DQ for Watkins, 196-214 (grad students: add 215-22. Also, please locate at least 2 compositions [score excerpts or audio excerpts] and at least 2 artwork images cited but not included in the readings, and be prepared to share with the class in hard-copy or from a jump-drive)
Please be prepared to respond in either seminar meeting or in "Comments" on the course blog. In all venues, you must be prepared to cite specific passages (by page, paragraph, line, and quotation) in support of your responses—and specific works.
This section, as its titles make clear, explores the confluence of factors that led to the watershed work The Rite of Spring, now conventionally understood as marking the beginning of the “musical 20th century.” Please pay particular attention to the historical continuum (the lengthy historical progression) and the combination of artistic and other factors in which Watkins roots this seminal work.
General question for consideration: is it possible that the Rite is widely regarded as such a watershed precisely because its roots and source influences are so complex? Is the Rite, then, a kind of “culmination”? If so, could a different piece, in the same time and place, have had the same impact? Why or why not?
(1) On p196, Watkins locates the combination of factors cited above specifically in
(2) On pp196-97, Watkins cites a group of “painters, composers, singers, actors, architects,” and others who provided new models for creative persons who sought new and/or nationalist art forms in
(3) On pp197 & ff, Watkins describes the career, influence, and styles of Rimsky-Korsakov. Be prepared to (a) summarize these elements of Rimsky’s artistic identity (particularly relating sources to compositional style) and (b) to explain both the philosophical and the practical/stylistic impact of Rimsky upon Stravinsky. Grad students: be prepared to cite specific works by each composer.
(4) Read the entire section and be prepared to describe the role(s) of Sergei Diaghilev, not only in the career of Stravinsky but also as a shaper of the world of Parisian avant-garde art. Hint: look at the citations of Diaghilev in the index. Grad students: be prepared to link at least five of the various artists (in various media) who Diaghilev brought together, and to compare Diaghilev’s role in pre-WWI
(5) Listen to at least TWO of the Four Tableaux (on WebCT) while following in the scenario printed in Watkins on pp202-04. Jot down a list of at least five precisely descriptive adjectives (e.g., “angular, dissonant, folk-like,” or other) which you think accurately describe musical textures in the Two Tableaux you listen to, and be prepared to articulate the SHMRG characteristics which support the choice of those adjectives. Grad students: play through the folksong excerpts on pp204-05 (11.4-11.8) and locate at least TWO places in Petroushka in which those excerpts serve as raw thematic material.
(6) On pp211-14 Watkins summarizes the range of sources, influences, ideas, and (especially) extra-musical inspirations for Le Sacre du printemps. Be prepared to summarize in your own words, in one sentence (jot down the sentence if necessary). Grad students: in addition read 215-20 and be prepared to summarize the specific motivic and rhythmic techniques which give the piece its distinctive melodic/rhythmic language.
2 comments:
To summarize Stravinsky in one sentence would be: Stravinksky was considered unique or "new" because the amount of borrowing that Stravinsky used exceed the composers of the time which made him modern.
Stravinsky used so much borrowing that it made his "style" modern and the use of modal centers from the original folk tunes gave Stravinsky is "sound."
Path to the Rite: DQ on Watkins 196-214; grad students add 215-222 by Lisa Lee.
General question: Yes, the Rite is a culmination with complex roots and source influences. Yes, a different piece could have had a similar impact BUT only if it had appeared “in the same time and place” (quotation from DQ) (Paris pre-WWI) and probably only if it had referenced the same “complex roots and source influences,” including Diaghilev’s recognition and promotion of those roots and sources. For artwork images mentioned in the text with no illustrations I found Petrov-Vodkin’s The Playing Boys and a woodcut by Franz Marc from the cover of Der Sturm, which looks to be an imitation of peasant woodcuts that were in the Blaue Reiter of 1911 (Watkins, p. 212).
1) Paris had already been prepared to accept Russian art and music by Diaghilev’s 1906 ff. annual exhibitions in Paris. He exhibited icon paintings, example of Russian art from the 18th- and 19th centuries, and art by the Russian “primitivists” Larionov and Goncharova in 1906, at the Paris Salon d’Automne, with great success. In 1907 he introduced Paris to the music of the Russian Five. In 1908 he presented Mussorgsky’s opera Boris Godunov with the Russian singer Chaliapin in the title role and décor by Benois. The scene was set for Parisian interest in Russian themes. He continued his work in Paris over the next five years. (Watkins, p. 199, paragraphs 3-5). [Moreover, Paris was the center of the Western artistic and cultural world at the time, with sophisticated audiences who wanted to be titillated by the new.] Influential persons living in Paris in the pre-WWI period, not mentioned here by Watkins, include Gertrude and Leo Stein, Marcel Proust, Anatole France, Piet Mondrian, and Henri Rousseau.
2) The sources for “the Wanderers” were ancient Scythian civilization, medieval icon paintings, and national peasant art and costume. The motive behind the Wanderers’ appropriation of these materials was a desire to create a new Russian culture that would be based on their Russian national heritage and be useful to the people. (Watkins, p. 196, paragraph 3). The sources for the composers Glinka and Rimsky-Korsakov were collections of Russian folk songs and peasant rituals such as weddings and dances (Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar and Kamarinskaya), which Rimsky-Korsakov said were ceremonies that were survivals from ancient paganism (The Snow Maiden). (Watkins, p. 197, paragraphs 1-2). Glinka’s motive was apparently to create a Russian nationalist music (Watkins, page 197, paragraph 1, line 4); Rimsky-Korsakov’s apparent motive was to utilize his interest in the ceremonies of folk-life which he saw as survivals from ancient paganism. (Watkins, p. 197, paragraph 2, last 3 lines). A similar interest in creating a national art form (music) can be seen in England, whose musicians and composers were collecting folk music (Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams) and looking to the Tudor music of England’s past (Vaughan Williams). Watkins lists Germany (Mahler and Hindemith had recourse to collections), Hungary (Liszt), France, and Spain as other countries in which folk songs had been collected, even before Bartok and Kodaly began collecting (Watkins, p. 200, paragraph 3)
3) Rimsky-Korsakov’s interest in collecting and appropriating folk music, perhaps instigated by his teacher Balakirev, under the influence of Glinka, provided sources not only for borrowed tunes but for the creation of new melodies based on folk modes. (Watkin, p. 197, paragraph 1). His interest in the folk music and exotic sources and in providing a Russian-Eastern exotic musical background probably provided the impetus behind his use of whole-tone and octatonic scales and his chromatic-diatonic harmonic dichotomy. (Watkins, p. 198, paragraph 3, lines 10-12). Rimsky-Korsakov was Stravinsky’s teacher, and so Stravinsky’s use of folk tunes, the heterophony found in folk music, the use of modes and other non-traditional scales, and a chromatic-diatonic harmonic vocabulary as techniques would have been appropriated by the student from his teacher. The whole philosophy of interest in Russian folk ceremonies with roots in pagan cultures had already been explored by Rimsky-Korsakov before his student exhibited this interest in the Rite. Specific works by Rimsky-Korsakov that included folk songs and the influence of folk songs together with an interest in Russian folk ceremonies with roots I pagan cultures and seasonal rites include his operas May Night, Snow Maiden, Mlada, and Christmas Eve; Stravinsky’s Rite incorporated all of these elements. Rimsky’s interest in Russian folk motifs was incorporated into Stravinsky’s ballets preceding the Rite: Firebird and Petrushka. Stravinsky adopted the distinction between the forces of good and evil through diatonic and chromatic means used in Firebird from Rimsky’s The Golden Cockerel, which in turn had roots in Glinka’s Ruslan and Lyudmila (Watkins, p. 201, paragraph 4, lines 8-12). Stravinsky used folk songs from Rimsky’s collection 100 Russian Folk Songs in Firebird. (Watkins, p. 201, paragraph 4, last 3 lines). The pre-Lenten carnival in Stravinsky’s Petrushka had already been used by Rimsky in the Prologue to The Snow Maiden (Watkins, p. 202, line 4-6). Finally, Rimsky was a brilliant orchestrator who wrote a text book on the subject, and Stravinsky the student was no doubt influenced in his orchestration by Rimsky the teacher.
4) Diaghilev had promoted what was to become a rallying cry for modernist art and music, the philosophy of “art for art’s sake,” in his “World of Art” magazine (1898-1903). He promoted the collaboration of artists from various fields, another idea that was to become prevalent in the twentieth century. He recognized Paris as not only the center of Western art and music, but as a place crying out for the avant-garde or the new. He had an incredible sense of what would be seen by Parisians as new and exciting (which included the exotic and the primitive—the “other” and foreign--and systematically worked at not only providing for their tastes but shaping their tastes to his intentions. Before he introduced Stravinsky to the Parisian public, he introduced Russian art (icon paintings, Russian art from the 18th and 19th centuries, the Russian “primitivist” artists Larionov and Goncharova); and music of the Russian Five, including operas with Russian themes, decors, and costumes (Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov, décor by Benois). (Watkins, p. 199, paragraph 2, lines 1-4, paragraphs 3 and 4). He had an incredible knack for determining and promoting art and music as the “cutting edge,” and that is what the Parisian audiences wanted—to be on the cutting edge. He brought Cocteau, Picasso, Satie, Appolinaire, and Massine together. Ravel wrote ballets for him. He worked with the Russian dancers. Pavlova, Karsavina, and Nijinsky. He worked with the conductor Pierre Monteux. His “evangelistic or propagandistic” work reminds me of the efforts of the Dutch composers c. 1965 ff. to determine the cutting edge for their audiences, create an aura of themselves as the cutting edge, and convince the public that they desired the cutting edge; they also convinced the news media to support their work through information, and the government to financially support their work with commissions, performances, recordings, and publication of scores and information. As far as impresarios go, perhaps one could cite Philidor, who founded the Le Concert Spirituel at the Tuileries in Paris in 1725, or Salomon, who was the cause for Haydn’s London Symphonies. Florenz Ziegfield might be called an impresario. So might John Rich of the early 18th-century London theatre.
5) At the beginning of Tableau 1, Stravinsky employs SHMRG characteristics that will be found in the Rite, as well as immediatelyly recognizable borrowed folk-type and popular tunes. The opening section features the colorful use of wind instruments. motivic repetition, the use of heterophonic type of repetitious elaboration, heterophonic texture, polyphonic texture, narrow-ranged melodic material that turns in on itself, and insistent repeated-note figures that work on the principal of a micro-pulse that underlies the irregular durations—this insistent repeated-note figure is taken from the Easter Carol (Example.11.4, Watkins p. 204). The first tableau also uses a tune “Song for St. John.” (Example 11.5, Watkins p. 205). Also, Stravinsky uses a diatonic music-hall-type tune with regular phrasing and a singable tune (Example 11.10, Watkins p. 206) and a sentimental tune (Example 11.9, Watkins, p. 206). In the second tableau, close to the beginning, the “Petrushka chord” is arpeggiated by two clarinets; it is a bitonal white-key C major with a black-key F# major (at the tri-tone). (Example 11.15, Watkins p. 209). He uses two borrowed dances in Tableau 3 (Example 11.11 and 11.12, Watkins p. 209). The fourth tableau recalls much material and references from the earlier tableaux. Folk song references include: Example 11.4, the Easter Carol, is used in the 1st and 4th tableaux. Example 11.5, Song for St. John’s Eve, is used in the 1st and 2nd tableaux. Example 11.6, “Dance Song,” appears in the 4th tableau. Example 11.7 appears in the 4th tableau. Example 11.8 appears in the 4th tableau.
6) Watkins includes in his summary of (mostly extra-musical) sources and inspirations for the Rite the following: 1) the late 19th-century interest by the Wanderers at Mamontov’s estate at Abramsveto of Scythian civilization, medieval icon painting, and folk art; 2) the interest and knowledge of Nicolas Roerich, who was associated with Mamontov @Abramtsevo and Taneshiva @Talashkino, in archeology and Russian preliterate theatre; 3) the appeal of primitive cultures as seen in the artistic interchanges of the time, for example, in the Blaue Reiter exhibition of 1911 and the almanac of 1912; and 4) the activities of Tanisheva @ Talshkino, at whose estate/where Stravinsky conferred with Roerich in 1911 about the Rite. (Watkins, pp. 211-214). Watkins looks to influences on Stravinsky’s technical consideration in the work, as well. He might have derived his heterophony from a movement begun by Melgunov to transcribe the Russian folk tunes in a new and non-prejudicial manner, which paid attention not only to the principal melody but to its heterophonic elaboraboration, as recorded on the photograph, and as published by Linyova between 1904-1909. (Watkins, p. 214, nine lines from the bottom of the page, ff). On the bottom of p. 215, Watkins, speaks of 1) a continued reliance on Russian folktunes; 2) the use of bitonal conglomerations; 3) an extrovert orchestration. Watkins writes of the rhythmic-metrical structure on p. 216, which we decided in class was the presence of a micropulse over which shifting meters were projected (Watkins calls it stable metrics); the changing meters are homorhythmically articulated by registrally and timbrally fixed components. Boulez linked Stravinsky’s rhythms to Messian’s personage rythmiques, which consist of rhythmic cells that expand and contract according to patterns. (Watkins, p. 216). Watkins writes that the central ingredients of Stravinsky’s Russian style are the “bitonal clashes and the cellular rhythmic structures that prosper alongside a folk melos.” (Watkins, p. 216, last 2 lines.)
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