The Apollonian Clockwork: On Stravinsky (Amsterdam University Press - Amsterdam Archaeological Studies)

Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger

The Apollonian Clockwork On Stravinsky

3 a

Amsterdam Academic Archive

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the apollonian clockwork

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The Amsterdam Academic Archive is an initiative of Amsterdam University Press. The series consists of scholarly titles which were no longer available, but which are still in demand in the Netherlands and abroad. Relevant sections of these publications can also be found in the repository of Amsterdam University Press: www.aup.nl/repository. At the back of this book there is a list of all the AAA titles published.

voorwerk Andriessen AAA 14-03-2007 15:22 Pagina iii

Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger

The Apollonian Clockwork On Stravinsky translated from the dutch by jeff hamburg

3 a Amsterdam Academic Archive

voorwerk Andriessen AAA 21-02-2006 10:46 Pagina iv

The Apollonian Clockwork. On Stravinsky by Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger was first published in English in 1989 by Oxford University Press, Oxford/New York (isbn 019 315461 7). Cover design: René Staelenberg, Amsterdam isbn 90 5356 856 5 nur 660/662 © Amsterdam University Press • Amsterdam Academic Archive, 2006 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the author of the book.

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preface to the AAA-edition Stravinsky demeure, as Pierre Boulez once wrote. Stravinsky remains. Stravinsky lives on, even though Stravinsky the man died in 1971. That man named Igor Fyodorovich was born near St Petersburg; he became a resident of Switzerland, France and California; he died in New York and was buried in Venice. He came into this world a Russian, lived in it a Frenchman, and departed it an American. He studied with grand old men from the nineteenth century, worked with leading artists of the twentieth, and engaged with creative spirits who continue to touch our lives in the twenty-first. He shocked the musical world with his Rite of Spring; he reinvented the musical world with his Pulcinella; he startled the musical world with his Movements. He bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus; and we petty men and women still walk under his huge legs (legacy), and peep about. Yet what do we really know of the real Stravinsky? Over the years, thanks to the efforts of many, not least the composer himself, ‘Stravinsky has become “Stravinsky”’. Stravinsky remains one of the most familiar and at the same time one of the most enigmatic figures of the past hundred years. The Apollonian Clockwork, you might say, is a journey in quest of the ‘real’ Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky. That we never really find him tells us as much about such quests as it does about Stravinsky. But as a different Louis (Robert Louis Stevenson) reminds us, to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. And this journey is certainly full of hope. We follow our Louis and Elmer to New York where they fail to learn anything directly from the ‘charming’ Vera Stravinsky and the ‘orphan’ Robert Craft, though they leave with a song in their step. We follow the pair round Lake Geneva, where they fail to find much evidence of the man who composed ‘the music for Fantasia’ there, but who later discover a truth about Dumbarton Oaks through playing ‘bad taste’ piano duet arrangements of Bach. We travel from one city of canals to another, from Amsterdam to St Petersburg, where we hear a Russian carillon made by a Dutchman. ‘Bells are always pealing in Russian music and bells are always pealing in the music of the singer’s son.’ These bells ring out at the end of their/our journey and, through them, we glimpse – darkly – something of the truth not only of ‘Stravinsky’ but also of Stravinsky. While The Apollonian Clockwork is undoubtedly a serious work of musicology, it mercifully reads as neither scientific textbook nor solemn tribute. Reading it is like wandering the streets of Venice, ‘the city [Stravinsky] loved more than any other’. There is no obvious starting or finishing point (though there’s little point starting where the maestro finished, at the island cemetery of San Michele, as he now only decomposes there). You know the main landmarks but, approaching them from an unfamiliar angle, you are continually taken aback. Sometimes, by accident, you end up where you began, but you discover a hidden gem along the way. There’s a sense of adventure and a sense of fun. Let’s not begin on the Rialto (The Rite), where all the other tourists throng, but on the quiet Calle Goldoni (Chanson russe) or in the basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paulo (Requiem Canticles). And then we might suddenly find ourselves back with the crowds in the Piazza San Marco, where orient and occident once met (the distant echo of ‘an eastern cathedral’, the opening of the Canticum Sacrum, ad honorem Sancti Marci nominis). As the

v

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authors point out, both Stravinsky’s journey as an émigré through the world and the compositional journey he took through the history of music followed labyrinthine paths with sidetracks and detours. Our journey with Louis and Elmer follows a similar route, similarly revelatory, similarly full of surprises at every turn. The working hypothesis of Andriessen and Schönberger is that – despite these many twists and turns, despite the many reinventions of ‘Stravinsky’ by Stravinsky and others – there remains a recognizable, albeit elusive core to his music, to which we can gain access via certain fingerprints. They introduce us to his way of thinking about chords; his understanding of octotony; his ‘utopian unison’; his rhythmic tics. We find these fingerprints in early and late works; we find them in original compositions and arrangements, between which no distinction can be made. And we find them in his attitude to other music: ‘The thing that Bach recognized in Vivaldi is the same thing that Stravinsky recognized in Bach – himself.’ Stravinsky once declared that he suffered from a rare form of kleptomania. This was his way of explaining the aspect of his music that had been labelled ‘neoclassical’. He struck a new relationship with music from the past, which, magpie-like, he stole wherever he found it and re-forged in his own image. It did not much matter what the music was, though the composers whose music he chose to plunder were those with whom he had most in common – ‘know-it-alls, money-grabbers and anally fixated hypochondriacs’. What makes Stravinsky recognizably Stravinsky, and not just pastiche Monteverdi, Bach, Pergolesi, Mozart or Tchaikovsky, is what he did with what he found. This is the central message of The Apollonian Clockwork. Andriessen and Schönberger assert that the importance of all Stravinsky’s music lies in its attitude towards already existing musical material, not in the nature of that found material itself. The true influence of Stravinsky, then, is not to be heard in those composers who merely imitate the superficial features of his style: ‘Everyone, after all, has been influenced by Stravinsky’. No. ‘The true influence of Stravinsky keeps beginning all over again.’ It is by means of a Stravinskian attitude that music has been able to renew itself, an attitude that is evident in the music of, among others, Varèse, Messiaen, Nancarrow, Carter, Birtwistle, Adams and, of course, Andriessen. Like his hero and mentor, like all good composers, Andriessen too is a kleptomaniac. In Stravinsky he hears all manner of things that he steals to use in his own music. It is these things that he tells us about in the book: ostinato basses, seventh chords, form as process rather than something already formed, Ravel, anti-Romanticism, Brechtian irony. This book is as much ‘on Andriessen’ as it is ‘on Stravinsky’. Indeed, it is a kind of palimpsest in which Andriessen and Schönberger write ‘on (top of) Stravinsky’; Stravinsky is written ‘over’, in English and Dutch. (Remember that Stravinsky claimed – dishonestly – that he began writing his Pulcinella on the Pergolesi manuscripts.) In this way our authors are more honest, more authentic (truthful) than those whose texts pretend (and inevitably fail) to be objective. Because our authors know that the writing of history can never be objective, they have some fun. Like Stravinsky, they play with the past. So let’s play. Who was the ‘Babar of the French china shop’? Who are the ‘Liberaces of Baroque music’? What is the ‘principle of the right wrong-note’? What is ‘zoonology’?

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What do Stravinsky and Disney’s Scrooge McDuck have in common? The answers to this quiz are to be found in the pages of this book. The answers will bring a smile to your face. Through laughter we are invited to look afresh at what we thought we knew about Stravinsky and the musical environments in which he lived and worked, and in which his music – even today – is received. Much has changed in our world since Het Apollinisch Uurwerk: Over Stravinsky was first published. St Petersburg was then still known as Leningrad. The ‘east’ of Stravinsky’s birth was still separated from the ‘west’ of his death by concrete wall and entrenched ideology. Since 1983 we have come to learn much about Stravinsky’s life, thanks to Stephen Walsh; we have come to learn much about Stravinsky and the Russian traditions, thanks to Richard Taruskin. You must turn to these distinguished scholars if you require chronological exegesis, thorough analysis and meticulous footnoting. But if you are only ever planning to read one work on Stravinsky, then I strongly recommend you keep reading the book you are now holding. It remains as fresh today as it was when it first appeared. It certainly tells us important things about Stravinsky’s life (his friends, colleagues and accomplices). It tells us important things about Stravinsky’s deep-rooted Russianness (via, among other creatures, Misha the bear). It also tells us a great deal about Stravinsky’s form, harmony, counterpoint, melody, rhythm and aesthetics. But above all it tells us that Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger love Stravinsky’s music. That is the true importance of this book. If, by the time you have finished reading it, not even a fleck of their shared enthusiasm has rubbed off on you, then you must have skin of leather and a heart of stone. It is a book that actually makes you want to listen to its subject’s music. And how often do we say that about a book? Jonathan Cross University of Oxford February 2006

authors’ note Since this book is an exact copy of the original edition, corrections could not be carried out. Some errors, such as ‘gr.drum’ instead of ‘bass drum’ (p. 225, Ex. 2) and ‘Zvezdolik’ instead of ‘Zvezdoliki’ (p. 294), are of minor consequence. The typographical error in the name of one of the 20th century’s main composers in the very Preface, ‘Schoneberg’ instead of ‘Schoenberg’, is, however, regretful.

For that matter, what is there to exaggerate: temperament, sensitivity, wit, humour, spontaneity, gentleness, strength, or~in the final analysi" the two characteristics of genius~nalvetc and irony; all of this he already possesses. Goethe on Haydn

Acknowledgements Grateful acknowledgements arc due to the following for permission to usc copyright materiaL Musical Examples Boosey and Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd., London Petrushka, Deux poesies de Balmonl, Le Sacre du prinlemps, Le Rossignol, Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Mavra, Octet, Concerto for Piano and Wind, Oedipus Rex, Apollon musagete, I.e Baiser de fa fee, Symphony oj P~'afms, Duo concertalll, Persephone , Three Pieces for string quartet, Orpheus, Cantata, Greeting Prelude, The Rake's Progress, Etude for pianola, Madrid, Agan, Canticum Sacrum, Threni, Variations (Aldous Huxley in memoriam), Concerto in D for strings, Requiem Canticles, Tres .mcrae cantiones, La Marseillaise. Publishers B. Schott's Sohne, Mainz The Firebird, Concerto for Violin in D , leu de cartes, Concerto in E flat (Dumbarton Oaks), Symphony in C, Danses Concerlantes, Ode, Sonata for two pianos, Symphony in Three Movements. J. and W. Chester/Edition Wilhelm Hansen London Ltd. Three Easy Pieces, Five Easy Pieces for piano duct, Les Noces (1919 and 1923 versions), L'Histoire du soldat, Song of the Volga Boatmen, Concertina for string quartet, Les cinq doigts.

Rob. Forberg-P. Jurgenson Musikvcrlag Le Roi des aoiles. Mercury Music The Star-Spangled Ranner

(© 1941).

Charling Music Corp. Ebony Concerto (© 1946). Quotations Faber and Faber, London I. Stmvinsky and R. Craft: Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (1959);

A cknolVlt.'ligeml'1IIs

vii

Memories and Commentaries (1 960); Expositions and DCI·eioprn cnlS (1%2) ; Dialogues and a Diary (1968); Th emes and Con clusion5 ( 1972). Hutchinson o f Londo n V. Stravin sky and R. Craft: Stra vinsky in Pictures and Documents (1 979 ). Illustration s page

4 8 19

23

51

54 50 69

95 11 8 129

143 148

149 151 159 178

185 186

194 213

259

PhotO by Hans van den Bogaard. from Jgor and Vera Stravin sky: A Photograph Album (Thames and Hudson, London, 1982). ' L
260 261

grave of F. I. Str
viii

Acknowledgements

262 264 268 269-70 270

grave of Glinka, photo by Elmer Schonberger. grave of Mussorgsky, photo by Elmer Schonberger. grave of Tchaikovsky, photo by Elmer Schonberger. Rimsky-Korsakov House, photo by Elmer Schonberger. lower: grave of Rimsky-Korsakov, photo by Elmer Schonberger.

Contents xi

Translator's Note

xiii

Preface

The New Renewed

1966-Requiem CClnticles America on Sunday

Ars Imicatio Artis No Copyright Problem Here 1919- /,/J Marseillaise A Mollo Ordeals of the Memory

22 28 36 39

45 50 55

Forma Forrnuns

Zoonology 1947- 0rphe!ls

II Purcell . Pergolesi. and the Others Concocted Realit y The Inverted Metaphor The Utopian Unison

Poetique musicale

65 68 71

75 81

97 102

On Influence

1952- Cwuaza PhiiuJ"uphie ,1t:(

3 7 11 17

fl t'Ut'1I

Musilf.

11 5

1955-Greering Prelude New York : Robert Cra ft and Vera Stravinsky 1943---0de

120 123 133

III Monsieur, Ie p ll uvrc Salie Ragtime 1921 -Les cinq doiglS

139

I 917- J.es Noces (Svadebku ) On Monl age Tech nique A Ki nd of Brecht

142 145 150 160 165

x Contents 191 8-L' Histoire du soldal On Authenticating and on Making C urrent OSlinato Ra!>se!> A Vi!>it 10 Lake Geneva IcJ esc Hermetic Music

169 174 178 162 198

IV Str(lvinsky [t,l57-Agon The World, a Comedy

21"

' ". necHKlnOiQ'C . . I ~ingmysong')

The Metamorphosis of Misha Oelolony The Firebird as Magpie !9 12- l.e Roi des eroiles (ZI ·t'uloliki) The Tradition o f Ihe New Spirit in the BOlllc of Cologne A PhOlomont;lgc

209 210 221 225

228 236 243 248 250 252

V

1951 - The Rake's

Progres,~

257

List of Sources

277

Index

287

Translator's Note Translating any book is problematic. This book was no different. The problems that arose from this translation, though, were not merely questions

of style , finding the correct phrase and so on, hut of catching the authors' mentality, creating the proper ambience, saying what the authors want to say in precisely the same elusive manner that they have in the original. For, as will become clear, this is not a straightforward book about Stravinsky, rather a paradigm of Stravinsky. To parody the authors, this book is concerned with everything and everything concerns this book. It is precisely for this rcason that I have made every Clttcmpt to keep the text as they wrote it as clear as possible. Nothing would have been easier than to footnote every allusion and reference, the effect being similar to a performance of The Rake's Prowess in which every time a melody or harmonic sequence from musical history is referred to, the orchestra would stop, play the quoted passage, then resume performing the opera. Even such obscurely translated words as 'zoonology'-a combination of zoology and sonology, the study of sound-are left to the reader to decipher. References are included by chapter in the List of Sources in order of their appearance in the text as a means of helping those who want to track down the sources. General works consulted, together with their abbreviations used in the text, are given at the start of the List of Sources. Where no translation of a non-English text is listed, I have translated it myself, from the original in most cases. I have attempted to use existing translations wherever possible. even when not in total agreement with them, to assist the interested reader In finding the context of tbe original quotation. One problem, though, was with some text written by the authors In German. This often h
XII

Translator's Note

was, in accordance with the authors' intention of, not mystifying, but bringing the subject of the book closer to the reader. Please note that [] refers to the rehearsal number in the score, [J2 to the 2nd bar of rehearsal number 22, and 25 2 to the 2nd chord of bar 25. The translator would like to thank Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schonberger for their great assistance in this translation (one could almost call this a collaboration considering the care with which Mr Schonberger has reviewed the translation). Furthermore , he would like to thank Mrs Mary Worthington for her excellent editing of this labrythine book and Ed Harsh for his comments and criticism. And last but not least, my wife and seven-month-old daughter for their patience. The original Dutch publication (He/ Apollinisch Uurwerk, Over Stravinsky, Uitgeverij De Bezige Bij, Amsterdam, 1983) was made possible through financial support from the Prince Bernhard Funds and the Ministry of Welfare, Health and Culture. This translation was made possible through financial support from the Prince Bernhard Funds. J.H. Amsterdam Spring 1988

Preface The most striking thing about this book is what it is not. It is not a biography: not even the date of birth of the main character is given. It is most definitely not a survey, though it is about a composer whose music is easily surveyed. Survey is simplification. Nothing is wrong with that as long as it is made apparent. Since so many surveys of Stravinsky have already heen written, it actually appears as if something like a survey exists, which is certainly not true. The facts alone are too numerous for one to write a survey with a dear conscience. A thorough investigation of the historical and musical relationship hetween Stravinsky and Schone berg would supply enough material for a volume. Stravinsky lived in an untidy period-the first half of the twentieth century. Besides, he concerned himself with everything and everything concerned him. His life as an emigre led him on a journey through the world; his life as a composer led him on CI journey through the history of music. Both journeys, with sidetracks and detours, followed labyrinthine pClths-at least to the onlooker. The authors' decision to collaborate on this book arose not only from a shared love of Stravinsky's music, hut from an agreement on a few fundClmental points: that there is no essential difference between early and late Stravinsky; thai the familiar division of his works into 'Russian', 'neoclassical', and 'serial' periods more often obscures rather than clarifies the music; and that the distinction commonly made between 'arrangements' and 'original compositions' is not pertinent to Stravinsky. What they heard in the music was that all his works have heen composed from an immutable musical mentality. It is a mentality precipitated in music that points to other music (and makes that pointing into a subject), without ever leaving a moment's douht as to who the maker is. This is a paradox. Since paradoxes do not exist in order to he solved, it was necessary to follow in Stravinsky's path-without stepping on his footprints, without even consecutively reconstructing those footsteps, and without being concerned about following the shortest path from A to B. It became a route with access roads, sidetracks, and detours. LA. and E.S. Amsterdam 17 June 1982 (5 June 19R2)

I

The New Renewed In 1981 a gramophone record appeared-Stravinsky's Chamon russe eight times over. nothing else . There are seveml re,lsons why this record ing can be called revea ling. In 1981. things had gone so f:u thai a fashionable bar in Amsterdam where tasteful background musk (the worst kind) was played , altcrn atcd sofl Thad Jones and soft Morricone wi1h soft (hut intended 10 he loud) fragme nts from Stravinsky's Pulcinelfa and soft (but intended to be loud) fragments fro m Steve Reich's Four OrRans. In another five years, Webern's Bagatelles, and in another ten years, Schoe nberg's Pierrot lunaire will get their turns. Chanson rllsse is lin arrangeme nt of the aria sung by Parasha. the girl in love from the opera buffa. Mavra. If anything cou ld shed light on what sweet me lancholy is-----of which many a poet has tasled- il is this aria. Sweet melancholy is counte rfei ted sorrow: 10 enjoy it. laste , a t en ain re fin ement . a nd leisure arc required . In order 10 make Ihis appa rent, a he l canlO melody, replete with sobs ( however precious and well mannered) and lhe broad shoulde rs of fo ur-;n-Ihe-ba r chords (however baShful) fall short of their mark: it remains sentim ental. Though these arc the ingredients of Parasha's aria, something peculiar is happening. T he melody wells up, but never begins to fl ow. Moreover, it is hi ndered by the accompan ying voices which erect dams in the most unexpected places, evcn damming each otner in . The hass is an QStinalo in four , the middlc voices arc repeated chord patterns in six, and the melody consists of pe riods ot" fivc and a half. T ogether they form a mechanism t hat ducs not sct anythi ng in motion excepl ilself. T he owner of thc bar in Amste rdam that played PlllcinelJa may well be ready to play Chanson russe once, bUI afte r eight times the cl ie ntele might realize that Chanson m .ue is more th.an just SOINelli, d(! Spa. R ussian Donizetti, but slightly too off-beat, preven ting you from continui ng your conversation. If o nee does not do ii , eight times should~re s lore the original effect. In the same year, 198 1, the premiere of /,e Sacre dll prinremp s took place in the Amsterdam Coneertgenouw: the premiere , th at is , of an arrangement for four pianos made from the original score by Maarten Bon. ' T he public reacted as if they had just heard the Sacre for the fi rst time , This was quite unde rstandable. , M1I:I, I\.-o Bon ( 1933), DUlch wmflO~ ' and pi.. ni~1 lu ansl.

4

The New Rcnewed

The arrangement appeared. in principle, to be one as true as possihle to the nOles. The effect was not merely of a rcduction (as i ~ th c fo ur·h,md version by Stravinsky himself, made for purely practical reasom ), but of an X-ray that , instead or showing the glille ring car-body, revealed the chassi).. Thus. the music became even mo re estranged rro m the traditio n that made it possiblcthe re was nothing left of ·rite- and 'spring-, let alo ne of a semi-fo lklo ristic ba llet. Had this piece bee n a romantic com position brimming with filled-in harmo nics and a written-o ut piano-pedal. this same tra nscri ption would have been a disaster; since it was the Sacre which was being tra nscribed , it created a sound which (except for a few episodes, such as the opening bassoon melody) replaced the original instead of imitating it, much as the four pianos in thc defi nitive version of Les NOCC.f replacc the original symphony o rchestra. And so, the source of the Sucre-a piano in an altic in a Swiss village- found its second destiny. We heard an enormous pianola , where eight y-cight mechanical fingers were re placed by eight y-eight live fingers, and it became clearer than cver that the distance between the Sucre CJnd L e,f Noces was much less th an the distance betwee n St Petersburg and Paris. Furthe rmore , this arrangement succeeded in a way that virtuosic and glamorous o rchestral

The New Renewed

5

performanccs rarely do any more; again we could hear that the Sucre, in 1913, not only reached a new limit in abstract compositional tbought (the effect of which the listener can fairly easily 'play back'), but a new limit in orchestral technique, synchronization, and rhythmic exactitude. A simultaneous attack from four pianists is-because it is more difficult to realize-more simultaneous than a simultaneous orchestral attack that sounds together even if it is not. It was just like the seven repetitions of Chanson russe: an original effeet restored, and we sat, not in the Concertgebouw, but in the Theatre des Champs-Elysees, albeit this time without the scandal. And still in 19R1, in the first week of April, we were reminded of the tenth anniversary of Stravinsky's death by a young Dutch composer, Comelis de Bandt. He did not do so with words but with a piece of music, Bint, that the twelve-man orchestra Hoketus 2 performed for the eleventh time. The title of the work refers to a novel by Bordewijk3, with which the music shares a certain severity, and, of course, to the object itself-a heavy beam.4 De Bandt's heavy beam is a piece of tramrail, or, more precisely, two pieces, as the instrumentation of Hoketus is self-mirroring. The heavy blows on these rails articulate a composition lasting fifty minutes, in which much happens evcn though little musical material is used and in which the listener, in spite of the process-orientated charactcr of the music, never knows exactly where these few chords and rhythms are supposed to go. Bint sounds like a machinc that has no other purpose than to keep itself in motion. It never becomes clear to which laws of mechanics this colossus is being subjected. It is as if two enormous cogwheels are slowly building up momentum, but because thc smaller wheels that conncct the big ones arc partially imperceptible to the ear, the listener has no chance to discngage his attention. The gnarling in his head and the gnarling of the music on the stage form an encrgetic counterpoint. Bint is a 'machine humaine'. Few things are so human as a human machine inasmuch as nothing is inherently so un-machinelike. In the human machine, humans must expend more effort and energy to accomplish what a machine, effortlessly, does mechanically. The musical construction of Bint is so finely tuned that just one moment of human inattention can be enough to throw this Swiss-precision instrument out of control. , H"k~tu, wa, an en,cmhk f"rm~J by I.olli, AnJri~"cn in III71lu perform !he comp,,,itiun by the ,arne [l,,,,,c. The ~",emble. "con'cquene~ of the origin,,1 compmition. w", h,,~cd On the principle of h(}ck~t. !hu, ocmg ",s"el"t~J more with pop
6

The New Renewed

Even though the musical material is limited, the piece is by nature just as unminimal as the dosing bars of Stravinsky's Les Noces. Quite contrary to the processes in most minimal music, those in Bint arc irreversible. That irreversibility is a result of, among other things, vague allusions to the traditional cadence, where the value of each chord is determined by its relationship to one unchangeable fundamental chord. This chord is suggested in Bint, but is never heard. The music does not untangle. The knot, which is getting more and more complicated, is simply hacked through. The 'wrong' chord that determines the last minutes of the piece thrusts a spoke into the cogwheel which has been driven to its max.imum velocity. Bint resembles most the execution of a mechanical ritual. One could almost say that it begins where Stravinsky-literally, in the postlude of the Requiem Canticles-leaves off. New music, at least as it sounds in Holland, takes on different shapes: strict, often process-orientated forms, with a preference for winds and keyboard instruments; simulated improvisations, written out in the most minute detail; montage-technique; nco-tonality (but no neo-romanticism and not 'back to the symphony orchestra' to be squeezed in between Brahms and Mahler, or nowadays Shostakovich). Tonality is 'played upon'----old concepts of arsis and thesis, breathing in and out, may be applied, distorted, inverted, but, in any case, arc no longer ignored as they were by serial music. What the composers of this music have in common is that they are all morc orientated towards Stravinsky , Yarese, and improvised music than towards Schoenberg and Boulez. Their music reflects a conception whieh places serial music, as the furthest consequence of nineteenth-century music, in the mausoleum of the past perfect tense. Even so-cal!ed post-serial music experiences the same fate. When, in the winter of 1981, at a concert of new Dutch music in Amsterdam, a piano work was performed in which
1966-Requiem Canticles On 6 April 1971 Stravinsky died in a house in New York where he had lived

for a week. On 15 April he was buried in Venice. Before the burial, a service was performed in the basilica of Santi Giovanni c Pao\o--a requiem according to the Greek Orthodox liturgy. This service began with a concert. Besides Scarlatti and Gabrieli, Requiem Canticles was performcd-Stravinsky's last large work, dating from 1966. Unlike the Mw's, this work is not suitable for liturgical usc as only one-tenth of the liturgical text is set; it is not suitable for a church either as it does not sound good in a church. The piece needs a short reverberation time. It is chamber music: thin, pointed, articulated, tailored more to a small Italian opera theatre than to a cathedral. If the Prelude reminds us of anything, it is the music that Vivaldi played, accompanied hy his girls' string orchestra in the Conservatorio dcll'Ospedale della Pieta in Venice; light, repeated notes, played at the point of thc bow, like the heginning of 'Winter' from the FOllr Seasons. Requiem Canticles is the Requiem for the Requiem. After that, every composer who writes a liturgical requiem for large choir and orchestra, preferably in his old agc, will seem like a taxidermist. Hc will he stuffing a skeleton with ersatz meat and then be putting a black top hat on it. Then he will say: here, this is a man. But hc will be wrong. It is no longer possible. Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles is Berlioz's Grande Messe des morts, shrivelled to an aphorism. The piece can be divided into scvcn parts, the longest not evcn lasting three minutcs. An orchestral Prelude; then only the last line of the Introitus: 'exaudi oration em meam. .. (thus avoiding thc tcxt 'Requicm aeternam'); then six of the nincteen couplets from the Dies irae, divided into two parts by an orchestral Interlude; the Libera me, sung in the liturgy during the absolution after the mass. here somewhat shortened, serves as the last vocal movement; and finally an orchestral Postlude. The entire work lasts for fifteen minutes and uses a symphony orchestra. two low solo voices, and a choir. (In the orchestra. some instruments are not used--oboes and clarinets. But the xylophone from Danse macabre is not left out in the cold. even if he only has two bars to play.) And yet. when all is said and done, it is difficult to recall if ever more than ten instruments have been playing at the same time.

8

/966-R\.':quiem Canticl es

As might be expected, reference is made to other Requi ems from musical hi story, In this work too , t rumpets ring out in the T uba mirum. We hear wailing motifs, sighs, and long mdi smas during the Luerimosa. But all fear is removed: in thi s musk the Fina l Judgement is not a threat , there is no Resurrection of Dead Souls, who. themselvcs paralysed herorc the Heavenly Counte num:e. terrify mo rtals so. no hordes of trumpets and tromhones. and ce rtainly no Paradise ilia Faure: thut was filed away lo ng ago in (he printed postcard archi ve . In the Tu ha mirum there arc only two t rumpets and one trombone and by the six th har they petrify into held-out chords . And the be lls do nOt toll for the Last Judgement , merely for the E nd of Time: it had always bee n evident that this bell' ringer, with his music as legal tender. belonged to the one hundred and forty- fo ur Chosen. After such a life in the service of God . the Judgement just had tLl be in his favour; the Judge ment need not even be feared , Death had already been celebrated too oftcn. Death in Venice: the cit y is itself a celebration of death. a sinking e mpire of Eastern beauty, the dos~st Weslern city 10 Byza nlium , thaI is Ihe cily from which Ihe Symphony

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1966- Rcquiem Canticles

9

of Psalms springs. The Hallelujah from the We!>! !'iounds like a Gospocii pomiluy [·Lord have m er~y ']. Venice forms an image of death; the first thing th
,'.

~..• The instrume ntation o f these chords (four fiul es wilh ho rn , doubled by the pia no and harp) gua ra ntee!> a nasty. (.'old . s kele ton -like sound . Then eume the clock -strokes. For the first time since L es Noel'S, Stravi nsky uses 'real' cl oc k ~ be lls (chimes sound like c hurch bells), playing tog~t nc r with two instruments, one of which Stravinsky h<.ld never before used (the vibraphone) and the other

10

1966-Requiem Ca nticles

only very sparingly (the celesta) . Doing things one has never done before at the end of your Iife--ending with 11 beginning-that is conjuring. Neither the great bells of 5t Petersburg, nor those of London or Paris are heard, they (lrc the high, glistening bells of a small church in Venice. The clock strikes II times in sect ion A, II times in section A', and II times in sectio n R. There are fo ur cntra nce~ of the 'chord of Death ': Ihree limes a chord of 4 beals for a lota l o f 12 beals and Ihe fourth and laSI time three cho rds also {otalling 12 beats. In Ihe last bar. the strokes of the dock and the chord of Death come together for the first and last time; the 33rd heat of seelion B i~ also the 33rd stroke of the dock. The Hour of T ruth? Did not somehody die at 33? According to mystical tradition , the division 44-:l'~-77 i" rc1<1ted to the measurements of the cross; hut o ne ca n prove anything with numbers if one counts the right things. Anyone who cou nts can coun t until some magic
America on Sunday San Diego, 6 August 1979 First time in the United States! No, the first time in America. Enjoying it all, without shame or reservation. To his dismay and disillusionment, this is exactly what he read in an article by a fussy columnist once home again in Holland: America is back in fashion 'not even ten years after Vietnam'. Travelling through desert nights in a Greyhound bus in which the airconditioning consists of opening a window; trying to win the trip back in Las Vegas; visions of hostages and shoot-outs in a dubious bus station in which he (terrorized by the mere presence of a circuit of dealers and junkies maintained by whispcr- and eye-contact and afraid to be taken for a plainclothes policeman) reluctantly makes that urgent phone call after hesitating for about an hour. It cannot be denied: all stories told by first-time travellers in America are identical. But each traveller is different. In all the buses between Toronto and San Diego there is only one passenger who has in his suitcase a brand-new recording of Damses Concertantes, bought in Sam's Record Shop in Toronto. (He did not bother to buy the Oud-Nederlandsche Suite by Cornelis Dopper.) When this passenger arrives in the Southern Californian university city, he is welcomed by a friend and hospitably received in an apartment in a luxurious suburb that is at his disposal. The next morning, even before he takes a swim in the nearby private pool, he places the record on the turntable, makes himself comfortable on the balcony in the sun, in the mean time enjoying the view of the Pacific and looking forward to four well-made police-action series that will be on TV between ten and two that evening, and listens. America, they said, is a new feeling. That was true, but now he realizes-he has had that feeling before. In September 1939 Stravinsky set foot for the fourth time on American soil. Even though France had declared war on Germany just before he left, he was not planning to remain in America any longer than was necessary in order to fulfil his guest lectureship at Harvard University (Poerique musicale) and to complete his concert commitments. The question whether Stravinsky would have compromised himself politically if he had not gone to America (as Pierre Suvchinsky has claimed on the basis of Stravinsky's opportunistic political behaviour during the years just before the Second World War), is nevertheless

12

America on Sunday

academic. The composer went to Amcrica. and stayed. In 1940 he settled in Los Angeles. 'Stravinsky was fifty-eight when he began a new life in California, yet he was to change continually and more profoundly there than ever before, both as a composer-from the vcry first months in Los Angelcs, he was more accessible to new ideas and intlucnces than he had becn in his final years in Europe-and as a man. The mctamorphosis of the man was largely due to his remarriage, but the informality and the radically different "life style" of southern California were contributing factors' (Craft. PD). The differcnee betwecn the French Stravinsky of the thirties