IGOR STRAVINSKY
Igor Stravinsky always seemed to be on the move, geographically and artistically. Born and raised in Russia, he later lived variously in France, Switzerland, and the United States. In a long composing life, he underwent a whole series of stylistic changes, like his contemporary and sometime colleague, Pablo Picasso. And this diversity was matched by a constant shifting of gears, as he switched from one medium to another. It is not uncommon for a versatile composer to try his hand, as he did, at most or all of the conventional forms, writing operas, oratorios, symphonies, concertos, chamber music, film scores, ballets, songs, piano music; and even in Stravinsky’s case, which involved striking differences of stylistic approach (early brutalism, for instance, followed by neo-classicism and then by twelve-tone austerity), there was always recognizably present the stamp of a consistent and highly individual mind. Moreover, in all this diversity, there was an unmistakable unity of idiom: that unity is evident in his quite characteristic approach to melody and rhythm, but most of all it is manifest in the timbres of his orchestration; whether in his large-scale canvases or in his miniatures, there is a unique and identifiable quality of sound in Stravinsky, just as there was in Brahms — but more so.
When Stravinsky left Russia as a young man of twenty-eight in 1910, he left behind a culture that had wholly formed him. Inevitably, though, his roots came with him wherever he went. Outwardly a chameleon, he took on some of the coloration of other cultures he resided in — borrowing a jazz flavour, for instance, from America. He set texts in many languages, such as English, French, Hebrew, Italian, Latin, Old Slavonic, and Russian. And he had a connoisseur’s love of international literature, especially English literature; his vast circle of friends included four important authors, W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and Dylan Thomas. Nevertheless, through all his travels and changes of domicile, his soul remained ineradicably Russian. He drew repeatedly on Russian folk-traditions as both inspiration and subject-matter, especially in the scores he composed for Diaghilev’s ballet company, Les Ballets Russes, and in “Les Noces”. He returned, in middle age, to the Russian Orthodox faith, which he had abandoned at eighteen. He regarded Bolshevism as a perversion of all that Mother Russia meant, and was saddened that the Soviet commissars banned his music; that ban was lifted under Khrushchev, and Stravinsky aged 80 made a triumphant return to Moscow in 1962, conducting his own compositions; it brought him full circle to where he had begun, and it was a vindication of his art.
It is sometimes said that the twentieth century, musically, was invented by Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Bartok. That is both an exaggeration and a simplification. But there does seem to be a kind of truth in it, when one compares Stravinsky with his fellow-Russian, fellow-exile, and near-contemporary, Rachmaninoff. Only nine years older than Stravinsky and bred in the same heritage, Rachmaninoff was the quintessential late-Romantic, following in the footsteps of Tchaikovsky. His symphonies and concertos are simply an extension of his predecessor’s career, couched intrinsically in the same language. Stravinsky, by contrast, once he had found his own voice, coined a language that was innovative, rebellious, and surprising. Even when he worked in a traditional role, as a composer of ballet music, the result was strikingly original: “The Rite of Spring” was a succès de scandale. And more often than not, he created works that were sui generis, in a form that evolved from the content (the reverse is true, for example in most piano sonatas, where the content bows to the precepts of sonata form), and in a scoring that has no kinship with convention; a good example of this is “L’histoire du soldat”, for narrator, female dancer, three actors, and an instrumental septet, consisting of clarinet, bassoon, cornet, trombone, percussion, and double-bass.
In his later years, Stravinsky, like many in old age, had to mourn the deaths of friends, colleagues, and others he admired. In some cases, he did so publicly, by composing elegiac music in their memory. For instance, “In Memoriam Dylan Thomas” was written after the poet’s untimely death and is a setting of “Do not go gentle into that good night”, the poem which Thomas wrote in mourning for his own father; it is scored for tenor voice and string quartet, with a canonic prologue and epilogue for four trombones. Among several others memorialized by Stravinsky over time were Raoul Dufy, Aldous Huxley, and John F. Kennedy. Towards the end of his own life, he busied himself with pieces that seemed to presage his own death: “Introitus”, with text drawn from the Requiem Mass; the “Requiem Canticles”; and two miniatures of similar intent, but extremely brief, lasting barely a minute. So it is perhaps appropriate that an epitaph, written in turn to memorialize him, should be similarly succinct.
Stravinsky died in 1971, aged eighty-nine. His funeral was conducted in St Mark’s, Venice; and he was buried near Diaghilev’s grave.
(After Stravinsky’s death, the above poem was set to music by Harry Freedman, for tenor voice, string quartet, and four trombones; this was the same scoring as Stravinsky had used in his own exequial composition, “In Memoriam Dylan Thomas”.)
