Stravinsky Talk

Sex at noon taxes.

Dennis and Edna sinned.

Noel sees Leon.

Soros.

Has it ever occurred to you to wonder whether pallindromes exist also in German? Well, they do. For example: Ein Esel lese nie.(That means: A donkey never reads.) There is a German word Eibohphobie meaning "fear of palindromes". [Spell it out] The big question is, did Anton Webern suffer from Eibohphobie? No, he didn’t. Take for example his Piano Variations Op. 27. I’ll play a few bits of the opening. [Play at piano]

Especially in his later years, Stravinsky was also attracted to palindromic writing but usually in one strand among many which makes it difficult to illustrate clearly. In any case, that’s not what I want to emphasize about his Septet for clarinet, horn, bassoon, piano, violin, viola and cello dating from 1953. (Three winds, three strings and the piano as fulcrum.)

Elliott Carter relates a conversation in which he asked Stravinsky how he went about composing. I quote:

he took me to his workroom and showed me a large book of blank pages into which short fragments of musical sketches, roughly torn out of larger sketch-pages, had been pasted….He proceded to explain how he chose fragments from his sketches, tore them out, reshuffled them in different orders until he found one that satisfied him, and then pasted them down.

Now I would argue that some movements more than others reflect this method of construction. Let’s listen to some sections of the opening movement of the Septet and see whether you agree with me that it does make this way of composing plausible. The main motif of the opening shifts between major and minor (illustrate at piano). [TRACK 1] Now I want to run through five more of these subsections, which tend to be articulated with pauses or at least stops in the flow—you’ll appreciate that when the piece is played. The second syncopates a chord [TRACK 2]; then a passage with wayward bassoon and then a horn blip [TRACK 3]; then a fugue [TRACK 4]; a stretto, in which the imitating voices pile on each other [TRACK 5]; and slashing chords left over from the Rite of Spring [TRACK 6]. Those are six out of the ten shards that Stravinsky has intuited into a continuity of about three and a half minutes. There is some recurrence and, with a little strain, we can relate the movement to sonata form because there is a reprise about two-thirds in. My own thought is, it’s a good example of the approach Stravinsky described to Carter.

The second of the three movements is designed differently. It is a passacaglia in which the underlying bass is introduced as a single line, passing the notes among instruments Webern style. It may strike you as a twelve-tone row but it’s not. Stravinsky employs only eight of the available twelve; by repeating some (there are even three A’s, three G#’s—leading-tone and tonic of A major or minor) he creates a succession of sixteen notes. [TRACK 7]. This is the first of ten statements of this line (I let that example go on into the first variation). The music above gets increasingly complex. Here is one of the more intricate statements. [TRACK 8].

In the final movement of the Septet, which is a gigue in rhythm but a double fugue in form, Stravinsky continues his preference for taking only eight of the available twelve tones and constructing rows and assigning them to the different instruments. By not exploiting the full chromatic spectrum he finds himself with one foot in tonality and the other in…well I hate to say ‘atonality’ – I know that mention of the word causes some people to feel ill. Here is the opening set of imitative entries. The subject employs the same succession of pitches as the passacaglia. [Show at piano] [TRACK 9]. Presently he turns these lines upside down and has a similar presentation of the voices—that’s why it’s called a double fugue. [Show at piano] (Something similar happens in the Concerto for Two Pianos which we heard last weekend. Beethoven’s Op. 110 is the model.) [TRACK 10].

With respect to Circus Polka, there was a famous phone conversation with George Balanchine:

B: I wonder if you’d like to do a little ballet with me.

S: For whom

B: For some elephants

S: How old?

B: Very young.

S: All right. If they are very young elephants, I will do it.

(Ringling Brothers & Barnum & Bailey paid very well.)

Aaron Copland’s Nonet exhibits a very different sort of plan from any of the Stravinsky Septet movements. It is not a fugue, or a passacaglia, nor does it seem to be assembled from fragments. It is a continuous arch of about 18 minutes that grows organically from inactivity to intense activity and then back again to inactivity. It is also of one timbral family—three violins, three violas, three cellos—as opposed to Stravinsky’s mixture of winds, strings and piano. The cellos begin, instructed to employ very little vibrato (“somewhat deadened”) conveying, indeed, a rather sepulchral tone. Things warm up when the violas come in. [TRACK 11] About four minutes in, there is an awakening of Copland’s balletic impulse. [TRACK 12]. The music becomes more and more energetic [TRACK 13]. There is a grand statement which immediately simmers down [TRACK 14] and then my favorite moment, an eerie recollection of the cold opening (using special string techniques such as playing with bow near the bridge to give a glassy, disembodied sound which is doubled with pizzicato notes) [TRACK 15].

Copland’s Nonet is dedicated to Nadia Boulanger as is Elliott Carter’s two-movement Woodwind Quintet. They both studied with her. At all stages of his remarkably long career, Carter is surprising and inventive in his endings. Rarely emphatic or triumphant, they are usually whimsical or ironic. Here is the last sixty seconds of this piece. Notice the ragtime rhythms—not a feature usually associated with Elliott Carter. [TRACK 16]

Ellis Kohs, whose music Stravinsky liked, wrote his Violin Sonatina for Samuel Dushkin with whom Stravinsky had a long and fruitful association. There is a bluesy feel to the slow movement. [TRACK 17].

Walter Piston’s Suite for Oboe and Piano is perhaps the clearest example of what was meant by the term ‘neo-classical’—which really should be ‘neo-baroque’ because of the clean textures and consistent, motoric rhythm. The first of the five movements is really in two voices—one in the oboe and the other (doubled at the octave) in the piano. [TRACK 18]. A similar two-voice texture appears in Prelude V by Carlos Chavez. The rhythm is patterned rather than motoric and has a South American lilt to it. I’ll play just a bit. [Play at piano.] By the way, this prelude is resolutely diatonic. There are two fleeting F#s--otherwise every note is a white key—an antidote to the chromaticism of Stravinsky and Carter.

In an attempt to bring these composers to life for you, I’ve saved time for a few personal anecdotes as I was lucky enough to have encountered all except Webern and Kohs. To be specific: I shook hands with Chavez, got Stravinsky’s autograph when I was fifteen, knew Piston and enjoyed friendships with Copland and Carter. (Full disclosure: two of these anecdotes are second hand.)

When Walter Piston reached the age of mandatory retirement the president of Harvard, Nathan Pusey, invited him into his office. “Mr. Piston we can’t imagine the music department without you. Would you consider staying on in a part time capacity?” To which the slow speaking composer replied, “What do you think I’ve been doing all these years.”

Once when I was with Copland he had just been to the White House to receive an honor from President Carter. He was especially taken with Rosalyn Carter at whose table he was assigned to sit. “Very intelligent lady…very impressive.” I asked, “Did she know who you were?” He replied, “Well if she did, she didn’t let on.”

Elliott Carter told me that Juilliard was gearing up to celebrate his 103^rd birthday with a concert. He said, “Besides the concert they want me to come to dinner. They want me to come to cocktails before dinner. You know, I’m not that young.”

Late in his life Stravinsky was in Santa Fe for concerts, in which he shared conducting duties with Robert Craft. He was bad tempered. In a rehearsal he suddenly stopped and said, “I can’t hear the second clarinet.” After a pause the first clarinetist timidly spoke up, “Maestro, he’s in Albuquerque.” They braced for an explosion. Stravinsky said, “No wonder I can’t hear him.”

Enjoy the concert!