My older brother, Ken, had a girlfriend back in grade school, named Donna. She went on to marry Ken�s best friend and Ken married Donna�s best friend Carolyn. Donna major in English, because she loved to read. Whenever she found an author who appealed to her, she would methodically read every one of his or her books. She worked her way through all of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Faulkner.

I respected her approach, but being a Gemini myself, I have been unable to follow that route either with authors or composers. That is the way of the scholar, but I�m much too easily distracted by the latest sight, sound, taste and have spent my life, jumping from one interest to another. This is the way of the dilettante, and though it�s too late to change my ways, I wouldn�t if I could. It has served me well.

My one exception in the world of music, however, has been Igor Stravinsky. After I discovered Rite of Spring and Petrushka I started to check out and buy anything by Stravinsky that I could. I still listened to other composers, of course, but I always returned-and still do, by the way-to Igor�s music. As in the case of all dilettantes, my obsession did wane after a while, but only after exploring some quite obscure pieces by him. That turns out to be not such a bad thing, because as recently as a couple of months ago, I heard a snippet from his opera, A Rake�s Progress, which I had never hear before, that was so lovely that it almost melted my heart.

The third piece of Stravinsky, that I devoted some time to was his probably most well-known piece, The Firebird. This was his first ballet for Diaghilev�s Ballet Russes in Paris. Since it predates Rite of Spring and Petrushka it lies closer to the Russian school out of which Stravinsky came under the tutelage of Rimsky-Korsakov. In The Firebird for example, you can hear echoes of Korsakov�s �Great Gate of Kiev� from Pictures at an Exhibition. At the same time, it is much more melodic, owing to the influence of Tchaikowsky. Finally, the lush and shimmering orchestration reminds me of the Impressionists, Debussy and Ravel, his near contemporaries.

This piece makes me think of a quote by Stravinsky: �all great composers steal.� Now I don�t know whether I�d call this work plagiarism. Rather, I�d say he was such a genius that he had completely mastered the artistic techniques and traditions of Western music until his time. The Firebird shows his attempt to synthesize everything he knew, or at least demonstrate his mastery of them, perhaps before finding his own unique voice, which burst on the scene and turned the music world upside down with Rite of Spring.

I find it puzzling that no one in the 20th century has been able to touch him. Why did so many composers who came after him get lost in the world of 12 tone, atonality, minimalism and serialism, some of which Stravinsky himself explored, instead of standing on his shoulders. The philosopher, T.E. Hulme, of course, wrote a book on how artistic movements become more abstract when a civilization is undergoing chaos-like the progressively two dimensional and iconographic art of latter Byzantium. And in prosperous times, he noted that art became increasingly naturalistic and representative as happened in Renaissance Florence. So maybe that is what happened in 20th century music as well. As European civilization collapsed under two world wars and then the cold war�s threat of annihilation, perhaps our music represented that angst. Now that we boomers have had about 30 years of peace and prosperity, our tastes run toward the more lush and stimulating music of the neo-romanticists like Aarvo Paart and Henryk Gorecki. Thank god. If I hear another monotonous piece by Phillip Glass, I think I�ll stick knitting needles in my ears.

Stravinsky Bio

Album with real audio samples

Recording

Enjoy

top