Stravinsky, Igor Fyodorovich (1882-1971)

[Richard Barrett]

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/classica...y-choral-works

I must give that one a listen. I thought there must have been a discussion about the text at some point, though it's hard to tell which recordings use which version.

[Pulcinella]

Gabriel Jackson has very kindly responded to a query I sent him.

I don't know anything about any replacement text for the anti-semitic lines in Tomorrow shall be by dancing day, official or otherwise. The St Mary's recording is of the work as written/published, as are all the others, as far as I am aware.

I discussed the issues around the anti semitic line(s), including their reception at the time, and Stravinsky's attitude, in my notes for the St Mary's disc. I also discussed that, a bit, on the R3 forum as I recall (possibly on a Building a Library thread on the Mass...)

I have not been able to find any discussion on the forum, but I am at least reassured that I must have seen something from him somewhere. I don't have that recording, so it's not the liner notes: perhaps a review somewhere?

[Quarky]

Just catching up with this matter, but can't shed any further light:

His Cantata (1951-2) is an English-language choral work for soprano, tenor, female choir and instrumental ensemble set to four anonymous, late-medieval English poems suggested by W. H. Auden. The choice of text in the Cantata, which marks Stravinsky’s first move into Serialism, is often interpreted as further evidence of his antisemitism. The Second Ricercar, ‘To-morrow shall be my dancing day,’ describes Jesus’ life and contains couplets that have antisemitic connotations. The offensive nature of the lyrics was brought to the composer’s attention after the premiere of the Cantata in a letter from Stravinsky’s then-biographer, Alexandre Tansman, who expressed regret that Stravinsky had chosen to set such a text, ‘only seven years after the opening of the death camps.’ Scholars have largely agreed that although Stravinsky was probably not motivated to choose an antisemitic text, he may have been ignorant to the fact – or simply did not care – that it could be offensive. Indeed, in August 1953 he inscribed a score of his Cantata to his friend and neighbour, Otto Klemperer (the Jewish conductor whose petition Stravinsky had refused to sign in 1933), who had fled to America from the Nazis. The Cantata has since been performed both in its original form, and with alternative lyrics, with the composer’s consent.

Based upon a quick search, possibly St. Mary's version contained the offending words:

https://www.thewholenote.com/index.php/booksrecords2/vocalchoralreviews/26302-stravinsky-choral-works-mass-cantata-choir-of-st-mary-s-cathedral-edinburgh-duncan-ferguson

[Pulcinella]

Gabriel has since told me that the liner notes are available here:

https://www.eclassical.com/shop/17115/art25/4987325-dd57e7-801918341649.pdf

Since these are freely available to look at/download, I hope I'm not breaking any copyright by posting the link.

He too has been unable to find what he thought he had posted.
If we're both imagining it, then our imaginations must share some part of the universe somewhere!

[Pulcinella]

Thanks to frenchfrank for some excellent sleuthing:

http://www.for3.org/forums/showthread.php?19810-CE-Winchester-Cathedral-23-i-19-L&p=720677#post720677

So Gabriel and I weren't in another imaginary world after all.

[Bryn]

IIRC, in the late 1960s, the Beeb (I think it was Radio 3, specifically) held a composition competition for a new setting of Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day. I can't recall the version of the text to be set. Can anyone here so recall? Neither my nor a friend's entry got close to the shortlist.

[Richard Barrett]

Gabriel and I weren't in another imaginary world after all.

Found in quite an unexpected place too! Taruskin has much of interest to say on this subject (although I feel it's necessary to add that there are plenty of other areas where I have no time for him at all!) although I find "closing one's ears" a distasteful idea; I mean you can't know about a situation like this and then "un-know" it so that it doesn't spring to mind at all when you hear the music. Well I can't anyway. Like Gabriel I would be in favour of leaving the text as it is and informing listeners about the controversy around it. I would completely understand performers taking the view that it should be changed, but I feel it's better to take Stravinsky with his imperfections and contradictions.

BTW Peter Wiegold in 1973 wrote a brass quintet entitled Dancing Day whose structure was based on that text although it isn't actually set to music there.

[ahinton]

IIRC, in the late 1960s, the Beeb (I think it was Radio 3, specifically) held a composition competition for a new setting of Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day. I can't recall the version of the text to be set. Can anyone here so recall? Neither my nor a friend's entry got close to the shortlist.

Not sure about that but there's a setting by John Gardner (1917-2011) that was quite widely performed at one time; it's the second of Two Carols, Op. 75, from 1965.

[Bryn]

Not sure about that but there's a setting by John Gardner (1917-2011) that was quite widely performed at one time; it's the second of Two Carols, Op. 75, from 1965.

I recall that a fellow member of Cardew's Experimental Music class at Morley College, Christopher Hobbs, also entered the competition. It is the version of the text I am uncertain about, not the competition itself.

[Pulcinella]

Not sure about that but there's a setting by John Gardner (1917-2011) that was quite widely performed at one time; it's the second of Two Carols, Op. 75, from 1965.

I recall that a fellow member of Cardew's Experimental Music class at Morley College, Christopher Hobbs, also entered the competition. It is the version of the text I am uncertain about, not the competition itself.

The text of the Gardner setting (included in a Naxos anthology called In terra pax, and given in the liner notes) constitutes just four verses:
Tomorrow shall be...
Then was I born...
In a manger laid...
Then afterwards baptized...

[Pulcinella]

I'm finding Straus' book quite a struggle, sadly.
It doesn't help that the nomenclature (which might be well known to music students) doesn't seem to be explained, even P (for Principal, I assume) when Stravinsky himself uses O (Original?).
By page 23 we meet:
It represents tetrachord-type (0134)
and
unexplained subscripts after P, R, and RI.
I knew the (0134) nomenclature, as both Joseph and ferney clued me in about it a while back (can't remember the context just now), and I assume that the subscript represents some sort of transitional/transpositional shift of the series, but it's really not helpful not to be told.
Confidence in the book is also undermined by a statement such as this on p45, as well:
Of twenty original compositions after the Rake, only five (Septet, Agon, Movements, Variations, and the brief Fanfare for a New Theater) are purely instrumental.
What does he think Epitaphium and Double canon are written for, I wonder.

[Joseph K]

Primary, retrograde and retrograde-inversion?

As for the five purely instrumental works... beats me. I am sorry your confidence in the book appears to have been compromised, especially since I suggested you buy it.

[Richard Barrett]

I knew the (0134) nomenclature, as both Joseph and ferney clued me in about it a while back (can't remember the context just now), and I assume that the subscript represents some sort of transitional/transpositional shift of the series, but it's really not helpful not to be told.

That's all typical US-academia-speak. I'll get around to reading that book eventually, but I can't help thinking that (what I know of) its approach to analysing late Stravinsky is barking up the wrong tree. Not that I would claim to know what the right tree is.

[Pulcinella]

Primary, retrograde and retrograde-inversion?

As for the five purely instrumental works... beats me. I am sorry your confidence in the book appears to have been compromised, especially since I suggested you buy it.

Oh! No blame attaches to you; don't worry!
Yes, I got the interpretation of the letters, but it's the unexplained subscripts that concerned me.

[Richard Barrett]

Yes, I got the interpretation of the letters, but it's the unexplained subscripts that concerned me.

Those are the transposition values, as you've worked out for yourself. Maybe this will be of assistance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Set_th...omplementation.