I don't see that this Stravinsky quotation contradicts my statement. As he says, his work is more iterative than Schonberg's, and what it shares with him above all is its difference from other music of the time. Certainly if there
is any kinship between the
Three Pieces and Schoenberg it is with
Pierrot - but the Stravinsky piece which is closest to that work is the
Japanese Lyrics (interestingly enough, at the time he wrote the Lyrics - Spring 1913 - Stravinsky was living at Clarens with Ravel, who was writing the
Mallarme Poems,
hismost Schoenbergian/Pierrotesque piece, and Stravinsky's favourite among his works, but I'm rambling....!)
Taruskin, who knows a lot more about Stravinsky than most, dedicates quite a few pages of his great book
Defining Russia Musically to the
Three Pieces - he sees them as the first of Stravinsky's works to be written as explicitly, consciously anti-European and above all anti-German in musical tone. As Taruskin points out, and discusses in great detail, this was the time that Stravinsky was most heavily involved with the proto-fascist Turanian group (a Russian nationalist group basing much of its belief system on specious 'science' and 'linguisitcs'), and these nationlist beliefs lie behind the works of these 10 or so years more than any others of Stravinsky's career; Taruskin thinks the
Three Pieces represent a highpoint of this Turanian phase. Taruskin points out technical points of detail which relate the pieces to the harmonic practises of e.g Rimsky-Korsakov, he talks extensively about Russian folksong, Breton folksong etc. etc. - but nowhere is there any suggestion that the pieces have any connection to expressionism, and the names of Schoenberg, Berg and Webern are absent from the entire discussion
.
Interesting points. I am happy to discuss this with someone who clearly has a lot of knowledge about Stravinsky. Certainly the only expressionistic influence on Stravinsky was Pierrot, as he claims he had heard no other expressionistic works at the time. I am however starting to agree with you that the Three Pieces is not the work which shows the clearest signs of an expressionistic influence. However, the last piece, and particularly the last elegic part of it is sometimes described as expressionistic, and also the atonal aspects of the second, clown, piece. But as we are both aware, bitonality was explored by Stravinsky already in Petrushka, and he had his own takes on the way this developed in his music.
It was in instrumentation more than anything else that he was inspired by Pierrot (two winds, two strings, and piano (and of course the voice)). Japanese Lyrics and Ravel's Three Poems of Mallarme were both attempts at writing for small chamber groups - which they decided to do as a result of the influence of Pierrots instrumentation. Originally a song for soprano and piano, the Japanese Lyrics was rewritten to use the Pierrot ensemble, which was expanded with additional flute/piccolo, clarinet/bass clarinet, and violin. Two Poems of Balmont, 1911 is another work which was rescored in the 50's, again influenced by the Pierrot ensemble. Stravinsky is of course known for his experimental instrumentations, but Schoenberg may have sparked his interest.
On another note, I was able to find Amy Lowell's spontaneous poem inspired by a performance of the Three Pieces in 1915:
Amy Lowell: Stravinsky's Three PiecesFirst Movement
Thin-voiced, nasal pipes
Drawing sound out and out
Until it is a screeching thread,
Sharp and cutting, sharp and cutting,
It hurts.
Whee-e-e!
Bump! Bump! Tong-ti-bump!
There are drums here,
Banging,
And wooden shoes beating the round, grey stones
Of the market-place.
Whee-e-e!
Sabots slapping the worn, old stones,
And a shaking and cracking of dancing bones;
Clumsy and hard they are,
And uneven,
Losing half a beat
Because the stones are slippery.
Bump-e-ty-tong! Whee-e-e! Tong!
The thin Spring leaves
Shake to the banging of shoes.
Shoes beat, slap,
Shuffle, rap,
And the nasal pipes squeal with their pigs' voices,
Little pigs' voices
Weaving among the dancers,
A fine white thread
Linking up the dancers.
Bang! Bump! Tong!
Petticoats,
Stockings,
Sabots,
Delirium flapping its thigh-bones;
Red, blue, yellow,
Drunkenness steaming in colours;
Red, yellow, blue,
Colours and flesh weaving together,
In and out, with the dance,
Coarse stuffs and hot flesh weaving together.
Pigs' cries white and tenuous,
White and painful,
White and --
Bump!
Tong!
Second Movement
Pale violin music whiffs across the moon,
A pale smoke of violin music blows over the moon,
Cherry petals fall and flutter,
And the white Pierrot,
Wreathed in the smoke of the violins,
Splashed with cherry petals falling, falling,
Claws a grave for himself in the fresh earth
With his finger-nails.
Third Movement
An organ growls in the heavy roof-groins of a church,
It wheezes and coughs.
The nave is blue with incense,
Writhing, twisting,
Snaking over the heads of the chanting priests.
`Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine';
The priests whine their bastard Latin
And the censers swing and click.
The priests walk endlessly
Round and round,
Droning their Latin
Off the key.
The organ crashes out in a flaring chord,
And the priests hitch their chant up half a tone.
`Dies illa, dies irae,
Calamitatis et miseriae,
Dies magna et amara valde.'
A wind rattles the leaded windows.
The little pear-shaped candle flames leap and flutter,
`Dies illa, dies irae;'
The swaying smoke drifts over the altar,
`Calamitatis et miseriae;'
The shuffling priests sprinkle holy water,
`Dies magna et amara valde;'
And there is a stark stillness in the midst of them
Stretched upon a bier.
His ears are stone to the organ,
His eyes are flint to the candles,
His body is ice to the water.
Chant, priests,
Whine, shuffle, genuflect,
He will always be as rigid as he is now
Until he crumbles away in a dust heap.
`Lacrymosa dies illa,
Qua resurget ex favilla
Judicandus homo reus.'
Above the grey pillars the roof is in darkness.
