Stravinsky Note 1913-30 by LionelJLewis

STRAVINSKY in the 1930’s

 

Stravinsky in the thirties turned out not to be that different from Stravinsky of the twenties, nor that much different from the Stravinsky of the forties for that matter. From a historical perspective one is apt to look for changes according to the calendar but the chance date of an anniversary rarely affects anything. Of course there may be changes but nothing like the changes he had already made after 1913.

 

The 1920’s are generally summed up as “the Roaring 20’s”; The Jazz Age; the Charleston and the black bottoms, the flappers and Rudolph Valentino. All good labels.  The 1930’s on the other hand gave us the Great Depression and the Clouds of War. In the world of music this was reflected by a more serious approach, a growing move towards neo-romanticism from the likes of William Walton in England with his first symphony and an emerging school of American composers like Roy Harris and Samuel Barber, frequently inspired by the presence of the now muted Sibelius.

 

None of this seemed to affect Stravinsky very much and so this composer of many styles was carrying on much as he had been doing. He was in the middle of his neo-classical period attracted to classical subjects. From Graeco-Roman he now, in 1930, turned his attention to another symphony, an expression which, for Stravinsky, had no bearing on sonata form as one understood the word. This time it was to be the Symphony of Psalms, based on the Old Testament, a three-movement choral symphony. It was commissioned by Koussevitsky for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Stravinsky, a religious man, had had in mind for some time the psalm-symphony idea. The three movements are played without a break. The texts are sung by the chorus in Vulgate Latin. Mind you, if you can distinguish between classical Latin and fourth century Vulgate Latin, you are a better homo than me Gungus Dinus. Stravinsky said that “it is not a symphony in which I have included Psalms to be sung. On the contrary, it is the singing of the Psalms that I am symphonizing.”

 

One noticeable development was more a nod towards an early composer without sexing up that composer’s work. Suddenly he was writing works with titles giving the key, Violin Concerto in D and Symphony in C. This was Stravinsky saying, “Hello, I can write traditional music you know”. The violin concerto, written in 1931, is a nod towards Bach and was written for the violinist Samuel Dushkin who lent his expertise to its composition. It is not your traditional violin concerto of the Brahms or Max Bruch ilk but more a chamber work lasting some 22 minutes, seemingly influenced by his own Soldier’s Tale and the devilish quality of the soldier’s fiddle. It is set in four movements rather than the traditional three, with titles such as Toccata, Aria and Capriccio. Each movement opens with the same chord, undeniably Stravinsky leaving his calling card. Its first performance was in Berlin under Klemperer.

 

It was his teaming up with Dushkin in 1931 that turned Stravinsky towards chamber music in the years from 1931 to 1934. Duo Concertant is another neo-classical composition dating from 1932 for violin and piano which he dedicated to Dushkin. The pair gave recitals together across Europe for some years following. Other chamber works of the early thirties included “Suite Italienne” , based on Pulcinella and written for the cellist Piatigorsky and Suite Pastorale written for violin (Dushkin) and piano with a version also for wind quintet and piano.

 

One influence from these early years of the thirties may come as a surprise, Benito Mussolini. Stravinsky is said to have remained a confirmed monarchist all his life and loathed the Bolsheviks. In 1930, he claimed, “I don’t believe that anyone venerates Mussolini more than I. I have an overpowering urge to render homage to your Duce. He is the saviour of Italy and – let us hope – Europe”. Later, after a private audience with Mussolini, he stated “I told him that I felt like a fascist myself.” On the other hand, when it came to the Nazis, Stravinsky’s works were placed on the proscribed list of “Entartaete Musik”, Degenerate Music, better described as ex-communicated composers, particularly Jewish or communist ones. There was a special section reserved for Stravinsky who lodged a formal appeal to establish his true Russian credentials and, demeaning himself, declared, “I loathe all communism, Marxism, the execrable Soviet monster, and also all liberalism, democratism, atheism, etc..” It did him little good. All that his appeal could infer was that he wished to dissociate himself from the others who were there. His fawning of Mussolini is in absolute contrast to that of Arturo Toscanini, who, stood as a fascist candidate in 1919 and then fell out with the party. He refused to display Mussolini’s photograph or conduct the Fascist anthem at La Scala. He raged to a friend, “If I were capable of killing a man, I would kill Mussolini.” He vowed not to return to Italy until the fall of Fascism”.

 

The status of the Swiss Family Stravinsky was to change in 1934 and it became the French Family Stravinsky instead. Why then, you may ask, after residing in France since 1920.? According to two of my authorities Stravinsky needed French citizenship to apply to apply for a vacancy which had occurred in the Académie Française. However, this is flawed and here I must be fair to Stravinsky. He applied for French nationality in 1934 for whatever reason.

Stravinsky was a man ahead of his time but even he was not to know in 1934 Paul Dukas, composer of the popular Sorcerer’s Apprentice as well as a brilliant symphony (illustrated by Matthew), was going to die the next year. His death left a vacant seat in the Académie Française much coveted by Stravinsky. However the appointment was at the behest of the members of the Académie, not the French government. On the whole the Académie are a conservative lot and would not have been keen to have someone who has just become French, thinking they can just barge in to become an immortel. Damn it, it’s a bit like Gérard Depardieu becoming Russian, just the other way round. So who did get the hot spot? Hands up any of you who have heard of Florent Schmidt and could name a work of his. No.   Well he wrote over 130 opuses and, as I have previously related, he lost his glasses in the Rite of Spring riot.   Actually they were pince nez and difficult to stay on during a dust up. Florent Schmidt came from Alsace Lorraine   but despite his name he is as French as

Arsène Wenger, who hails from the same area. He was rated highly until 1940 but then dropped out of favour. He wrote a ballet, La Tragédie de Salomé, in 1907. The rhythmic syncopations, poly-rhythms, percussively treated chords, bitonality, and scoring of Schmitt’s work are said to anticipate the Rite of Spring. Stravinsky acknowledged that Schmitt’s ballet gave him greater joy than any work he had heard in a long time. The two fell out with each other in later years, and Stravinsky reversed his opinion of Schmitt’s works. Stravinsky was somewhat miffed not to have been elected. Schmidt’s election would have done nothing to improve that relationship.

In 1934 the French Family Stravinsky moved back to Paris and resided at the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Now that is no garret for some bohemian artist. It is an area you can live in, money being no object. It is one of the most fashionable streets in the world, home to virtually every major global fashion house. Yes, and also having at No 55 the Elysée Palace, official residence of the President of the Republic.

Now Stravinsky returned to sung melodrama with dance. In 1933 Ida Rubinstein commissioned Pénélope, a kind of Orpheus story with Pénélope hitching up with Pluto in Hades for three months a year and coming back to earth for the following nine months. It is not played very often and it is difficult to obtain a CD without having the Firebird and the Rite of Spring included for the umpteenth time. It was one of Stravinsky’s gripes in an interview given in 1934 in London to the Gramophone magazine that people wanted to listen to the same old stuff being churned out instead of the latest compositions.

The Concerto for Two Pianos was Stravinsky’s first work after becoming a French citizen and completed in1935. It is considered to be one of his major compositions for piano during his neo-classical period. He had begun work on the first movement of the Concerto in 1931 after his violin concerto. He had in mind something to be played by him and his son if they found themselves in a city with no resident orchestra. He had some difficulty in the composition and turned to the Pleyel company to build him a double piano with one keyboard fixed to the back of the other so that Stravinsky could play both parts whilst composing. The inspiration for the concerto is said to have come from the variations of Brahms and Beethoven.

Much of Stravinsky’s commissions were now coming from America although he was not to reside there till 1939. A particularly felicitous period in his catalogue follows although one would never guess that Stravinsky was going through the most painful of experiences in his private life at the time. First came the ballet “Jeu de Cartes” (The Card Game) commissioned by George Balanchine and mounted by him for the first Stravinsky Festival given by the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1937. Stravinsky, himself a keen poker player, wrote it in three, not acts, not scenes, but deals. At the start of each deal, the same theme is announced as the cards are shuffled before intrigue and deceit follow. There is a lot of bluffing in this game and in the music also. Stravinsky parodies and combines various fragments from Rossini’s Barber of Seville and Strauss’ Fledermaus with musical allusions to Beethoven, Ravel and Tchaikovsky. Musically the blood is actively flowing again compared to the anaemia of the statuesque classical dramas which had more recently dominated his output. Co-incidentally, Arthur Bliss wrote a ballet “Checkmate” based also on a game of chess for the Vic-Wells in 1937. It is curious that Stravinsky’s ideas seemed sometimes to follow what others had just been doing.

Following Jeu de Cartes came the Concerto in E flat, better known as Dumbarton Oaks. It demonstrates Stravinsky’s ability to create something completely modern whilst paying homage to the musical past. It was commissioned by Robert Woods Bliss, a wealthy American diplomat, for his and his wife’s 30th wedding anniversary. It was first performed in their home, Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington DC. Bliss had by then retired from the foreign service but had had a distinguished career, including postings in St. Petersburg and Paris. The work was completed in Paris in late March 1938. It is based on Bach’s Brandenburg concertos, and is in three short movements. The first performance took place on the Bliss’s anniversary in the Great Hall of Dumbarton Oaks, a 19th century Georgian-style mansion. Stravinsky was laid up with tuberculosis at the time and unable to travel. Bliss came out of retirement during the war to work for the State Department. Dumbarton Oaks was used to host two international conferences in 1944 which he organized and that led to the setting up of UNO. The Bliss’s later made a charitable donation of Dumbarton Oaks with its collection of Byzantine and medieval art and its research library to Harvard University.

 

The third work in this group was the Symphony in C commissioned by Mrs Woods. On disc it is usually coupled with his Symphony in Three Movements but there is a whole world war which separates the two. The symphony in C is half and half. Half was composed in France and Switzerland against the background of sickness and bereavement. The second half was written in 1939 after Stravinsky became resident in America. The symphony is in the traditional four movements and is entirely abstract. One writer refers to it as in the ‘pure music’ styles of Bach, Haydn and Beethoven, which is about as moronic as it is oxymoronic. Whether it should rank as a symphony or ballet is to be discussed by Matthew but Martha Graham did choreograph the work in the late 1980s. Just to confuse matters, she named the ballet “Persephone” which it is not and only used three of the movements.

 

Stravinsky disclaimed any link between his personal experiences and the symphony’s content. The domestic background to this particular period was one of acute tragedy and suffering. His wife, Katya had long suffered from tuberculosis. He could only recall living in Paris as the unhappiest time of all. Both he and his eldest daughter, Ludmila, in turn contracted the disease from which Ludmila died in 1938. Katya, died of tuberculosis a year later, in March 1939. Stravinsky himself spent five months in hospital, during which time his mother died. These three hammer blows of fate are virtually Mahlerian. It does not seem to have had any perceptible effect on Stravinsky’s music compared to, say, that of Josef Suk and the Asrael symphony.

 

The outbreak of war in September 1939 was in no way the reason for Stravinsky going to America. With hindsight one knows of the collapse of France in June 1940 but Stravinsky was not leaving to scupper off for the duration. He had undertaken a lecturing post at Harvard and the widowed Stravinsky was not emigrating as he set off alone at the end of September . Vera de Bosset with whom he had shared a steady fifty-fifty relationship for twenty years followed him in January, and they were married in Massachusetts in March 1940. Pretty fast off the mark. Now the American years, half of Stravinsky’s compositional life, were about to begin.

STRAVINSKY – THE AMERICAN YEARS

 

Stravinsky had arrived in America in late 1939 and had married Vera de Bosset in March 1940. Having fulfilled his engagement at Harvard the couple moved to Beverly Hills and bought a house in Hollywood where they were to live for many years. He would soon build up quickly a new circle of friends. There was plenty of artistic and intellectual activity around particularly ex-pat Brits such as Aldous Huxley and W H Auden with whom he would later collaborate. After the war he would also get to know Dylan Thomas for what was to be a short period. On arrival he was half way through his Symphony in C which was first performed in Chicago. His first American composition was Tango inspired by a trip to Mexico as was “El Salon Mexico” written at much the same time by Aaron Copland, my preferred option. In 1942 Stravinsky would fall foul of American law without even knowing it. He wrote an arrangement of “The Star Spangled Banner” for the Boston Symphony Orchestra. You may well ask what was wrong with that. There just happened to be a federal law forbidding interference with the national anthem and Stravinsky got arrested during the performance. Who knows, if he could have done to the Star Spangled Banner what he could do to Pergolesi and Tchaikovsky, with a few carefully placed wrong notes, it might well have warranted the electric chair. Stravinsky was receiving a number of commissions and in 1942 he produced Danses Concertantes for Balanchine followed by Scenes de Ballet in 1944 and then film music from Hollywood. He certainly had no money troubles and found himself in rude health. Happily remarried he was still in good form and prone to a seven year itch….. but which occurred somewhat more frequently.

 

Towards the end of the war Stravinsky began writing for jazz and swing bands, composing his Scherzo à la Russe for jazz ensemble in 1944 followed by his Ebony concerto, written for Woody Herman, a clarinettist swing band leader. Frankly I prefer Woody’s own “At the Woodchoppers Ball”. Copland adapted better in writing his clarinet concerto, in his case for Benny Goodman who actually recorded the Ebony concerto with Stravinsky. One does not get the feeling that Stravinsky got the real soul of American music as Dvorak had done fifty years earlier.

 

1945 saw the end of the war and the return to form of Stravinsky in his neo-classical mould with his symphony in three movements. It is a very listenable work but Stravinsky described it as a war symphony after having watched newsreel films. It does not have the feel of a war symphony like Shostakovitch’s Leningrad symphony or his harrowing eighth but then you didn’t get harrow in Hollywood.

 

With the end of the war Stravinsky obtained American nationality. The first thing he did was to start revising a number of his works, Firebird, Petrouchka, Symphony of Wind Instruments, The Fairy’s Kiss, Apollo, Persephone, Oedipus Rex, Symphony of Psalms, Pulcinella and others. Sometimes it was just a touching up job, sometimes the addition of a further instrument here or there. He might be said to have been looking for his last word but he was also looking more for royalties which he had not been receiving before. Obtaining American citizenship gave him this particular source of income and who can blame him for that?

 

This summary cannot deal with each item of Stravinsky’s output but simply to follow his career where he was still pursuing his neo-classicism at this stage . 1947 saw a new ballet, Orpheus, based on Monteverdi who of course wrote his own superb version, the moving opera, Orfeo. Here Stravinsky has returned to the static style which permeated his output when he based it on the culture of Ancient Greece.

 

Shortly afterwards Stravinsky visited an exhibition in Chicago of to view “The Rakes Progress”, the eight engravings of Hogarth. The series formed in Stravinsky’s mind a subject for an opera but he himself was not sufficiently skilled in English to write a poetic libretto and on the recommendation of, Aldous Huxley, he engaged W H Auden and his partner, Chester Kallman to write it. Auden came out west and the two hit it off despite Auden, according to the Stravinsky’s maid, not using the towel and soap left out for him. He and Kallman, soon would refer to Igor and Vera as the Stravs. The well known story concerns the decline and fall of Tom Rakewell, who deserts Anne Trulove for the delights of London in the company of Nick Shadow, who, in the Auden version, turns out to be the Devil. Shades here also of Stravinsky’s Soldier’s Tale. It was first performed at La Fenice in Venice in September 1951, with Stravinsky himself conducting. It was his first visit to Europe in twelve years. Many consider The Rake’s Progress as the summit of Stravinsky’s neo-classical period and the pinnacle of Auden’s work as a librettist.

 

It was in 1948 that Stravinsky met the 25 year old conductor Robert Craft who became his pupil, his promoter, his biographer, his mentor and adviser, his conductor, his propagandist and his minder as well as legal executor, a relationship which lasted the rest of Stravinsky’s life and beyond. Just as Stravinsky was influenced at the outset of his career by Diaghilev, so he was influenced for the final years by Craft. What differed were the types of influences. Diaghilev was a promoter and adviser but with him Stravinsky remained his own man. One could not say that he did not remain his own man with Craft but one is left with the impression that Stravinsky had weakened and the influence more pernicious. Little is known about Craft but he seems to be a cross between a leech and a vulture. He developed his speciality in early music, particularly Monteverdi, perhaps having been involved in some way with Orpheus. He then turned his attention to the Second Viennese School, Schoenberg, Berg and Webern, particularly the last named and became an apostle to St Arnold, St Alban and St Anton, the three A’s. He turned Stravinsky’s attentions to the music of Webern and one cannot doubt that Stravinsky would not have followed that course had it not provoked his interest. He was interested and began experimenting. It was a change of direction, perhaps one much needed. He clearly had a problem as to which way to go forward particularly after thirty years of writing in neo-classical vogue and no longer wishing to excavate old composers and include them in his own recipes. Many composers face the dilemma of advancing years, Beethoven by developing a mature sound which in his late quartets would baffle generations; Brahms by retreating into premature old age; Sibelius, not wishing to repeat himself, by retreating into silence for thirty years.

 

I do not propose to list all the Stravinsky output which followed. My own lack of sympathy would be unfair to him and to you. It is not simply the serial technique which he sought to adopt as this was by no means any longer novel. Stravinsky had ceased being in the vanguard but following in the steps of others, the leaders of whom were all by then dead. There are still Stravinskyan sounds and the occasional reminder of the voice we had known previously but there seems to me to be a sense of the static we had seen produced in his previous stylistic incarnation. In 1953 he would meet Dylan Thomas and was impressed by him and his exuberance, not to mention his capacity to consume quantities of alcohol. Together they planned to team up to write an opera which was not to be. Thomas died that year and Stravinsky wrote his “In Memoriam Dylan Thomas”. It seems to me they would have been a mismatch. To the extent that Dylan’s poetry is particularly more musical Igor’s music is particularly less poetic. Perhaps someone more immersed in late Stravinsky can better illustrate its qualities than I. Matthew has referred to Stravinsky writing the wrong notes – but the right wrong notes. I prefer to liken his late music to what Eric Morcambe said to André Previn. “They are the right notes – but in the wrong order”. In Memoriam is a dirge with the setting of the poem, “Do not go gentle into that good night” written by Thomas as his memorial to his own father. Stravinsky framed it within a prologue and postlude scored for four trombones and a string quartet. It does not for me possess the musicality of the poetry of Dylan Thomas such as in Fern Hill or the humour of Under Milk Wood. No evidence of any Organ Morgan, Dai Bread, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, Butcher Beynon or Lily Smalls. Dan Jones who wrote the music for the original radio production of Under Milk Wood also wrote an “In Memoriam Dylan Thomas”, his symphony no 4, a more memorable and moving tribute given its first performance at a prom I went to in 1954.

 

Earlier in 1952, Stravinsky had written for the city of Venice the Canticum Sacrum Ad Honorum Santi Marci Nominis, a commission form the International Society of Contemporary Music to be performed at Saint Marco. It is partially serial. Two years later he wrote Threni, a fully serial work to be performed in Venice to which he had become strongly attached.

 

Better known from this period is his ballet, Agon, which he started writing in his diatonic style and during which he switched to twelve tone style. It was written for the ballet company of Balanchine. Although musically not neo-classical, it is based on French seventeenth century dance forms including sarabande, galliard and bransles. Here Stravinsky demonstrates his adoption of twelve tone music by writing for everything centred on twelve; bars in alternate seven and five meters, dancers in three groups of four and anything which can add up to twelve. Had he written it at nineteen to the dozen he would have doubtless marked it at nineteen to the bar.

 

Following Agon, Stravinsky undertook a world tour over two years covering five continents and conducting wherever he went. This would have been taxing for any younger man than him. For someone at nearly 80 years of age it is hard to imagine where his energy came from. All of this was against the background that between 1957, aged 75 and 1967 aged 85, he had embarked on recording his complete oeuvres, nowadays spread over 22 CD’s, conducting almost the lot, with Robert Craft the only permitted stand-in for the few the old man could not manage. Robert Craft had become more rather than less the official voice of Stravinsky with critics referring to his writings and recorded performances as the authorised version and the gospel truth. However there remain those of us who learned a much more full blooded Stravinsky from the famous FFRR 78 rpm recordings and the early LP’s by Ansermet and no usurper to the throne will replace him.

 

In 1962 Stravinsky was a guest of President and Mrs Kennedy at a dinner given in his honour at the White House. Sadly he would little more than a year later be writing “Elegy for JFK” to a poem written by W H Auden. Before that however came a surprise invitation for his 80^th birthday. It was from the USSR to come and conduct his music there. Until then he had been persona non exista in the USSR and he himself hated anything to do with them. He did not want to go but did so on the advice of Robert Craft. It was his first visit to his native land in 48 years. He would have hated the very name of Leningrad at which airport he arrived. He was nevertheless t earfully overcome by his return and was greeted in the Kremlin by Nikita Kruschev. He went on over three weeks to make public appearances and give performances and was feted wherever he went.

 

After his return home he wrote his “Abraham and Isaac” to a Hebrew text from Genesis which was first performed in Israel in 1965. This leads me to make an observation concerning works by Stravinsky with titles either identical to or very similar to those of Benjamin Britten. One gets the feeling that Stravinsky began to feel overtaken by Britten and had a sneaking regard for him. It is certainly very odd that after Britten had written Noye’s Flood Stravinsky too wrote The Flood; odd too that Britten had written five canticles, a term not to my knowledge used by any other composer except subsequently by Stravinsky; strange too that one of Britten’s canticles was called “Abraham and Isaac” based on a Chester miracle play and here now was Stravinsky writing his “Abraham and Isaac”, regrettably in my view not matching up in any way to that of Britten which the latter considered highly enough to reproduce in his own War Requiem.

 

Stravinsky’s last major work was entitled Requiem Canticles and written in 1966 on a commission from Princeton University. His last public concert was in November 1967 in Toronto where he conducted Pulcinella. His health was beginning to fail and after 28 years living on the West coast he and Vera moved to New York. In 1971 he travelled to Evian to visit his family by his first marriage.

 

Igor Stravinsky died in New York in 1971 just short of his 89^th birthday . His choice, set out in his will, as to where he wanted to be buried was Venice, the city he loved.

He had chosen the position of his grave in San Michele just across the path from that of his old colleague, friend and compatriot in exile, Sergei Diaghilev. The two were together again after a long absence perhaps plotting on what earthquakes and riots they could inflict on others wherever they had gone.

 

Stravinsky had a long career incredibly linking him from Rimsky-Korsakov to Anton Webern. He was the most individual of composers who rarely could be mistaken for another. Equally incredible were his stylistic changes so different from each other whilst he remained always recognizably the same Stravinsky. It has been said that Stravinsky did not write from the heart but, let’s be honest, nor do most composers. Composing is hard work as Beethoven knew only too well and sounding from the heart is a gift to those composers who have had to contrive to achieve that result. In Stravinsky’s case the lack of apparent heart gives rise to a sense of artificiality. Yet, there is heart but also the words needed to describe him are “shock” and “brilliance”. If I have failed to show understanding for his last period the fault is mine, not that of Stravinsky. Just like many who could not immediately comprehend the late Beethoven quartets in their time, I remain to come to terms with the late Stravinsky in mine. We have done that before with that old war horse, the Rite of Spring, written unbelievably now a hundred years ago. Those late works of his will surely have their day to come.