GMG Listening Group — Stravinsky's Agon :: 22 May - 4 June 2011

[karlhenning]

Yes, though the solo violin numbers feel to me like a bond back to L'histoire. There is also an obsession with canon which will further underscore his ensuing fascination with Webern . . . .

[karlhenning]

. . . I had read that Agon is diatonic meets 12 tone.  Well I can't hear it, I'll be honest, I don't know much about tonality.  It's beyond me.

It would be easier to hear, if Stravinsky's use of tonality here were a direct matter of Common Practice, or even the "Debussyan stretch" of Common Practice which we hear in L'oiseau de feu or even Petrushka. But here in Agon even the "tonal" areas tend to be dominated by an angular polyphony, and the 'verticals' (one word which Stravinsky employed for chords which are not our traditional third-built triads) are not Common Practice harmonies.

Additionally (or perhaps I should say first of all) Stravinsky scores the piece with marvelously playful and inventive instrumentation — the score lists quite a normally constituted orchestra, with Stravinsky's characteristic addition of piano & harp (very French, that harpe), and with the quite novel addition of the mandolin (very Italian, and I couldn't say offhand whether Stravinsky was aware of Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet, with its brace of mandolin numbers) . . . but most of the textures are intimate and chamber-ish (there's hardly a page scored for the full band).  So it seems to me that the 'weave' of the piece creates so unified an impression, our ears are not invited to draw any sharp distinction between the tonal and atonal elements.

[karlhenning]

They were in Paris for no more than forty-eight hours, but the hours were crowded, and even in one respect decisive.  Boulez played through Stockhausen's Klavierstuck XI in his flat, and later they dined with Giacometti, whom Boulez had asked to draw Stravinsky for the cover of the Agon recording that Rosbaud was due to make just before the Domaine Musical premiere in October . . . .

[Scarpia]

One thing which intrigues me about the piece is the inspiration.  Why a Ballet?  There is no scenario, just a set of abstract dances which were apparently inspired by illustrations in a 17th century book about dance.  It seems like such a scant fountain of inspiration to tap into.  Listening to the piece without any description I might guess it is a set of etudes for orchestra.

The music does grow on me, there is a big emphasis on horizontal rather than vertical organization and the free counterpoint involving brass instruments is especially attractive to me.  But it does not reach out and grab you like early Stravinsky.  I have to approach it with a high level of attention to get anything out of it.

The mandoline he stole from Schoenberg and his serenade, I assume.   

[Cato]

One thing which intrigues me about the piece is the inspiration. Why a Ballet? There is no scenario, just a set of abstract dances which were apparently inspired by illustrations in a 17th century book about dance.  It seems like such a scant fountain of inspiration to tap into. Listening to the piece without any description I might guess it is a set of etudes for orchestra.

The music does grow on me, there is a big emphasis on horizontal rather than vertical organization and the free counterpoint involving brass instruments is especially attractive to me.  But it does not reach out and grab you like early Stravinsky.  I have to approach it with a high level of attention to get anything out of it.

The mandoline he stole from Schoenberg and his serenade, I assume.   

I can agree with your reaction, which is my reaction to a good deal of his later works, with Threni being an exception.

The influence of Webern mentioned earlier is indeed present. 

But it might be interesting to pose the question to our group: do you hear a story in the pieces?  If it is a "contest" as the title says, do we hear conflicts, winners, laments of losers, etc?

[karlhenning]

. . .  But it does not reach out and grab you like early Stravinsky.  I have to approach it with a high level of attention to get anything out of it.

In my own case, I think this is partly because, as with Webern, blink and you've missed it.

[karlhenning]

The question of subject, though, was not so easily resolved. Neither Kirstein nor Balanchine liked the Nausicaa idea.  It had charm but no outcome, since once Odysseus is welcomed by Nausicaa's father, Alcinous, the princess herself fades out of the story. On the other hand Balanchine's own ideas were becoming more and more grandiose.  He wanted, Kirstein reported, "a ballet which would seem to be the enormous finale of a ballet to end all the ballets the world has ever seen."  One version of this might be "a competition before the gods; the audience are statues; the gods are tired and old; the dancers re-animate them by a series of historic dances [. . .] * courante, bransle, passepied, rigaudon, menuet, etc. etc.  It is as if time called the tune, and the dances which began quite simply in the sixteenth century took fire in the twentieth and exploded." To back up this idea, Kirstein was sending a copy of a recent critical edition of de Lauze's sixteenth-century dance manual, Apologie de la danse, which included music examples by the contemporary theorist Marin Mersenne. None of this met Stravinsky's need for precise specifications, those limitations which, he told Kirstein, "generate the form." So instead he simply washed his hands of subject, and decided to compose a " 'Concerto for the dance' for which George will create a matching choreographic construction." Nevertheless, many details of Balanchine's idea stuck in his mind and in due course found their reflection, suitably transformed, in the new ballet.

* The ellipsis is in the Walsh

[(poco) Sforzando]

One thing which intrigues me about the piece is the inspiration.  Why a Ballet?  There is no scenario, just a set of abstract dances which were apparently inspired by illustrations in a 17th century book about dance.  It seems like such a scant fountain of inspiration to tap into.  Listening to the piece without any description I might guess it is a set of etudes for orchestra.

Although Balanchine's earlier collaborations with Stravinsky (e.g., Apollo) did have scenarios, Balanchine also choreographed a great many works that are totally lacking in plot or narrative. This includes a number of IS works to which he set ballets (the IS Violin Concerto, Symphony in 3 Movements, Duo Concertante, the Capriccio which turns up as "Rubies" in the full-length ballet Jewels) as well as works from other composers like the Bach Double Concerto, Tchaikovsky 2nd Concerto, Tchaikovsky Suite #4, Hindemith's Four Temperaments, etc. He also set a number of works that had very distinct plot lines, such as Prokofiev's Prodigal Son and his classic staging of the Nutcracker.

I would say Balanchine's greatest interest was in patterns of human movement as set against music. Perhaps part of the "agon" in "Agon" is the constant counterpoint of the music against the dance. There will be passages where the steps echo the music (e.g., in the castanet dance where two boys on either side of the stage clap the 3/8 rhythm while one girl dances in the stage center), but others where they contradict the music (as in one of the dances for two girls, where the final cadence is musically static, but the dancers' hands mark each beat).

[Cato]

The mandoline he stole from Schoenberg and his serenade, I assume.   

Rather, I would think it is part of the late Medieval/Renaissance homage aspect of the work.

Certainly the Webernian influence grows in the last half of the work.  At times, however, especially during the Galliarde, I was strongly reminded of the Golden Calf scene from Schoenberg's Moses und Aron.

[karlhenning]

The mandoline he stole from Schoenberg and his serenade, I assume.   

Rather, I would think it is part of the late Medieval/Renaissance homage aspect of the work.

Yes. More than a quarter-century separate the Schoenberg Opus 24 and Agon.

OTOH, it is very likely that Craft was conducting the Serenade about that time . . . so that the deepeding acquaintance with Craft may well have returned the Schoenberg to Igor Fyodorovich's attention.

Still, Cato's point stands, I think.

Certainly the Webernian influence grows in the last half of the work.  At times, however, especially during the Galliarde, I was strongly reminded of the Golden Calf scene from Schoenberg's Moses und Aron.

Aye, I think Roman Vlad also mentions the Golden Calf . . . .

[karlhenning]

Balanchine's idea of a contest is on the face of it a highly abstracted, schematic affair involving twelve solo dancers (four male, eight female) in varying combinations whose starting positions are represented by stick men drawn by the composer at appropriate places in the draft plan they drew up together.  Balanchine thought of it as "less a struggle or contest than a measured construction in space, demonstrated by moving bodies set to certain patterns or sequences in rhythm and melody."

[Mn Dave]

Like most of Stravinsky's music, I wasn't much into this and the fragments I did enjoy didn't last too long. I could tell it was written for dancers.

[karlhenning]

. . . I could tell it was written for dancers.

Why? (Or, as it may be, how?)

[Mn Dave]

Why? (Or, as it may be, how?)

Oh, the rhythms I guess. I could imagine dancing.

[karlhenning]

. . . The long second part would be a sarabande and gaillarde, in the form of a pas de trois, followed by a string of different types of branle (also pas de trois), and ending with a "Pas de deux," just at the point where that episode usually figures in Romantic ballets.  This would then run into the final part, a more up-to-date set of duos and trios, cast as a quick-moving sequence of angular modern dances culminating in a return to the opening fanfares.

Whether or not Stravinsky planned Agon quite so explicitly that summer of 1954 (and he did certainly know more or less how long it would be), there is no mistaking the resemblance of this musical dramaturgy to the scheme outlined by Kirstein the year before. Balanchine, it is true, had long since abandoned — if he had ever entertained — any idea of Handelian gods surrounded by Baroque statues and an ornate proscenium. He would be content with dancers in rehearsal tights on a bare stage. But Stravinsky was obviously intrigued by the musical concept of antique dances in a hyper-modern setting — a neoclassicism that would transform the modelling process as well as the model.  He duly marked up his De Lauze and, while there are no clear quotations, the sense of allusion — rhythmic as well as melodic — remains extremely strong. We may be a long way from the Pulcinellification of Mersenne, but not so far that the outline of a phrase or the turn of a rhythm cannot sometimes, here and there, be recognized.

[karlhenning]

Oh, the rhythms I guess. I could imagine dancing.

Bene, bene.

[karlhenning]

Not every day you run into the word Pulcinellification ; )

But, you would on this thread, of course . . . .

[karlhenning]

Dave & Davey, have you done, or are you game for more listening to the piece?

Another question, which may or may not be separate: Would it be helpful (or 'helpful'), or would it be intrusive if I were to offer sort of a personal "road map" to the music, number by number?

I don't want to quash other input, nor to have my own impressions 'set the tone' at all.

[Mn Dave]

I've listened to it several times now and it's not like it's particularly difficult to fathom, so I'm probably done with it. However, this doesn't mean I won't participate in these exercises in the future. 

[(poco) Sforzando]

Well worthg reading from Alistair Macauley, chief dance critic of the NY Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/arts/dance/25maca.html