Stravinsky, Igor Fyodorovich (1882-1971)

[Bryn]

See revision of #42

I was introduced to the quote in my youth. I wonder if it is on EWW's "Stravinsky, the Composer and his works" which, the first edition of which I had as a requested birthday present from my father.

I have now checked with both the first and second editions of EWW and neither appears to make any reference to Stravinsky's defence regarding his magpie activity regarding Mozart in THe Rake's Progress. I doubt I learned of it at school. Most likely if was via the Third Programme or LP 'sleeve notes'.

[Richard Barrett]

Joan Peyser's "To Boulez and Beyond", page 98.

Thanks. I see though that Peyser (a gossip monger rather than a scholar IMO) gives no source.

[gurnemanz]

The music of Agon obviously does stand alone, but I feel many of his ballet scores need to be seen as a ballet production for full enjoyment. ....And then there is Scenes de Ballet ......

Please excuse my waffling on...

Please waffle away. Good point about seeing the ballet scores danced live. I had not paid so much attention to Apollo until we saw it as part of the Stravinsky Project at the Barbican a few years ago with the Michael Clark Company. If I hear it now memories of that performance are indelibly attached.

[Pulcinella]

There may be an issue with some of his Ballet scores, the lesser known ballets. Obviously, the great ballets, Rite etc, are musical works that stand on their own feet as great works of art.

However Ballets are a joint production with the Choreographer, and particularly with modern productions, the production will stand or fall by the quality of the Choreography. I'm thinking of Balanchine and Agon for example - please don't open this clip if you don't like Dance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fZCdTFPiUs

The music of Agon obviously does stand alone, but I feel many of his ballet scores need to be seen as a ballet production for full enjoyment. ....And then there is Scenes de Ballet ......

Please excuse my waffling on...

... with its wonderful four opening chords (spaced with cunning irregularity: White, in his book) that give no hint at all of the basic compound 5/8 that it settles down into!
Some find the music of the Pas de deux, where the solo trumpet (male dancer) is imitated by solo horn (female dancer), brash, vulgar, and incongruous (White again): but I love it!

This is the piece that resulted in this lovely story (taken from White, again).

After the first night, Stravinsky received a telegram couched in the following terms:
YOUR MUSIC GREAT SUCCESS STOP COULD BE SENSATIONAL SUCCESS IF YOU WOULD AUTHORISE ROBERT RUSSELL BENNETT RETOUCH ORCHESTRATION STOP BENNETT ORCHESTRATES EVEN THE WORKS OF COLE PORTER
Stravinsky telegraphed back:
SATISFIED WITH GREAT SUCCESS

[Richard Barrett]

Some find the music of the Pas de deux, where the solo trumpet (male dancer) is imitated by solo horn (female dancer), brash, vulgar, and incongruous

I think of it as Stravinsky saying: see? I could write better film music than any of you people if I could be bothered.

[Quarky]

... with its wonderful four opening chords (spaced with cunning irregularity: White, in his book) that give no hint at all of the basic compound 5/8 that it settles down into!
Some find the music of the Pas de deux, where the solo trumpet (male dancer) is imitated by solo horn (female dancer), brash, vulgar, and incongruous (White again): but I love it!

This is the piece that resulted in this lovely story (taken from White, again).

After the first night, Stravinsky received a telegram couched in the following terms:
YOUR MUSIC GREAT SUCCESS STOP COULD BE SENSATIONAL SUCCESS IF YOU WOULD AUTHORISE ROBERT RUSSELL BENNETT RETOUCH ORCHESTRATION STOP BENNETT ORCHESTRATES EVEN THE WORKS OF COLE PORTER
Stravinsky telegraphed back:
SATISFIED WITH GREAT SUCCESS

Agreed - good fun! Doubtful whether Robert Russell Bennett would have "improved" it.

Apparently Scénes de ballet was recently revived by Christopher Wheeldon - so who knows it might be performed in the future on the London Stage (Lockdown permitting)

[Quarky]

I would also include what many Stravinsky enthusiasts regard as a "slight" work, the Ebony Concerto, for its anticipating the essence of Cool jazz, a good five years ahead of Miles Davis' and Gil Evans' Birth of the Cool, upon whose harmonic textures and instrumental combinations I detect its influence.

Listening again to Ebony Concerto, I felt the influence of ??????? band. As regards Miles Davis, it is often overlooked (at least by me) that he started life at the Juillard School, so he was Classically "informed".

It seems Stravinsky wrote a number of Jazz-inspired pieces - RagTime worthy of note....

[Pulcinella]

Agreed - good fun! Doubtful whether Robert Russell Bennett would have "improved" it.

Apparently Scénes de ballet was recently revived by Christopher Wheeldon - so who knows it might be performed in the future on the London Stage (Lockdown permitting)

It's one of the 'Ballets for hire' from Birmingham Royal Ballet (where I saw it), apparently!
(I was trying to find the date they did it, as part of their Stravinsky offerings.)

https://www.brb.org.uk/hires/production/scènes-de-ballet

[Richard Barrett]

Listening again to Ebony Concerto

I was listening to that the other day, Stravinsky's own recording with Benny Goodman and the Columbia Jazz Ensemble, followed by Boulez's with the Ensemble InterContemporain, which, to quote an eminent colleague of mine in another context, "swings like a bucket of sh*t". Boulez for his own part used words like "une sorte d'onanisme en public" to describe jazz, so you wouldn't expect much more I suppose. I think it's a lovely piece - the only thing wrong with it (as with Symphonies of Winds) is that it's over so soon.

[Joseph K]

I was listening to that the other day, Stravinsky's own recording with Benny Goodman and the Columbia Jazz Ensemble, followed by Boulez's with the Ensemble InterContemporain, which, to quote an eminent colleague of mine in another context, "swings like a bucket of sh*t". Boulez for his own part used words like "une sorte d'onanisme en public" to describe jazz, so you wouldn't expect much more I suppose.

That's a shame about Boulez, since - as you know I've pointed out before - his Derive 2 is not unjazzlike in at least a few respects and particular passages.

[Bryn]

I was listening to that the other day, Stravinsky's own recording with Benny Goodman and the Columbia Jazz Ensemble, followed by Boulez's with the Ensemble InterContemporain, which, to quote an eminent colleague of mine in another context, "swings like a bucket of sh*t". Boulez for his own part used words like "une sorte d'onanisme en public" to describe jazz, so you wouldn't expect much more I suppose. I think it's a lovely piece - the only thing wrong with it (as with Symphonies of Winds) is that it's over so soon.

How about the Gervaise de Peyer recording with the Johnny Dankworth Band (Dudley Moore on piano)? I've always been rather fond of that one.

https://www.discogs.com/Dankworth-And-The-London-Philharmonic-Orchestra-Conducted-By-Hugo-Rignold-Improvisation-For-Jazzband/release/15757414

ISRT that Pristine transferred it to the digital domaiin but it seems no longer to be in their catalogue.

[Quarky]

There seems to be quite a number of available recordings - may be as many as 10 -20 if reissues discounted. The Woody Herman version is pretty good, IMV:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sTWwtPo2lM

[Serial_Apologist]

How about the Gervaise de Peyer recording with the Johnny Dankworth Band (Dudley Moore on piano)? I've always been rather fond of that one.

https://www.discogs.com/Dankworth-And-The-London-Philharmonic-Orchestra-Conducted-By-Hugo-Rignold-Improvisation-For-Jazzband/release/15757414

ISRT that Pristine transferred it to the digital domaiin but it seems no longer to be in their catalogue.

That being the version which I have: "boxy" is usually a term of disparagement in reviewing a recoridng, but for me it suits the piece perfectly, and is I think better than the Herman version, which allegedly they hated. The Seiber/Dankworth is also of interest given its contemporaneity with experiments in the Third Stream across the Atlantic, and coincidental idiomatic similarities to West Side Story, which Bernstein would have been in the process of composing at the time, so any cross-influence would have been apocryphal at best. The Lindup suite, taking up the entire other side of this LP, is frankly erstwhile cinematic period kitsch, which some might well see as tempting!

[Richard Barrett]

Moving on... another piece I've spent some considerable time with in recent weeks is the Cantata, which seems to be considered to be a problematic work: the refrains are too repetitive, the central aria is too long, and besides its text contains antisemitic sentiments. I don't really agree with the first two criticisms, but the third is more difficult to deal with: it may be a mediaeval text, but Stravinsky's well-documented antipathy towards Jewish people and his insensitivity in setting it in a piece written soon after the second world war do strike me as something that needs addressing. Robert Craft has claimed that he replaced the offending words of the text in his first performance in Los Angeles and was berated for this by WH Auden (who had given Stravinsky the anthology from which he drew his text); Stravinsky's manager assured a correspondent in 1971 that Craft would ensure that the emended text would appear in any future republication of the score, which he didn't. What's to be done? (& should any possible solution also apply for example to JS Bach's setting of Luther's words about "the murderous Pope and Turks"?)

[Pulcinella]

Moving on... another piece I've spent some considerable time with in recent weeks is the Cantata, which seems to be considered to be a problematic work: the refrains are too repetitive, the central aria is too long, and besides its text contains antisemitic sentiments. I don't really agree with the first two criticisms, but the third is more difficult to deal with: it may be a mediaeval text, but Stravinsky's well-documented antipathy towards Jewish people and his insensitivity in setting it in a piece written soon after the second world war do strike me as something that needs addressing. Robert Craft has claimed that he replaced the offending words of the text in his first performance in Los Angeles and was berated for this by WH Auden (who had given Stravinsky the anthology from which he drew his text); Stravinsky's manager assured a correspondent in 1971 that Craft would ensure that the emended text would appear in any future republication of the score, which he didn't. What's to be done? (& should any possible solution also apply for example to JS Bach's setting of Luther's words about "the murderous Pope and Turks"?)

I'm sure that there's been a discussion about the text of Cantata (related to a performance or new recording that used the 'revised' wording) elsewhere, but a quick search didn't reveal a likely thread. Perhaps someone else will remember.

PS: Looking at available versions has prompted my memory.
I think it was the St Mary's Edinburgh version, and that Gabriel Jackson was involved in some way (he might have written the liner notes).

https://www.prestomusic.com/classical/products/8158209--stravinsky-choral-works