To the Left of Spring

**Ian Thumwood** · 03-04-21, 08:56

SA

There was a very good article in last week's Sunday Telegraph about Stravinsky which looked at the range of his repertoire and considered why so much of it never gets performed. I found it quite interesting and I never really appreciated that he had embraced a number of different styles as the 20th Century progressed. I am familiar with stuff like "the rite of spring" but have to say that he is a composer that has always left me cold. What was revealing was that his contemporaries were critical of his later work and it was long since considered that the fact he embraced extreme forms of Serialism, Neo-baroque and jazz suggested he had no real style of his own. I cannot recall who wrote the piece (Ivan Hewitt?) which made the case for Stravinsky's music to be reappraised.

Personally, I feel that Stravinsky's work often resembles the clean, efficient and neat technical lines of a technical drawing but lacks the warmth of a painting. There are pieces like "Dumbarton Oaks" that I don't mind but he is not a composer I have ever felt compelled to explore. Like Picasso, his work is considered a landmark in 20th century culture and the "modernist" nature of it is something that repels as opposed to intrigue. Stravinsky seems too "modern" to appeal to part of my taste in Classical music and not modern enough to appeal to the other part. He is part of that collection of 20th century composers such as Schoenberg, Webern and Berg that I really dislike and a precursor to some of the immediate post-War 20th century stuff that is so off-putting.

What I have been listening to a lot lately is Scriabin preludes. I bought a book of the Opus 11 set to satisfy my curiosity and having heard Chick Corea perform one of these. I can struggle through the easier one but the more difficult ones will be impossible for me. Still, I love the harmonies he uses which have things like flat 9th all over the place and you can see why they appealed so much to Chick. For me, Scriabin's piano work is like super-strength Chopin and whilst there are some pieces such as the Opus 8, No. 12 Etude which sounds like the kind of music you would expect to hear from an old silent film when there is a woman tied to a railway track, I am a big fan. I think Scriabin had synesthesia which helps explain why his music appeals so much to jazz pianists - oddly the colours were suggested by the different keys as opposed to chords.

**cloughie** · 03-04-21, 10:07

If it’s messed about with too much it is in danger of becoming the Wrong of Spring.

**Old Grumpy** · 03-04-21, 11:06

Originally posted by cloughie View Post

If it’s messed about with too much it is in danger of becoming the Wrong of Spring.

Another example of the effect of climate change?

**Tenor Freak** · 03-04-21, 13:49

Originally posted by Serial_Apologist View Post

Sat 3 April
5pm - J to Z
As Radio 3 marks the 50th anniversary of Igor Stravinsky's death, Julian Joseph explores the relationship between the Russian-born composer and jazz, including his influence on bebop [???] and the special place of The Rite of Spring among jazz musicians.

Not so far fetched. In that Bird docu I linked to, Chan Parker recalls that Bird would listen exclusively to modern classical music such as Stravinsky, Hindemith etc. There had to be a percolation of those influences into the music. Bird also wanted to work with Stravinsky; had he had his way, the sessions with the strings would have been much more radical.

**BLUESNIK'S REVOX** · 03-04-21, 15:34

Originally posted by Tenor Freak View Post

Not so far fetched. In that Bird docu I linked to, Chan Parker recalls that Bird would listen exclusively to modern classical music such as Stravinsky, Hindemith etc. There had to be a percolation of those influences into the music. Bird also wanted to work with Stravinsky; had he had his way, the sessions with the strings would have been much more radical.

Alice Coltrane: "On March 20, 1972, I was blessed with the good fortune of receiving a visitation from the great master composer, Mr. Igor Stravinsky, who I had never met before in life,” she wrote. Coltrane proceeds to describe a stimulating conversation with the deceased Russian, after which he proffers a glass vial filled with magical elixir. After gulping it down, Alice seemingly gains superhuman string-arrangement skills. “Since that time, it has been incumbent to me to proceed forthrightly into the great master Stravinsky’s works. Divine instruction has been given to me throughout the entire arranging of this music, even down to the smallest detail.”

I had a similar experience after drinking two bottles of Algerian Red, passing out and receiving a "visitation" of John Lee Hooker who taught me how to play the riff from "Dimples". Which I forgot when I woke up. But, years later...

Anyway, more seriously, I have been listening to a lot more "classical" music than jazz during this year long "hiatus", particularly Shostakovich (Qrts), Bartok (Qrts), and Stravinsky, - the "Firebird", every other day. And lots of early Soviet era composers who didn't get that much recognition and performance as the key "names", given the time, tides and disapproval. And of course, Uncle Joe.

**cloughie** · 03-04-21, 15:58

Just a moment...

https://www.discogs.com/Lalo-Schifrin-Firebird/release/6611590

Whole Lalo Schifrin going on?

**Quarky** · 03-04-21, 17:36

Ebony Concerto - Woody Herman band. I think we've had this discussion before - Woody Herman not sharp enough to do justice to Igor's spiky rhythms......

**Alyn_Shipton** · 03-04-21, 17:47

Ebony Concerto - rather than whether Woody played Igor's score well, it's always seemed to me to demonstrate Stravinsky's complete inability to make the most of the Herman band's outstanding rhythm section. Though Stravinsky clearly showed some interest in jazz because in the Radio 3 series we did, Shorty Rogers told me how Stravinsky would show up from time to time to listen to the "Giants".

**Serial_Apologist** · 03-04-21, 18:01

Originally posted by Quarky View Post

Ebony Concerto - Woody Herman band. I think we've had this discussion before - Woody Herman not sharp enough to do justice to Igor's spiky rhythms......

For me the best version is John Dankworth's, on a Fontana LP, where it is coupled with Variations for Jazz Band and Orchestra - a collaboration with the Hungarian, British-domiciled composer Mátyas Seiber (who had known Bartók) - and a "period" confection by arranger Arthur Lindup occupying the other side. Wonderful commentary in Malcolm Rayment's liner notes, in which he remarks on Dank's musicians' difficulties with improvising against 12-tone harmonic structures on the Variations, used as they were to standard chord changes! Interesting early examples of Third Stream before the term had been invented.

**Serial_Apologist** · 03-04-21, 18:35

Originally posted by Ian Thumwood View Post

SA

There was a very good article in last week's Sunday Telegraph about Stravinsky which looked at the range of his repertoire and considered why so much of it never gets performed. I found it quite interesting and I never really appreciated that he had embraced a number of different styles as the 20th Century progressed. I am familiar with stuff like "the rite of spring" but have to say that he is a composer that has always left me cold. What was revealing was that his contemporaries were critical of his later work and it was long since considered that the fact he embraced extreme forms of Serialism, Neo-baroque and jazz suggested he had no real style of his own. I cannot recall who wrote the piece (Ivan Hewitt?) which made the case for Stravinsky's music to be reappraised.

Personally, I feel that Stravinsky's work often resembles the clean, efficient and neat technical lines of a technical drawing but lacks the warmth of a painting. There are pieces like "Dumbarton Oaks" that I don't mind but he is not a composer I have ever felt compelled to explore. Like Picasso, his work is considered a landmark in 20th century culture and the "modernist" nature of it is something that repels as opposed to intrigue. Stravinsky seems too "modern" to appeal to part of my taste in Classical music and not modern enough to appeal to the other part. He is part of that collection of 20th century composers such as Schoenberg, Webern and Berg that I really dislike and a precursor to some of the immediate post-War 20th century stuff that is so off-putting.

What I have been listening to a lot lately is Scriabin preludes. I bought a book of the Opus 11 set to satisfy my curiosity and having heard Chick Corea perform one of these. I can struggle through the easier one but the more difficult ones will be impossible for me. Still, I love the harmonies he uses which have things like flat 9th all over the place and you can see why they appealed so much to Chick. For me, Scriabin's piano work is like super-strength Chopin and whilst there are some pieces such as the Opus 8, No. 12 Etude which sounds like the kind of music you would expect to hear from an old silent film when there is a woman tied to a railway track, I am a big fan. I think Scriabin had synesthesia which helps explain why his music appeals so much to jazz pianists - oddly the colours were suggested by the different keys as opposed to chords.

Early Scriabin comes straight out of Chopin, pretty much, and Liszt to a lesser extent. Then there's a period during which he advanced towards the harmonic system he devised from the Poem of Ecstasy (1908) onwards, based largely on his idea of a "mystic chord" (C F# Bflat E A D) which a few have described as a precursor of 12-tone composition. That was a time when several composers were taking harmonic advancement to the point of breaking with tonal-orientation, coincidentally and separately in different countries - Schoenberg and his pupils Berg and Webern were to go the next step at roughly the same time. Those Scriabin harmonies found their way into parts of Stravinsky's Firebird, alongside the musical language and ethos of composers from Debussy to Rimsky-Korsakov. Had not Stravinsky been forced to leave Russia I have sometimes wondered if he would have continued to develop in line with the works of the "Paris period" (Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), The King of the Stars (1911), The Rite (1912-13)) and instead seems to have experienced some kind of breakdown followed by inner denial so that his later music, particularly from Pulcinella onwards (1919), seemed conceived from perspective which saw music as to be assembled from kits, rather than flowing from the kind of inspiration he described behind The Rite: "I was the vessel through which Le Sacre passed". This is what lends his post-Russian music its mechanical qualities - someone writing of Les Noces, albeit a work still stemming from the "inspirational" period, that it works rhythmically like a precisioned synchromesh gearbox. Being the great technician he was, having learned his skills at combining instruments while studying with Rimsky, accounts for the expertise applied in particular to the ballet scores of the neo-classical period: he remained faithful to the Russian tradition of musical caricature. Another writer wrote that this composer recovered his rhythmic edge when he composed the Symphony in Three Movements (1945), and it may have been significant that this was around the time he must have encountered Charlie Parker and bebop. I have to say we are out of sync when it comes to Schoenberg and the serialist school he and his pupils helped sire in the 1940s and 50s, as you will probably appreciate!

**Ian Thumwood** · 03-04-21, 20:55

I have to say that I am really intrigued by Alyn's comments about Stravinsky not exploiting the Herman band's rhythm section. It is ages ago since I heard this piece of music and, as I said previously, Stravinsky does nothing for me. However, I have always felt that any "connection" jazz musicians had with his music would have been by his use of rhythm. By contrast, you always feel that jazz musicians were getting their harmonic ideas from the Romantic composers from Chopin onward and then from the Impressionists such as Debussy and Ravel. I will need to listen to the "Ebony Concerto" again to appreciate Alyn's comments.

I love a lot of 20th century classical music although I am really selective about it. Picking up Bluesnik's comments, Bartok always seems to tower above everyone else in the last century even if you can appreciate that there are still the vestiges of Lizst in pieces like the early Piano Concerto. Elsewhere, the composers from the last 100 years who interest me most are the ones who have a closer relation to jazz such as Scriabin, Delius, Martinu, Poulenc, Milhaud, Debussy, Ravel, Janacek , Messiaen and Reich. (The latter having cited Coltrane as an influence on him.) I also like contemporary composers like Gavin Bryars too. There seem to be other composers like Stravinsky, Schoenberg and Webern whose music I dislike as well as a swathe of lesser mortals like Walter Piston who followed in Stravinksy's wake but are now largely forgotten.

There are often parallels with Louis Armstrong where his best work was produced earlier in his career and it is probably safe to say that some of Stravinksy's later stuff needs to be dusted off and reappraised in line with Armstrong's later work. I am a bit sceptical with the links between Parker and Stravinsky and maybe a bit over-played such as the Goodman / Bartok "Contrasts" scenario where the former was not necessarily a fan of the latter. To my ears, the likes of Prokofiev, Stravinsky and other mid-20th century composers probably had more influence of the likes of Kenton and his arrangers more than anything else. It is weird that the music championed by Kenton in the 1950s is really over-looked on this board and amongst many jazz fans when it was this orchestra that was taking it's cues from Stravinsky whereas most fans would tend to cite Gil Evans as the pioneering arranger of that era. Evans' palette was more geared to the likes of the Impressionists and 20th century Spanish composers. i.e. Where there is a bigger influence of Stravinsky and his ilk on jazz, most fans are likely to turn away when it concerns Kenton !

i am never 100% convinced by "Third Stream." It is not disagreeable and there are arrangers like Christohe Del Sasso who have probably managed to realise it's potential more than was happening in the late 1950s. The concept seems to have been swamped by the fact that jazz composition is increasingly sophisticated these days so that the idea of a "Third Stream" is a bit redundant.

**Quarky** · 04-04-21, 02:14

Stravinsky:: musical magpie or a composer that takes existing forms of music and reshapes them so that we can see the original form more clearly? But undeniably a greatest composer of the 20th Century. I found Tom Service's podcast quite helpful:: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0b6nx9v

Some lowdown on the Ebony Concerto:: https://thelistenersclub.com/2018/08...bony-concerto/

To the Left of Spring

To the Left of Spring

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