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. Petrouchka is, 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 a world 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, and Petrouchka not 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 Firebird stirred 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 instruments revolve 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 a crescendo of 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 followed the 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 more akin 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 Serbia Kultur is 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 with salon music 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 of La Khovanchina unfinished; Rimsky-Korsakow reorchestrated Boris—a needless task, perhaps a desecration; he also wrote a good deal of the orchestration of La Khovanchina; the work was completed by Maurice Ravel and Strawinsky in a more reverent spirit.) Strawinsky is 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 compares Pelléas et Mélisande with Boris 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 and chromatic 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.
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 Fantastique for orchestra, op. 3, 1907-8 (Jurgenson); Fireworks, for orchestra, op. 4, 1908 (Schott); Funeral Hymn for 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, entitled Les 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 from La Khovanchina of Moussorgsky. With the aid of notes left by the composer he wrote the final chorus of La Khovanchina.