Academic literature on the topic 'Rake's progress (Stravinsky, Igor)'

Abstract Stravinsky has a deserved reputation for manipulating the sound of words, which, among other factors, has given rise to accusations of “antihumanism” against the composer and his music. However, close analysis of the opera The Rake's Progress (1948–51) shows that Stravinsky actually takes care to set the text intelligibly, and at certain moments, even expressively. By analyzing metric displacement and motivic development as it evolved from the composer's earlier neoclassical settings—including Oedipus Rex (1927), the Symphony of Psalms (1930), and Perséphone (1934)—through his first efforts at serial composition in the Cantata (1952), this article contextualizes the seemingly anomalous expressiveness in The Rake's Progress. Discovery of this evolution in his approach to setting text also entails a reassessment of the composer's aesthetic concerns.

“Hogarth's Rakes's Progress paintings, which I saw in 1947 on a chance visit to the Chicago Art Institute, immediately suggested a series of operatic scenes to me.” (Stravinsky & Craft, 1960). By 1947 Stravinsky's career, which had started so brilliantly and stormily with the revolutionary Rite of Spring, was almost totally becalmed. Since emigrating from Paris to California in 1940, he had written a couple of untempestuous orchestral pieces, Circus Polka, “composed for a young elephant”, and little else. He was depressed by the lack of originality of his work and was eager to write an opera in English. When he saw the paintings of the Rake's Progress, he seized his opportunity.

Messiaen's concept of ‘personnages’ is essential to his compositional and analytical thinking. Yet it is not described in his Technique of My Musical Language of 1944, and it features only sporadically in the secondary literature. There are references to personnages in Messiaen's booklet notes to recordings of the Turangalîla-symphonie, but only the basic premise of personnages rythmiques is discussed there. Messiaen's preliminary thoughts on the rhythmic aspect of the process are given in his 1939 article ‘Le rythme chez Igor Stravinsky’, but those two pages only permit fairly general comments and the label ‘personnages’ was not yet in use. We are introduced to personnages in detail at various points in his seven-volume Traité de rythme, de couleur et d'ornithologie – a compilation of Messiaen's writings from 1949 onwards, edited by Alain Louvier and Yvonne Loriod and published between 1994 and 2002, the order of material having been decided by Messiaen shortly before his death. For those patient enough to negotiate its convoluted presentation, the Traité allows the reader a unique insight into Messiaen's thought-processes, his musical and technical influences, analytical style, and non-musical interests. The present article seeks to disentangle and clarify the concept of personnages, to gather the threads from various analyses in the Traité in which they appear, and to trace their progress from Messiaen's Stravinsky analysis to a pinnacle of complexity in the Turangalîla-symphonie.

Background. During the last century composers show an increasing activity in the fi eld of a literature while writing texts that explain specifi c features of their musical works, their aesthetic, philosophy or attitude to certain cultural phenomena. Sometimes even an analytical essay produced by the composer may characterize the composer’s personality and his/her position in the art. In this aspect, the composer’s texts deliver a vast number of facts directly connected to the heart of aesthetic, social, psychological phenomena of a composer’s activity. In the article an ill-defi ned phenomenon of texts and speeches of a composer on his/her works and on music and art in general is analyzed. The objectives of the study are fi nding the connection between literal and musical works of the composer. The main source of the analysis of a composer’s personality should be musical works, because they contain the complete information about the author, and they may lead to construction of the author’s “portrait” in various aspects – psychological, historical, ideological, etc. Understanding the artistic personality through analysis of his/ her works, although being the most trustworthy method, sometimes is also the hardest, since the author not always manifests himself/herself directly while using various kinds of play-acting. That’s why the analysis of a composer’s speech as an additional fi eld, that refl ects the composer’s personality, may be effective. This method is applied to the published speeches and the interview of Valentyn Sylvestrov. Being applied to his “case”, this analytical instrument explains the reason of his critical speeches against avant-garde aesthetic and its typical adepts (Helmuth Lachenmann, Karlheinz Stockhausen and others). This critic does not mean the change of Sylvestrov’s position since his youth. Although he became known as an avant-gardist in the 1960s, even then – and his early interview (published in 1967) demonstrates this quite clearly – he declared his position which strongly differed from typical avant-garde ideas. His speeches of later time shows similar attitude of the composer to many musical problems, despite these speeches were made almost half a century after his early interview. They describe quite strange situation when the composer’s text, while saying almost nothing about the objects of its criticism, shows fi rst of all Sylvestrov’s own evolution from “soft” avant-garde of the early 1960s to the specifi c and extremely individual stylistics that combines radical and quasiconservative features. This combination in itself is quite unusual both in avant-garde and conventional styles, and proves lyrical nature of his artistic personality, as well as some favorite subjects typical of him both now and half century ago. Composer’s letters show the mental condition of the author in a certain period of his/her life and creative evolution. They give exact information on facts, events, dates, etc., so in this aspect they are irreplaceable. Certain words and a way of description used by an author – and also what he/she omits – directly shape the artist’s nature. It is important to take into account that we do not have to deal with absolute truth but subjective interpretation which may contain (apart the trustworthy details) exaggeration, misunderstanding and wrong conclusions. These very deviations add new features to the artistic “portrait” and may explain the reason this or that feature appears in a musical work. Analysis and even reading composer’s (and any other) letters raise some moral problems. Usually letters are addressed to a certain person or an institution and not intended to be seen by anybody else. We cannot know whether the author would be happy if he/she would know his/her letters are published. Only in the case of a publication during the author’s life this problem may be totally fi xed, as the author’s agreement to such publication seems to be mandatory. While artist’s letters are usually not intended for publication, an interview or dialogues of the artist with “authorized person”, as well as autobiography, an article or memoirs are always created for the public, so the “master” depicts himself in accordance with the way he/she wants the others see and treated him/her. While the literature knows classical example of this genre back from the early 19th century (we mean the wellknown Peter Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe), the composers start to regularly produce similar texts much later in the 20th century. Despite the technical and aesthetical progress of the 20th century culture stimulated the musicians to create texts, they did not became the obligatory (sometimes because of personal reason). While almost all more or less known musicians gave an interview and created brief speeches on various occasion, just a part of them left the dialogues with extended explanation of the composer’s views on various problems and facts of the art and life. The model example of such texts are the Dialogues if Igor Stravinsky with Robert Craft. Later other outstanding musicians followed them, exactly Jannis Xenakis, Olivier Messiaen, Witold Lutoslawski, Alfred Schnittke and Edison Denisov among the mostly known. Another kind of the author’s word to be widely circulated is an author’s annotation or commentary to the piece. Such a commentary written for a concert leafl et or a festival (LP, CD) booklet is always expected by the recipients, so it plays an exceptional role in understanding the new work and may help to promote it or, in unlucky case, prevent its success. The results of the research prove the importance of the composer’s text for understanding his/her music. Although being a sort of paradox, such texts may show the shortest way to fi nd secret senses and codes of music. so we conclude the literal texts gradually become an integral part of the composer’s work and composer’s life.