BaL 26.05.18 - Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex

[Pulcinella]

Once you've heard Horovitz's Metamorphosis on a bed-time theme (Oedipe: Je suis la plume.....) it's very hard to take the narration seriously!

[Bryn]

Available with "visuals", too - it was shown on Channel 4 in pre-"revolting bodies" days.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Oedipus-Rex-Saito-Kinen-Festival/dp/B00092ZAOK

... a sample (complete with Narration in Japanese) here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyeR8lY7A_8

It should be noted that there is an important distinction between the CD and DVD versions of the Ozawa/Saito Kinen recordings. The CD has French narration, the DVD has Japanese (with subtitle options including French, and the e e cummings English translation). Best to get both. After much searching, I have just found mu stash of Oedipus Rex CDs (the Ozawa DVD is still hiding somewhere). That makes Stravinsky x3, Bernstein, Neeme Järvi, Ancerl, Ozawa, Craft, Gergiev, Colin Davis, Gardiner and Salonen, so no Karajan, Levine, Welser-Möst, Abbado or Solti.

[Bryn]

Once you've heard Hoffnung's Metamorphosis on a bed-time theme (Oedipe: Je suis la plume.....) it's very hard to take the narration seriously!

Horovitz's Metamorphosis on a bed-time theme, surely?

[Pulcinella]

Horovitz's Metamorphosis on a bed-time theme, surely?

Of course!

Corrected.

Included in The Hoffnung Interplanetary Music Festival (1958).

[silvestrione]

It seems that the composer of the Movements for Piano & Orchestra was more than a little embarrassed by the original aesthetics that motivated Oedipus - regarding the work in the '60s with the same mixture of pride and mortification of somebody in their seventies today looks at photos of themselves from the '70s. The comic/absurd aspects of the work is something that he doesn't discuss - but which, after listening to recordings in the past few days seems very much a part of the whole experience. The narrator who doesn't really "narrate" (describing events that are to happen, but which don't actually occur, missing out those which are - it's as if s/he has come onto the rostrum, and realized that the script hadn't been put on the stand, and s/he has to "recite" as best s/he can what they can remember from rehearsals) - the deliberate way the dramatic flow of the Music is repeatedly thrown off by the narrator's interruptions - the way the Gloria has to be repeated literally as if the chorus is annoyed at such an interruption, and are making a collective "as we were saying ... " - the appropriately totally inappropriate Music associated with Creon (the "bring on the dancing girls"/Folies Bergere bit); the Messenger's repeating his brief announcement four times, as if no one's listening to him and the jaunty Music with which the chorus surround these announcements ....

Many of these absurdities originate in Cocteau's text; but Stravinsky chose to work with Cocteau, and ruthlessly scrutinized Cocteau's work - rejecting passages that didn't meet what he wanted to not express in his Music, and demanding other passages be rewritten, so he knew exactly what was going on in the text, for all his later disclaimers. And Stravinsky decided to work with Cocteau after hearing - and being impressed by - the latter's Orphée (in which, amongst other absurdities, Death is presented not as a dusty, terrifying skeleton with scythe, but as a fashionable woman in a pink ballgown and fur coat). "For all his later disclaimers" ... over the past few days, I've been more than once tempted to wonder if these "disclaimers" create more problems than those they sought to remove: guiding us to a conception of the work as "simple" Tragedy, and making the farcical aspects seem incongruous.

Didn't Stravinsky originally engage Cocteau to do the text, in French, then gradually came to realise he wanted it in Latin, and then had to give some role to Cocteau to keep him happy, so accepted his suggestion of a narration, which he later greatly regretted? I'd be interested to see how it worked without the narration. Is that done anywhere, I wonder?

[Bryn]

I see the Abbado can supposedly be heard on YouTube. Listening, I am not convinced this is as claimed:

[Bryn]

Given the varying accents the composer puts on the different syllables of "Oe -di-pus", maybe the choir might also sing the first syllable with a different pronunciation each time?

Having now found my misplaced Bernstein CD, I am reminded that in this recording, it's variously 'Oidipus' or 'Owdipus' in the chorus, though 'Eddipus from Kollo. Variety is the spice of life, eh?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Didn't Stravinsky originally engage Cocteau to do the text, in French, then gradually came to realise he wanted it in Latin,

No - the sung Latin was a part of the concept from the start. Cocteau knew of this, and was in contact with Jean Daniélou (who translated his French into Latin) throughout the creation process.

and then had to give some role to Cocteau to keep him happy, so accepted his suggestion of a narration, which he later greatly regretted?

Stravinsky certainly "regretted" the narration "later" - but much later. At the time of creation and first performances, he voiced no such regrets. This later rejection of the work of his collaborators (not just Cocteau, but Gide, Ramuz, and Nijinsky) is an unpleasant aspect of the composer's personality - given a life long enough, he might even have eventually rescinded his approval of Auden/Kallman's "perfect" libretto for The Rake's Progress!

There's no evidence, that I know of, that Stravinsky only "allowed" the Narration just in order to give Cocteau something to do. Walsh (whose study of the work I've consulted many times over the past few days) only goes as far as "Perhaps the Speaker, who tells the story in the vernacular, was an author's compromise".

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Stravinsky-.../dp/0521407788 (p6)

I'd be interested to see how it worked without the narration. Is that done anywhere, I wonder?

This is the point - serial Reviser Stravinsky - who jettisoned so much of Cocteau's work during the creation of the work, and who spent much of his time in America making revisions to his European works, never dispensed with the narration. For all his elderly criticism, he knew that the work doesn't "work" without it.

[Bryn]

An hour or so's fiddling about with Exact Audio Copy and the free audio editor, Audacity might give some idea of what it would be like without the narration, though one ould lose the string drones, etc.

[Richard Barrett]

For me the problem isn't that it's there but that it isn't done right. My favourite is Edward Fox in Craft's second recording. Craft by the way doesn't repeat the "Gloria" chorus. Does anyone have a score to see whether the repeat is actually there?

[Joseph K]

For me the problem isn't that it's there but that it isn't done right. My favourite is Edward Fox in Craft's second recording. Craft by the way doesn't repeat the "Gloria" chorus. Does anyone have a score to see whether the repeat is actually there?

I have the score. Whereabouts is the Gloria section?

[Richard Barrett]

Right in the middle, before the narration "The dispute of the princes summons Jocasta".

[Joseph K]

Right in the middle, before the narration "The dispute of the princes summons Jocasta".

No, there's no repeat.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

No, there's no repeat.

"Reprise du denier Choeur", non?

[Joseph K]

"Reprise du denier Choeur", non?

Oh yes, I've just seen that at the top of the beginning of the second act ... hence why I didn't see it before.