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

[karlhenning]

Agon, ballet for twelve dancers, 1953-57. First performance:  Los Angeles (concert), 17 June 1957; New York (stage), 1 December 1957 (preceded by a charity performance on 27 November). Published by Boosey & Hawkes, 1957.

From Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky, The Second Exile:  France and America, 1934-1971

[Mn Dave]

I'll listen to mine and decide if I have anything to say about it.

[karlhenning]

I'll listen to mine and decide if I have anything to say about it.

Then, you understand how this works.

(Which do you have? Just curious . . . .)

I'm revisiting the Walsh, and the biographical context is interesting.  May type some stuff in.

[Mn Dave]

Then, you understand how this works.

(Which do you have? Just curious . . . .)

I'm revisiting the Walsh, and the biographical context is interesting.  May type some stuff in.

The same one everyone else has.

[karlhenning]

Dude, you've got the Stravinsky Box?!

[Mn Dave]

Dude, you've got the Stravinsky Box?!

Nah. Craft.

[DavidW]

Craft is my go to listening too.  I was actually waiting to see if I will be able to understand you Karl!

Look at that quarter note on measure 25... doesn't that just send shivers down your spine?  It's so perfect in it's placement only Stravinsky could have thought of that... discuss.

[karlhenning]

Nah. Craft.

What's your favorite bit? (Or haven't you got one?)

Actually, I haven't got the Craft, but it must be good.

Craft is my go to listening too.  I was actually waiting to see if I will be able to understand you Karl!

I have not yet begun to be obscure!

Fact is, I need this evening to dig up some materials.

Offhand, my quarrels with the original recording today, are mostly intonation here and there . . . .

[Mn Dave]

What's your favorite bit? (Or haven't you got one?)

I don't even know for sure. Stravinsky sort of slides right off my brain. Sorry. However, I will listen to this piece by week's end.

[karlhenning]

That's cool. Part of why it's a week's affair.

[DavidW]

I'll listen through the piece carefully this afternoon, will post my impressions however simplistic they maybe.

[karlhenning]

At the risk of introducing a music-geek element, though . . . I've got an [technical musical term deleted] question for later.

(Deleted the term, in case it should give the game away too soon . . . .)

[DavidW]

Alright so this is what I think...

First of all amazon mp3 download = no liner notes.  So what to do?  Google!  I wanted to be prepared with the program, it is a ballet after all. What no program??  Seriously?  Okay...

I've listened to it twice.  And no program= no story, no emotional picture, no conventional classical sonata form narrative.  This is a very abstract work.

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.  I'll tell you what I do here.  The piece starts out melodic, and rhythmically driven like the kind of Stravinsky I'm used to. As the piece progresses the music becomes mildly dissonant and loses homophony for an easy on the ear polyphony that is 2 voices, but varying between pairs of individual instruments or groups playing together.  Without listening to it with the melodic and harmonic complications, one might think that it would sound complicated or ugly, but I found that they followed the same rhythmic pulse.  Like breathing, I could hear the instruments pause with a collective sigh.  It's not really stop and go, but they felt like they were playing in sync with each other with staccato phrasing. Whether the music was simple or complex I felt that I could follow along by following the beat.  Closer to the end of the work melodies start to pop out more and more, and that dissonant edge goes away and it sounds like it did in the beginning.

I might be wrong, I might have lead ears but there you have it.   Now I guess it's back to Bach, Mozart, Beethoven...

[karlhenning]

I don't think you've done half bad for 'flying blind', Davey! We'll try to get more texture for you . . . .

Also, thanks for your thoughts, because I've been wondering myself about the "tonality vs. atonality" angle.  I mean, I could point to instances of one or the other in the score, but . . . just going with these old ears, the whole abstract score with all its variety strikes me as fairly "whole-cloth" rather than any forced blend of oil and water . . . and I was curious how an "untutored" listener (untutored in this specific piece) would receive the music.

[DavidW]

I was expecting that kind of oil and water kind of thing too.

La-de-la-da-da-da-da-dum HONK! HONK! La-de-la-da-da-da-da-dum

But yeah, it didn't happen.

[DavidW]

Thanks Leon btw, your kind words helped me post.  I also feel like the ice is broken in the discussion now, and more posters will surface to post their impressions.

[karlhenning]

The Greek ballets, Stravinsky conducted by Robert Craft who I believe conducted the premieres as well?

Actually, the three ballets cover quite a period, and Craft was not a part of Stravinsky's life until about the time of Agon.

Here is a simple  chart:

[this data from Eric Walter White's book]

Apollon Musagète [Apollo]
Composed at Nice between July 1927 and January 1928
First performance at the Library of Congress, Washington DC, 27 Apr 1928
First European performance with the Saisons Russes, at the Théatre Sarah-Bernhardt, Paris, 12 June 1928 conducted by the composer

Orpheus
Composed at Hollywood, finished on 23 Sep 1947
First performance, Ballet Society, New York, 28 Apr 1948

Agon
Composition begun in Dec 1953; interrupted in 1954; resumed in 1956 and completed in 1957
First concert performance in LA, 17 Jun 1957, conducted by Robt Craft
First stage performance, NY City Ballet, 1 Dec 1957

[karlhenning]

There's a hint in the Walsh that Stravinsky himself was a little impatient with Balanchine in terms of the composer having any idea about a scenario.  Such a division between the two collaborators is entirely absent, though, from White's description, with which we'll start.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


For Agon Stravinsky decided on twelve movements arranged in four sections of three, as follows:

I.   (i) Pas-de-quatre
(ii) Double Pas-de-quatre
(iii) Triple Pas-de-quatre

Prelude
II.   (First Pas-de-trois)
(i)   Sarabande-Step
(ii)   Gaillarde
(iii)   Coda

Interlude
III.   (Second Pas-de-trois)
(i)   Bransle simple
(ii)   Bransle gay
(iii)   Bransle de Poitou

Interlude
IV.   (i)   Pas-de-deux
(ii) Four Duos
(iii)   Four Trios

[...]

The duodecimal patterning is fundamental ot the dance layout.  From its title, it is clear that the ballet was conceived as a dance assembly or contest. The score specifies twelve dancers – four male and eight female – and the dance numbers are based on various groups of divisors [...]

Agon was commissioned by Lincoln Kirstein and George Balanchine as the result of a grant made to the New York City Ballet by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1954. When the news was bruited abroad, some persons seemed to think that the result was likely to be a score that, together with Apollo Musagète and Orpheus, would complete a ballet triptych on classical themes. But that is not what happened. The subject chosen was an abstract one, without any semblance of plot: so the conception of the ballet lies closer to Scènes de ballet than to Orpheus.  Stravinsky found a prototype for some of the dance numbers (particularly those in the two middle sections) in the French Court dances of the seventeenth century as prescribed in de Lauze's Apologie de la Danse (1623) and Mersenne's musical examples; and it is said that an engraving in the de Lauze publication showing two trumpeters accompanying a Bransle simple suggested the instrumentation of Stravinsky's own Bransle simple.

[DavidW]

Wow I didn't realize that those works were so scattered!  Hey you know I think I just thought of a pet peeve, time to post on that thread...

[Scarpia]

Well, listened to the piece today, for the second time.  An odd bird, this piece.