightingale, a lyric drama to set a pace in the race towards the future. There was a long intermission after this short opera before the continuation of the bill, which included a performance of The Legend of Joseph, the composer himself conducting, and Steinberg’s Midas. In the foyer I met my friend Alfred Hertz. Those who know this conductor are familiar with his moods. Tired, after a rehearsal of Parsifal, or excited before the performance of a work which he is about to conduct for the first time, he becomes distrait and 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 hear The 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 pleasure that 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 of The Firebird in 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 of The 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 the leitmotiv. However, they repeated themes and melodies, and Moussorgsky in Boris brings 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 as they 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.”