Chez Stravinsky

[Karl Henning]

I've played most of the Stravinsky ballets in the pit and the two I enjoyed playing most were Rite and Pulcinella and they happen to be the two I listen to still most for pleasure as well.  Oh and Fairy's Kiss as well

Nice!

[Brahmsian]

I guess I just don't pay any attention to which period of Stravinsky that I am listening to.

I have works that I absolutely love, some that I like, some I am indifferent to and some I just don't like. I can't tell which period they really are in other than the big three ballets, to be honest.

If there is a categorical like/dislike that fits more less tidily for me, it is this:

Instrumental works, yes. Works with vocal, no,but yes to Symphony of Psalms.

[Mirror Image]

I've played most of the Stravinsky ballets in the pit and the two I enjoyed playing most were Rite and Pulcinella and they happen to be the two I listen to still most for pleasure as well.  Oh and Fairy's Kiss as well

Pulcinella and Le Baiser de la fée are so delightful and contain some rather gorgeous music.

[Mirror Image]

I guess I just don't pay any attention to which period of Stravinsky that I am listening to.

I have works that I absolutely love, some that I like, some I am indifferent to and some I just don't like. I can't tell which period they really are in other than the big three ballets, to be honest.

If there is a categorical like/dislike that fits more less tidily for me, it is this:

Instrumental works, yes. Works with vocal, no,but yes to Symphony of Psalms.

No love for the Mass, eh?

[Brahmsian]

No love for the Mass, eh?

I can honestly say that I don't remember my impressions of the Mass, and it would have been years since I listened to it. Time for a revisiting.

[Mirror Image]

I can honestly say that I don't remember my impressions of the Mass, and it would have been years since I listened to it. Time for a revisiting.

I think you'll enjoy it, Ray. It's quite beautiful.

[Karl Henning]

I can honestly say that I don't remember my impressions of the Mass, and it would have been years since I listened to it. Time for a revisiting.

Tu n'aimes pas les Berceuses du chat? Est-ce possible?

https://www.youtube.com/v/rizNduvJXfo

[Brahmsian]

Tu n'aimes pas les Berceuses du chat? Est-ce possible?

https://www.youtube.com/v/rizNduvJXfo

If it's some sort of song or lieder, the answer is likely no. 

[Mirror Image]

Tu n'aimes pas les Berceuses du chat? Est-ce possible?

https://www.youtube.com/v/rizNduvJXfo

That's a cool little piece and even though it was written in the 1910s --- it has an almost Webernian austerity to it with the silences between the notes.

[Mirror Image]

It's time for another...

Compositional Spotlight


                                                         Orpheus



A little background to the work:

Stravinsky's neo-Classical works turn to ancient Greek myth almost as often as they call upon musical styles from earlier centuries. It was perhaps inevitable that he would at some point adopt the tale of Orpheus, which had inspired so many important works from the Renaissance on, as the basis of one of his own compositions. Stravinsky wrote his Orpheus (1947), a ballet, while studying the music of Claudio Monteverdi. The influence of Monteverdi, composer of the first great opera based on the Orpheus myth, is indeed evident in Stravinsky's work. Still, as he always did in his neo-Classical music, Stravinsky integrated his disparate influences into his own artistic personality to produce something wholly original.

Orpheus was composed in collaboration with the choreographer George Balanchine. The two men synchronized their thoughts on music and action precisely, and when the score was complete and choreography began, Stravinsky attended rehearsals to ensure that their original vision would remain intact. Balanchine's Ballet Society premiered Orpheus in New York on April 28, 1948.

Opportunities for melodrama abound in the Orpheus myth; however, much in the manner of Monteverdi's treatement, Stravinsky's Orpheus is distinguished by nobility and restraint. The dynamic level rarely rises above mezzo-piano, and the tempi are similarly moderated. This restraint was partly dictated by the instrumentation; having assigned the role of Orpheus to the harp, Stravinsky carefully ensured that the instrument's delicate sonorities would not be overwhelmed in the texture; even the whooping string chords in the dance of the Furies are palpably tempered. At the same time, the establishment of this slow, soft atmosphere allows Stravinsky to rip the musical fabric to great effect. After a song to tame tormented souls, which has the echoes of a Bach siciliana, Hades relents and allows Eurydice and Orpheus to exit the underworld, accompanied by noble, eloquent string polyphony. A short, sharp crescendo jolts the listener to attention and is followed by a bar of silence, during which Orpheus unbinds his eyes and Eurydice falls dead. Ominous sounds from the strings lead up to the only truly fast and loud music in the score, which accompanies the dismemberment of Orpheus by the Bacchantes. This passage recalls the composer's Rite of Spring in its brutally shaped rhythms, stabbing accented chords, and cruel, off-center downbeats. The closing music, which depicts Apollo raising Orpheus' song heavenward, is reminiscent of the opening, lending an odd sense of peace to the work as it draws to a close.

[Article taken from All Music Guide]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Orpheus (1947)
Ballet in three scenes
Duration: 30'
Scoring
2.picc.2(II=corA).2.2-4.2.2.0-timp-harp-strings

Abbreviations (PDF)

Publisher
Boosey & Hawkes

Territory
This work is available from Boosey & Hawkes for the world.

Repertoire Note
The translucent scoring and evanescent lyricism of this ballet – a cousin to Apollo (who appears at the close to "raise heavenward Orpheus' song") – confer a distinctive beauty. Even the Furies are spectral and restrained. Orpheus's pleading lyre is memorably translated as a solo harp. Stravinsky's retelling of the famous myth connects to a rarefied lineage of musical incarnations also including the Orpheus operas of Monteverdi and Gluck – and (a possible companion piece) Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto, in which the solo piano, pleading for Eurydice, pacifies the angry string choir of the second movement.

Repertoire note by Joseph Horowitz

In 1946, in the wake of the Second World War, Stravinsky and Balanchine, now both resident in the USA, turned to Apollo's son Orpheus for their next balletic collaboration. It is the lamenting Orpheus who is encountered at the start of this ballet, almost as if picking up the melancholic mood left suspended two decades earlier at the end of their Apollo. 'Orpheus weeps for Eurydice. He stands motionless, with his back to the audience.' We hear his lyre at the beginning and end of the score, represented by the sounds of the harp, playing falling lines of lament. It is as if Stravinsky is speaking personally here, lamenting the death of his daughter and first wife as well his mother just before he left for America. Balanchine and Stravinsky worked side-by-side on the scenario. Music and choreography emerged simultaneously. The scenario starts with Orpheus weeping at Eurydice's funeral and ends with an apotheosis where Apollo appears, 'wrests the lyre from Orpheus and raises his son heavenwards'. The music throughout is restrained, distanced, formal, with a predilection for counterpoint. The designer chosen for the premiere production was Isamu Noguchi, a sculptor whose abstract geometric sets, costumes and masks perfectly matched the distilled, ritualistic purity of Stravinsky's music and Balanchine's dances. Orpheus can be paired effectively in concert performances with other of Stravinsky's works on classical themes.

Repertoire note by Jonathan Cross

[Information taken from the Boosey & Hawkes website]

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Orpheus was the brain-child of Lincoln Kirstein, who specifically wanted a companion-piece for Apollo to grace the second season of his new venture, Ballet Society. Stravinsky was not normally responsive to being told what sort of music he should write; but he trusted Balanchine, whose idea the Orpheus story was, and he enjoyed working with a choreographer who seemed to understand his music and whose native language was Russian. For the first time they worked closely together from the start, deciding on the details of the scenario ('with Ovid and a classical dictionary in hand', the composer later recalled), and agreeing on the essential tone, which would treat the well-known subject as little more than a pretext for a kind of formal/musical/spatial geometry, endowed with significance by the merest framework of narrative. For the first performance, at New York's City Center in April 1948, the designs were done by Isamu Noguchi, who was known mainly as a sculptor. So the plastic qualities of the work were emphasized in every dimension, and its narrative elements correspondingly downplayed.

Stravinsky's score, though routinely included among his neoclassical works, is in many ways quite unlike anything that precedes it. During the war, in America (of which he became a citizen in 1945), he had fulfilled a string of more or less openly commercial commissions, while working quietly on two eventual masterpieces—the Symphony in three movements and the Mass—which he found for a long time hard to crystallize in his mind, perhaps for lack of any likely performance. The uncertainties of war seem to have drawn him back to the church, and also to his Russian inheritance. And at some point he became intrigued by medieval music, especially the Ars Nova of the fourteenth century, with its decorative lines and intricate polyphonic techniques.

All these influences left their mark, however obliquely, on Orpheus, while to some extent directing it towards the more esoteric aspects of the next and final phase of his music. Orpheus is not in any sense a serial work; but it does hint at a new austerity and intensity that might suggest a breaking away from the more mechanical aspects of neoclassicism. Compared with the brusque, almost hearty opening of Jeu de cartes, the introduction of Orpheus has a repressed, secretive quality. Orpheus weeps for Eurydice, the stage direction informs us, but with his back to the audience, standing motionless. Later, as the Angel of Death leads him into Hades, the Furies protest, it seems, mainly in undertones (and soon submit to the beauty of Orpheus' playing). Then, at the crucial moment when Orpheus tears the bandage from his eyes and looks back at Eurydice, who at once falls dead, the music responds with a bar of complete silence. Even the Pas d'action in which the Bacchantes tear Orpheus to pieces is truly violent only for a few bars, which must have seemed a very strange turn of style for the composer of The Rite of Spring.

From notes by Stephen Walsh © 2009

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I thought I would do a monthly 'Compositional Spotlight' for one of Stravinsky's works. For this month, since I have become rather obsessed with Orpheus over the past few weeks or so, I thought this might be a good work to discuss. I have always thought highly of this ballet and what is remarkable is just how different it sounds from the other Greek-inspired ballets: Apollon musagète and Agon. A lot of the music in Orpheus is subdued and almost has a mediative-like quality to it, but there is a mean streak to found here and it's the dismemberment of Orpheus from the maenads. This particular section comes as a shock given the relatively melodic nature of the music. What do you guys think of this ballet? Any favorite recordings? To be honest, I haven't heard a bad recording of it and I own six: Salonen, Orpheus Chamber Orch. (no conductor of course), Craft, Järvi, Volkov and Stravinsky's own recording. Make that seven as I just bought the Colin Davis recording on Philips.

[Karl Henning]

Nice, thanks!

[Mirror Image]

Nice, thanks!

I'd love to know your thoughts on Orpheus, Karl.

[Karl Henning]

I'd love to know your thoughts on Orpheus, Karl.

Will marshal them.

[Mirror Image]

Will marshal them.

[Mirror Image]

I will also add to my previous comments that Orpheus has one of the most exquisitely beautiful introductions in all of 20th Century ballet. It actually shows Stravinsky with his 'guard down' so to speak. Those harp figurations with those soft and swelled chords from the strings really seduces the listener or, at least, this listener.

[bhodges]

In a bit of a surprise, last August Joe Parrish (drummer for Jethro Tull) arranged and recorded The Rite of Spring for multitracked electric guitars. He has done a masterful job of capturing the work's textures and moods, including the quieter moments. At least one friend called The Rite "the original metal," which might explain why the arrangement works so well.

From the comments, this one made me chuckle: "As a bassoonist, it is my job to tell you: holy shit well done."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFG70gFbvOg

--Bruce

[Artem]

Never heard Orpheus before and looks like I don't have it on CD. Will check it out on youtube. Stravinsky is still one of the problematic composers for me. I have yet to find a piece of his music which I would really like.

[Mirror Image]

Never heard Orpheus before and looks like I don't have it on CD. Will check it out on youtube. Stravinsky is still one of the problematic composers for me. I have yet to find a piece of his music which I would really like.

Out of curiosity, what do you find so problematic about Stravinsky? Could you be more specific?

[Artem]

It is the intense rythm that puts me off.

[Mirror Image]

It is the intense rythm that puts me off.

Intense rhythm, eh? Well, there's no question that Stravinsky was quite a rhythmically-minded composer, but this is what I love about him. As a former percussionist (and a lousy one at that), this is one of the main characteristics of his music that I was attracted to or, at least, it's what pulled me in first it seems. Of course, not all of his music is as rhythmically-driven as say Le sacre for example. Give a listen to his works from his Neoclassical and Serialist Periods. But don't forget that Stravinsky had a unique approach to harmony and melody as well and not to mention color/texture that was quite singular.