Igor Stravinsky Chamber Works 1911 - 1954 - Columbia Masterworks

 

Chamber Works 1911 - 1954

Igor Stravinsky 

Chamber Works 1911 - 1954

Conducted by The Composer

Cover: "Vase Of Flowers" by Pablo Picasso courtesy Ramond & Raymond Inc., New York

Columbia Masterworks ML 5107

In Memoriam Dylan Thoms - 1954

Three Shakespeare Songs - 1953

Septet - 1953

Four Russian Songs for Flute, Harp, Guitar and Soprano - 1953

Two Balmont Songs - 1911 and Three Japanese Lyrics - 1913

Three Souvenirs

Four Russian Choruses - 1941 - 1917

From the back cover: In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954). (Richard Robinson, Tenor; Lloyd Ulyate, Hoyt Bohannon, Francis Howard, Seymour Zeldin, Trombones; Israel Baker, Sol Babitz, Violins; Cecil Figelski, Viola; George Neikrug, 'Cello).

Stravinsky's memorial for Dylan Thomas was com- posed in February and March, 1954, and performed for the first time by the Monday Evening Concerts, Los Angeles, September 20, 1954, the present writer conducting.

In January, 1952, the English producer Michael Powell had secured the in-principle agre ement of both Thomas and Stravinsky to collaborate in a film of the Odyssey. Stravinsky's idea was rather for a kind of masque of some single episode in which formal pieces, songs and dances, would be used purely and incidentally and not as accompaniment, in a verse narrative or verse drama. Though Powell later abandoned the project Stravinsky and Thomas wanted to go through with it as a stage work, even unsponsored as it was likely to remain. When they met in Boston, May 22, 1953, to discuss it, they decided that Thomas, who was returning to England, would come to the Stravinsky home in Hollywood in November and live there until the work, whatever it was to be, had been finished. The Stravinskys used some money that had just been received from an Italian prize for composers to build a guest room especially for the awaited poet. Then in New York, where he had paused en route to do poetry readings, Dylan Thomas died, November 9th.

The opera plot described in the book "Dylan Thomas in America" was indeed the plot Thomas outlined to Stravinsky in Boston and subsequently in three very beautiful letters, but Stravinsky had another idea in mind for a subject. Thomas was quick to understand the composer's approach (though to Stravinsky's remark about a certain opera that it is between two chairs Thomas said that that is the best place to be) and showed a certain knowledge of opera and an intimate knowledge of The Rake's Progress.

Stravinsky's In Memoriam consists of a prelude of dirge-canons for four trombones and string quartet, a setting of Thomas' poem "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" for tenor and string quartet, and a postlude of dirge canons for the four trombones and string quartet. All of the music is derived from a basic row of five notes stated at the beginning as theme and inversion by the second and fourth trombones in canon at the octave, and in retrograde and retrograde inversion by the third and first trombones in canon at their octave. The chorale-like canon of the trombones is answered by the strings – the same music doubly slow. The canons of the trombone chorale follow, in a different order and with a different tonal center, are relieved by the same string music, then complete the prelude giving the tonality of E to the whole. The song is composed with the same canonic strictness and adherence to the forms of the basic series. It would be silly to list all of the obvious devices, but another equally obvious event must be mentioned: how Stravinsky's five-note row allows him the same cadences, the same tonal frame, the same melodic structure that we might have expected-row or no row- from the line of his earlier music. Also, the form of Thomas' poem, with its many repetitions, would have appealed to Stravinsky, apart from any other reason, when one remembers his setting of the second ricercar in the Cantata. Here the 'Rage, rage' music is repeated four times, the two-bar string interlude six times, etc. The use of trombones and strings as equal antiphonal voices is an interesting coincidence in the light of the Canticum Sacrum that Stravinsky was to compose for San Marco's in Venice two years later.

Three Shakespeare Songs (1953). (Grace-Lynne Martin, Soprano; Arthur Gleghorn, Flute; Hugo Raimondi, Clarinet; Cecil Figelski, Viola).

The Three Shakespeare Songs were composed in the early Fall of 1953 and performed for the first time, the present writer conducting, March 8, 1954, by the Evenings-on-the-Roof of Los Angeles, to which organization they are dedicated.

The first song is a setting of the sonnet 'Musick to Heare'. Stravinsky has treated it as words to be heard', and the accompaniment is therefore bare. Only a single line of counterpoint is passed from instrument to instrument until the end where second and third parts are added. The vocal line is a kind of recitative, the recitation in musical pitches of a Shakespeare sonnet. The instrumental introduction concludes in the open fifth C to G, sustained like a caesura. So are the fourth, eighth, twelfth, and fourteenth lines of the sonnet sustained, each at its last word, though the harmonic fifth has moved to B-F sharp at the end of the eighth line, and to G-D the dominant, at the end of the twelfth line. Besides musical and textual pune- tuation we feel by these divisions or places of rest during the reading, by the three C-G cadences and the two others, definite tonal relationships.

The material of the song is exposed in the instrumental introduction where the flute's eight-bar melody is a tone row with six different tones and six repeated tones played in direct order and then by inversion. The clarinet and viola accompany, sharing the notes of a diatonic scale from C to G. The first four lines of the text are sung to exactly the same music of the introductory flute melody. The second four lines begin with the same row in the voice, then give the intervals in retrograde, which acts on the ear as a harmonic change. Then with the exception of a few notes derived by inverting the intervals of the melody, the vocal line stays to the original order of the row, with rhythmic and octave alterations. The instrumental accompaniment is also made up entirely of row tones in different orders or transpositions. It may or may not be by design that the row order of two notes is upset at the words 'offend thine ear'.

The second song, 'Full Fadom Five,' is as rich in texture and instrumental color as the sonnet is bare. The seven-tone bell motive is played and sung at the beginning in canon: at the fifth in diminution, and at the octave in double diminution. The seven tones are then sung in a new sequence, which sequence is followed by its retrograde. Various canons are introduced and developed, always from the four orders of the bell row. The quiet sonorities of viola and clarinet, the bell effect of the D-natural pizzicato with the words Ding Dong (the D has been saved elsewhere in the piece except for once as a passing tone), and the quiet, harmonically ambiguous cadence are appro- priate to Ariel's magical air.

The vocal melody of the third song, 'When Dasies Pied,' is diatonic. Derived from the bell motive of "Full Fadom Five', to which it adds passing tones, it is stated in direct and then in retrograde order. Joining the fun, the instruments add sound effects suggested by the verse: in the 'piping' viola harmonics, in the 'cuckoo' motive, in the concluding flute solo over a clarinet tremolo. The music of the two stanzas is repeated exactly.

Septet (1953). (David Oppenheim, Clarinet; Loren Glickman, Bassoon; John Barrows, Horn; Ralph Kirkpatrick, Piano; Alexander Schneider, Violin; Karen Tuttle, Viola; Bernard Greenhouse, 'Cello).

The Septet was composed between July, 1952, and February, 1953, and performed for the first time January 23rd, 1954, at Dumbarton Oaks in Wash- ington, D. C., the composer conducting.

Stravinsky's first purely instrumental chamber work since the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto of 1938, the Septet begins with a diatonic theme of an octave's span, and as in the Concerto this theme is developed by imitation. The Septet theme is first stated in A, and simultaneously against itself in augmentation. After seven bars of statement a contrasting developing episode begins with a new rhythmic figure in the dominant minor. This twelve-bar episode leads to a new section, marked 'tranquillo' in the score, whose rhythmic and accompaniment figures are in Stravinsky's lightest, most divertimento manner. This section also serves as prelude to a fugato which, like the fugato in the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, becomes the principal episode of the movement. A two-note figure bridges into the fugue and forms part of the fugue subject. The bridge itself will remind many listeners of the beginning of the fugue in the Symphony in Three Movements: the two notes – F and G in both works – are introduced in the same kind of breathy, tentative rhythm.

The first six notes of the fugue subject are the first six notes of the first theme, but in reverse order and with transposed octaves. This relationship may or may not be aural but it must be remarked because the entire Septet is engendered by the leading melodic idea in a way that is unique in Stravinsky: no earlier Stravinsky work derives its formal and harmonic structure so closely from a single theme. The fugue is confined to an exposition, a brief developing episode, and a stretto which leads at the climax of the move- ment-as in the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto – to the recapitulation. Again as in the Concerto, the move- ment ends in a pianissimo coda. The coda projects the theme in slow note values over a harmony whose final resolution to a chord which expresses both A and E and which-built from the bass E in fourths with an augmented fourth from G to C sharp and with A on top is the frame of the tonal history of the whole movement.

The first five notes of the passacaglia (second movement) theme are a transposition of the first five notes of the first movement's leading melodic idea. It is not supposed that this is aurally evident on first hearing, but repeated through nine variations and then turned around and upside down in the last movement the aural identification will be made. These five notes bear a great share in the unifying of the three movements.

The eight-bar passacaglia theme is treated as a tone row, in inversion, in retrograde, and in retrograde in version. However, there are not twelve but sixteen tones, and only eight of them are different. The theme is divided in its first phrase between viola and bassoon – divided in the manner of a klangfarbenmelodie. Eight variations follow, and a final variation in which the theme is heard against its own retrograde inversion (starting with the last note and moving backwards, but reversing the direction of the intervals so that a fifth up becomes a fifth down, etc.). In many of the variations the five notes are heard in their original form as the leading melodic idea. The plan of the variations is so simple and the figurations and textures are so little dense that the movement is accessible at first hearing. It might take several hearings, however, before the ear has analysed the many canons: second variation: canons at the octave (violins), the fifth (viola), minor seventh (clarinet) which because they are in short note values and end before the theme require new canons at the minor seventh (bassoon), octave (clarinet), and by inversion (horn) to finish the variation; third variation: two-part canons in the piano, straight and by inversion, by retrograde motion and retrograde inversion, etc.; then finally the violin and viola play the retrograde form and its inversion; fourth variation: at the octave (violin), inversion at the minor second (viola); fifth variation: all four forms of the theme are in the accompaniment; sixth variation: strings play a canon at the octave; eighth variation: there are seven real parts: piano, 'cello, and bassoon and clarinet play the row in straight form but in different rhythms, while the horn has the inversion, the viola the retrograde, and the violin the retrograde inversion.

The Gigue (third movement) is another completely contrapuntal movement. It is comprised of four almost equal-length parts, where each part is a fugue based on a different form of, or combining forms of, the same original subject. The subject is the passacaglia theme and therefore the leading melodic idea in different rhythm, and with altered octaves.

Again the derivation may not be determined aurally, yet will be if such things ever are.

The first fugue is played by the three strings, the second by the three winds and piano, the third by the strings, and the fourth by the winds and piano. Thus a dialogue of instrumentation is set up as complement to the dialogue of the fugues. Only at the final cadences of each fugue are the strings and winds mixed, and only at those cadences is the strict tempo retarded and the single dynamic level relaxed.

Like the passacaglia, the gigue is composed entirely with the sixteen-tone row. The fugue subject presents the eight different tones in such a way that the tonalities of E and A are expressed. Now though Stravinsky's use of tone rows in the Septet may have proceeded from the example of Schönberg and Webern it does not tend toward their kind of twelve-tone atonality. But whereas in the Cantata (1952) harmonic movement is restricted to safely Copernican revolutions around strong tonal centers, in this gigue the vertical aspects of tonality are made to function with a more radical latitude than ever before in Stravinsky's art.

Four Russian Songs for Flute, Harp, Guitar and Soprano (1915-1919). (Marni Nixon, Soprano; Arthur Gleghorn, Flute; Dorothy Remsen, Harp; Jack Marshall, Guitar).

Composed in 1915-19 for voice and piano and in- strumentated in 1954, these four songs were performed for the first time in Los Angeles, February 21, 1955, Robert Craft conducting.

Two Balmont Songs (1911) and Three Japanese Lyrics (1913). (Marni Nixon, Soprano; Shibley Boyes, Piano; A. Gleghorn and A. Hoberman, Flutes; H. Raimondi and W. Ulyate, Clarinets; I. Baker and D. Albert, Violins; C. Figelski, Viola; Howard Colf, 'Cello).

Two Balmont Songs were composed in 1911 and instrumentated in 1954. They were performed for the first time in the instrumental versions in Los Angeles, November 29, 1954.

Three Japanese Lyrics were composed in 1913. The titles of the poems are the names of their authors- Akahito, Maztsumi, and Tsaraiuki. The three pieces are dedicated to Maurice Delage, Florent Schmitt, and Maurice Ravel, in that order.

Three Souvenirs (1913). (Soprano, Marilynn Horne; with chamber orchestra).

These three songs (from the recollections of childhood) were composed in 1913 and orchestrated in 1930 for flutes, oboes, clarinets, bassoons in pairs, and four violins, three violas, and two 'cellos. They were performed for the first time in the orchestrated version in Los Angeles, November 29, 1954.

Four Russian Choruses (1914-1917). (James Decker, Sinclair Lott, George Hyde, H. Markowitz, Horns; first chorus soloist: Marni Nixon; fourth chorus solo- ist: Marilynn Horne).

These four Russian peasant songs for female choir were composed in 1914-17 and revised and instrumentated for four horns in 1954. The first performance took place in Los Angeles, October 11, 1954, Robert Craft conducting. – Notes by Robert Craft