His first ballet, 'The Fire Bird,' was produced in Paris in 1910. It tells a long and richly colored story of the rescue of a beautiful maiden from the snares of a wicked magician. The music is by no means 'radical,' but it shows immense talent in expressive melody, colorful harmony, in precise expression of mood, in the suggestion of pictures, and in a certain elaborate and free polyphony which is one of Stravinsky's chief glories. It is a work irresistible alike to the casual listener and to the technical musician. The next ballet was 'Petrouchka,' produced in 1911. This is a fanciful tale of Petrouchka, the Russian Pierrot, and his unhappy love for another doll. The little man finds a rival in a terrible blackamoor, and in the end is most foully murdered, spilling 'his vital sawdust' upon the toy-shop floor. The characters are richly varied, and the carnival music is telling in the extreme. Stravinsky's musical characterization and picturing here is masterly. But his greatest achievement is his preservation of the tone of burlesque throughout—bouncing and joyous, yet kindly and refined.
In this work we notice much of the harmonic daring which is so startling in his third ballet, 'The Consecration of Spring.' Here is an elaborate dance in two scenes, setting forth presumably the mystic rites by which the pre-historic Slavic peoples lured spring, with its fruitful blessings, into their midst. The character of the music and of the libretto is determined by the peculiar theory of the dance on which the ballet is founded. We cannot here go into this matter. Suffice it to say that the dancing does not pretend to be 'primitive' in an ethnological sense, though its angular movements continually recall the crudities of pre-historic art. The music is quite terrifying at first hearing. But a second hearing, or a hasty examination of the score, will convince one that it is executed with profound musicianship and a sure understanding of the effects to be obtained. Briefly, we may describe the musical style as a free use of telling themes, largely national in character, contrapuntally combined with such freedom that harmony, in the classical sense, quite ceases to exist. Because of the musical mastership displayed in the writing we can be sure that this is not a 'freak' or a blind alley experiment. Whether the tendency represents a complete denial of harmonic relations, with the attention centred wholly on the polyphonic interweaving, or whether it is preparing the way for a new harmony in which the second (major or minor) will be regarded as a consonant interval, we cannot at this time say. But Stravinsky's well-proved ability, and his evident knowledge of what he is about, are at least presumptive evidence that our enjoyment of this new style will increase with our understanding of it.
Certainly men like Scriabine and Stravinsky prove that Russian music has not been a mere burst of genius, destined to become embalmed in academicism or wafted on lyrical breezes into the salons. Probably no nation in Europe to-day possesses a greater number of thoroughly able composers than Russia. The Slav seems to be no whit behind his brothers either in poetic inspiration or in technical progress. Perhaps it is a new generation, that has just begun its work—a generation destined to achievements as fine as those of the glorious 'Big Five.'
H. K. M.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Ivan Narodny in 'Musical America,' August, 1914.
CHAPTER VI
MUSICAL DEVELOPMENT IN BOHEMIA AND HUNGARY
Characteristics of Czech music; Friedrich Smetana—Antonin Dvořák—Zdenko Fibich and others; Joseph Suk and Viteslav Novák—historical sketch of musical endeavor in Hungary—Ödön Mihalovics, Count Zichy and Jenö Hubay—Dohnányi and Moór; 'Young Hungary': Weiner, Béla Bartók, and others.
I
All that is best in the music of Bohemia is fully represented in the compositions of her two greatest sons, Friedrich Smetana (1824-1884) and Antonin Dvořák (1841-1904). As Louis XIV said that he was the state, so it may almost be said that, musically speaking, these two men are Bohemia. And yet, paradoxical as it may seem, they can be really understood only when studied in relation to their national background, when considered the spokesmen of an otherwise voiceless but richly endowed race. This is the paradox, indeed, of all so-called 'national' composers. From one point of view they are personally unimportant; their eloquence is that of the race that speaks through them; and we listen to them less as men of a general humanity than as a special sort of men from a particular spot of earth. Thus Mr. W. H. Hadow, in his admirable essay on Dvořák,[17] does not hesitate to say of the eighteenth century Bohemian musicians, Mysliveczek, Reicha, and Dussek, all of whom lived abroad: 'We may find in their denial of their country a conclusive reason for their ultimate failure.' Shift the standpoint a little, however, and it is obvious that something more is necessary for a Bohemian musician than to live at home and to incorporate the national melodies, or even express the national temperament, in his compositions. He must, that is, have gone to school to the best masters of the music of the whole world—not literally, of course, but by study of their works; he must thus have become a past master of his craft; above all, he must be a great individual, whatever his country, a man of broad sympathy, warm heart, and keen intelligence. 'Theme,' wrote one who realized this on the occasion of Dvořák's death,[18] 'is not the main thing in any art; the part that counts is the manner of handling the theme. When books are good enough they are literature, and when music is good enough it is music. Whether it be "national" or not matters not a jot.' Both of the truths that oppose each other to form this paradox are repeatedly exemplified in the history of music in Bohemia.