berry stravinsky europe encyc 2006

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David Carson Berry, Stravinsky, Igor,in Europe 1789 to 1914: Encyclopedia of the Age of Industry and Empire ,

editors-in-chief John Merriman and Jay Winter (Detroit: Charles Scribners Sons, 2006), vol. 4: 22612263.


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PETER KEMP

- - , T h ~Strauss Family.' Portrait of a Musical Dynasty.Tunbndge Wells, U.K., 1985. Revised as The StraussFamily. London, 1989.

Mailer, Franz. Josef Strauss: Genius against His Will.Translated by Philip G. Povey. Oxford, U.K, 1985.Translation of Joseph Strauss.' Genie wider Willen.Vienna and Munich, 1977.

- - , Johann Strauss (Sohn): Leben un d Werk in Briefenund Dokumenten. 10 vols. Tutzing, 1983-2005.

S c h n ~ i d e r e i t ,Otto. Johann Strauss und die Stadt an derschiinen blauen Donau. Berlin, 1972.

Tra ubner, Richard. " Vienna Go ld ." In Operetta.' ATheatrical History, pp. 103-131. New York, 1983.Reprint, 2003.

Wechsberg, Joseph. The Waltz Emperors. London, 1973.

(1882-1971),G O RTRAVINSKY,Russian composer.

The highly influential composer Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (1882-1971) was born inOranienbaum ( no w Lomonosov) Russia, nearSt. Petersburg. He was raised in the latter city (thenthe capital of Russia), where his father, Fyodor, wasa prominent operatic bass-baritone. Thus Igorgrew up in an envi ronment steeped in music andthe' theater. In 1902, while studying law, heapproached composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov(1844-1908) an d a t s ome point afterward studiedprivately with him. In the ensuing decades,Strav insky-who adopted citizenship in France( 1 9 3 ~ )and the United States (1945)-was asso-ciated with many of the important tendencies intwentieth-century music, from forms of nationalismand primitivism, to neoclassicism, to serialism. Thepastiche element of his neoclassic music has evenbeen interpreted as a harbinger of postmodernism.

Stravinsky's creative output is often divided into

three periods, which the composer later described ashaving been demarcated by two "crises." His first or"Russian" phase was an outgrowth of his formativeinfluences. In relatively early works such as Scherzofantastique and Fireworks (both completed 1908),he emulated the techniques of Rimsky-Korsakovand other composers admired in his milieu. EvenThe Firebird (1910 ) - the fIrst of his ballets writtenfor impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) and

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

Kemp, Peter. J. Strauss Jr.: Complete Orchestral Works;Works for Male Chorus and Orchestra. Marco Polo8.223201-8.223279 (1988-1996). Historical sociopolitical program texts accompanying a fifty-two CDseries.

and their author's exorbitant financial demands ,prompted the city's theater directors to approachStrauss to mount a home-grown riposte. He waseventually persuaded to experiment with composing operetta by his first wife, the theatricallyexperienced mezzo-soprano Jetty Treffz (1818

1878). Th e first of his stage works to reachproduction was Indigo un d die vierzig Rauber(1871; Indigo an d the Forty Thieves, 1871), acomposition the Fremden-Blatt considered "promises the most splendid expectations for the future."A further fourteen operettas, a grand opera RitterPasman (1892; I(night Pasman) and an incompletefull-length ballet score, Aschenbrodel (1901; Cinderella), followed in its wake, with Strauss scoring hisgreatest box-office successes with Die Fledermaus(1874; The Bat), Eine Nacht in Venedig (1883; ANight in Venice) and Der Zigeunerbaron (1885; The

Gypsy Baron). Although history has adjudgedStrauss the leading exponent of "Silver Age" Viennese operetta, he was generally a poor judge oflibrettos an d felt encumbered and restricted by theprocess of composing to prescribed texts.

Together with his brother Josef, Strauss developed the classical Viennese waltz to the point whereit became as much a feature of the concert hall as thedance floor. In an 1894 speech Strauss freelyacknowledged the debt he owed to his father andto the latter's friend and rival, Joseph Lanner

(1801-1843), for formalizing, developing, andexpanding the structure of the Viennese waltz fromits origins in the unsophisticated rural dances ofAustria and Germany. His characteristic modestynevertheless concealed the fact that , as early as1854, he had himself been hailed as a reformer ofthe stereotypical waltz form, shaping it into characteristic tone-pictures. Johann Strauss the Younger'smusical legacy continues to captivate the world,charming new audiences and ensuring that heremains the most celebrated and enduringly successful of nineteenth-century light-music composers.

See also Music ; Offenbach , Jacques; Romantici sm;Vienna.

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the Ballets Russes-owed a debt to established fashions (including French impressionism). Changesare more evident with the next ballet, Petrushka(1911), which is infused with nascent modernismas evidenced by its formal, textural, and thematicjuxtapositions. The following ballet, The Rite of

Spring (1913), took these characteristics to newlevels. Indeed, its Paris premiere was the scene of afamous audience riot that guaranteed the growingreputation of the composer.

Especially after The Rite, some listeners beganto discuss Stravinsky's music in terms of primitivism, which composer Marc Blitzstein (19051964) described as "violent, rhythmic, blunt ,"and characterized by "short successive electricmoments" (p. 334). Many contemporaries wereparticularly intrigued by Stravinsky's rhythmic

innovations. In tIle Russian-era works and afterward, one finds sections of metric irregularity-thatis, with a shifting sense of where the "downbeats"fall-as well as sections of superimposed patterns,each internally consistent bu t combined to formcycles of polyrhythniic activity.

The first of the composer's period-delimiting"crises" was precipitated by the outbreak of WorldWar I in 1914 and exacerbated by' th e RussianRevolution of 1917. The result was what hedescribed as his "loss of Russia and its language

of words as well as of music" (Stravinsky and Craft,p . 23) . During the years that followed, as he livedfirst in Switzer land (1914-1920) and then inFrance (1920-1939), his so-called second musicalstyle developed: the neoclassic. Generally speaking,neoclassic music imitates that of the past-especially that of the baroque and high classical periodsof the eighteenth century-but more by translatingthe older idioms into those of the present day thanby exactly replicating the older styles. I f the musicwas steeped in counterpoint and textures reminiscent of the baroque, the motto "Back to Bach" was

often attached. Stravinsky's foray into neoclassicismhas been associated with the composi tion of various works, including the ballet Pulcinella (1920),which Stravinsky himself later suggested as a turning point. The new style was confirmed with theOctet for Wind Instruments (1923); its zenithcame in 1951, with the completion of The Rake)sProgress, an opera that harkened back to WolfgangAmadeus Mozart (1756-1791).

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By the mid-1920s Stravinsky \vas publicly condemning musical modernism, and so emerged oneof the great polemics of the era, which pit ted himagainst Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg(1874-1951). Arthur Lourie (1892-1966) promoted the polarization when he described

Schoenberg and Stravinsky as thesis and antithesisin his article "Neogothic and Neoclassic." Theformer's style was characterized as one of extremeexpressiveness, emotionalism, and egocentric individualism. The latter's neoclassic style, in contrast,was described as objective and "purely musical,"born of intellectualism and a t riumph over the"personal u tterance ." Although Lourie' s allegiances were with Stravinsky and his style, similarcharacterizations were later inverted in meaningby Theodor Adorno (1903-1969), a philosopherand writer on musical modernism. In Philosophieder neuen Musik (1949; Philosophy of modernmusic), he to o argued that Schoenberg andStravinsky were at the polarized extremes of contemporary music. For Adorno, however, Stravinsky'ssuppression of expression and subjectivity was to becondemned.

Given the dichotomy described above, it cameas a surprise to many that in Stravinsky's third compositional phase he adopted a method closelyassociated with Schoenberg: serialism. I t must bestressed that serialism is neither a "style" nor amonolithic system. It is a pliable method wherebya composer establishes an ordering of musical elements-most commonly notes, or more preciselythe intervals between the notes-that will becomereferential for a work. Those who appropriated themethod adapted it to their idiomatic inclinations, asdid Stravinsky, who fashioned many distinctive procedures. As for the "crisis" that brought about thisnew orientation, Stravinsky remarked later that itwas a produc t of the intense period of over threeyears in which he was immersed in The Rake)s Prog-ress. That is, having exhausted himself in theconsummation of three decades of work in neoclassicism, he needed a creative change. Other factorsalso played a role. After World War II serialism hadbeen adopted by many of the composers deemedmost "progressive," especially in parts of Europe. In1951, when Stravinsky visited Europe for the firstt ime in a dozen years, he became aware that he wasno longer relevant to many younger composers.

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