Igor Stravinsky
Symphony in C
Igor Stravinsky was one of the most influential
modern composers, with a career spanning five decades at the forefront of
musical invention. Born in 1882 in Russia, he studied with Rimsky-Korsakov and
first came to prominence composing works for Sergey Diaghilev's Ballet Russes,
including The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite
of Spring (1913). The Rite was considered so 'barbaric' in its
harmonic and rhythmic ferocity that it caused a riot at its premiere. Though influenced both by his Russian master
and by Debussy and Ravel, the works are notably Stravinsky's in the insistent,
irregular rhythms and the bright, clean instrumentation that became his
hallmarks.
Having made an indelible first impression, Stravinsky moved to
smaller chamber works, such as the jazz-influenced Ragtime (1917) and The
Soldier's Tale (1918), and pieces that focused on the crisp sound of wind,
percussion, and piano, such as the Symphonies of Winds (1920). The ballet
Pulcinella (1920), based on music ascribed to the 18th-century composer
Pergolesi, began his neoclassical period. Here he reinvented the forms of the
past, from the oratorios of Handel recalled in Oedipus Rex (1927) to
echoes of Mozart in his opera The Rake's Progress (1951). Yet the
references were ironic, for he set in classic developmental structures his
distinct, non-developmental "blocks" of melody.
After 30 years of neoclassicism, in the late 1950's
Stravinsky was encouraged by conductor Robert Craft to study works by serialist
composers Webern and Schönberg. Soon Stravinsky created his own personal style
of serialism, from the astringent yet tonally-based ballet Agon (1957) to
the detached, concentrated style of the Requiem Canticles (1965). He
continued to compose into his mid-80s, and died in 1971 at age 88 in New York.
The Symphony in C is a work planted firmly in Stravinsky's
neoclassical period — and in a time of personal turmoil. Shortly after he
began the work in late 1938 his daughter died of tuberculosis; this was followed
in March of 1939 with the death of his wife, and his mother's death in June.
He continued work on the symphony, however, and by August had completed the
first two movements. He then left Paris for the United States to give lectures
at Harvard. In January 1940 he was joined in New York by Vera de Bossett (with
whom he had begun an affair in 1921), and in March they were married. He and
Vera traveled to California and settled in Beverly Hills, where he completed the
last movement of the symphony in August 1940. He conducted the first performance
that November with the Chicago Symphony, which had commissioned the piece.
Outwardly Stravinsky's most traditional work, this symphony
presents the standard four movements in typical sequence: allegro, slow
movement, scherzo, finale. However, the work is as abrupt in its changes from
one section to another as any of his less traditional pieces. It has been
described as a "cubist portait" of a symphony, with passages in
approximately the right places yet looked at from disjoint angles, the way a
Picasso portrait has eyes, nose, mouth, in the correct general position but
without consistent perspective applied to each. Having composed the first two
movements in France, the last two in America, Stravinsky maintained that there
were distinctly European and American halves to the symphony; the first half is
perhaps more 'classical' in sound.
The Moderato alla breve begins with strings declaring
the rhythmic insistence pervading the movement (Stravinsky noted this was the
longest single movement he wrote without a change in time signature). The main
theme, heard first from the oboe, revolves around G rather than C, and is built
on a B–C–G chord that is a transposition of the chord in the final movement
of Stravinsky's earlier Symphony of Psalms (1930). Lyrical passages in the
winds contrast with the urgency of the pulsing strings, and the movement ends
with a repeated sonic punch from the full ensemble.
Stravinsky called the Larghetto concertante an "aria,"
with a tune stated mainly by the oboe and recalling Bach in its ornamental line.
Eventually the strings interrupt with an agitated theme, soon moderated by brass
and woodwinds. Melody has the last word, and the section ends quietly in a
three-note rhythm immediately echoed by the low strings at the start of the next
movement, the Allegretto. This vigorous scherzo is built on the brisk
repetition of a fourth, and is the only movement that abounds in Stravinsky's
typical changes in time signature. The central section uses a form even older
than the classical in a Baroque dance, the passepied. The driving rhythms
of the beginning relax at the end, the strings restating the original fourth
softly and at half speed.
The finale begins slowly (Largo) with the bassoon chanting quietly against an augmented fourth from the brass that demands to resolve
to C — but instead builds to a burst, introducing the Tempo guisto, alla
breve. The angular motif sounds over rising or falling fragments that aim
for the tonic C or the dominant G. Finally the original chord presses,
crescendos, and drops, leaving the theme to be repeated ever more slowly until,
with several long pulses, the piece fades to an combination of the C and G
chords, rather than the simple C-major expected from a "Symphony in C."
Whereas in a classical symphony we might have traveled from doubt to certainty,
Stravinsky's work is finally modern in its view that, after all, there really
is no absolute destination.
February 27, 2001
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