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Home , CSO Resound, Jeux, Pierrot lunaire (book), Werner Reinhart

Program

One Hundred Twenty-Third Season Chicago Symphony Orchestra Music Director Helen Regenstein Conductor Emeritus Yo-Yo Ma Judson and Joyce Green Creative Consultant Global Sponsor of the CSO

Thursday, February 20, 2014, at 8:00 Friday, February 21, 2014, at 1:30 Saturday, February 22, 2014, at 8:00 Tuesday, February 25, 2014, at 7:30

Cristian Măcelaru Conductor Jennifer Zetlan Soprano Sasha Cooke Mezzo-soprano Jeux Ravel Trois poèmes de Mallarmé Soupir Placet futile Surgi de la croupe et du bond Sasha Cooke First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

Stravinsky Three Japanese Lyrics Akahito Mazatsumi Tsaraiuki Two Poems of Balmont Nezabudochka Golub’ Jennifer Zetlan First Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances

Intermission Stravinsky Three Pieces for Solo John Bruce Yeh, clarinet

Stravinsky Cat’s Cradle Songs Spi, kot Kot na pechi Baj‑baj U kota, kota Sasha Cooke First Chicago Symphony Orchestra subscription concert performances

Stravinsky Suite from Sinfonia Serenata Scherzino—Allegro—Andantino Tarantella— Toccata Gavotta con due variazioni Vivo (Duetto) Menuetto Finale Stravinsky Suite No. 1 for Small Orchestra Andante Napolitana Española Balalaïka

CSO Tuesday series concerts are sponsored by United Airlines. This program is partially supported by grants from the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

2 Comments by Phillip Huscher

The traditional function of the orchestra Symphony Orchestra this season—presented this is largely a thing of the past,” Pierre Boulez week and next—he has created models of the wrote as long ago as 1970. “The orchestra as we kind of concert experience he has long advocated. know it today,” he said, in words that ring just Reacting to the rigid framework of conventional as true in 2014—“still carries the imprint of the programming—which is further restricted by nineteenth century, which was itself a legacy of the conservative design of concert halls and court tradition.” Over the past five decades, he the restraints of rehearsal schedules—Boulez believes that we must find new ways of looking at our musical heritage. Even in the case of the most familiar works, “we have to bypass our memories and use our imaginations to discover new potentialities.”

his week’s program takes one of the most fertile times in the history of music—the second decadeT of the twentieth century—and examines it from new perspectives. The result is a panoramic journey through that time, highlighting con- nections between works by Debussy, Ravel, and Stravinsky, and revealing Pierre Boulez conducting the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, 2010 ties to two revolutionary compositions, ’s lunaire and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, that do not appear on this program but whose has continually fought to bring the orchestra presences hover over it. This concert offers us and its programs into our own time, and since something like an airplane view of a specific plot Boulez began his annual visits to Chicago in of music history, allowing us to see things not 1991, he has not only become our guide to the in the familiar linear sequence, but to observe modern masters and new adventurers, but also the entire landscape, with all its crisscrossing a pioneer in the traditional world of program- paths, untraveled byways, and out-of-the-way ming. As in all the aspects of his extraordinary career—as 1911 Stravinsky composes Two Poems of Balmont composer, conductor, musical 1912 Debussy: Jeux thinker—Boulez, now the october 16: premiere of Schoenberg’s , Berlin Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Helen Regenstein Conductor 1913 May 15: premiere of Debussy’s Jeux, Emeritus, demonstrates an May 29: premiere of Stravinsky’s , Paris uncanny foresight and clarity Stravinsky: Three Japanese Lyrics of vision; he has shaken up our Ravel: Trois poèmes de Mallarmé familiar ways of listening and 1916 Stravinsky: Cat’s Cradle Songs thinking about music; and time and time again he has rejected 1917 Stravinsky: Five Easy Pieces (orchestrated as Suite No. 1) the idea of doing business 1918 Stravinsky: Three Pieces for Clarinet Solo as usual. Stravinsky: The Soldier’s Tale In the two programs Boulez has designed for the Chicago 1920 Stravinsky: Pulcinella

3 allow a single program to tackle many different repertoires— solo, chamber music, orchestral. It is anchored by large orches- tral landmarks: Pulcinella, Stravinsky’s most successful redecorating project—it refashions eighteenth-century music into a work of brilliant neoclassicism—and Debussy’s Jeux, a revolutionary score with which Boulez himself has long been identified: he led the then rarely played piece in his professional debut conducting a symphony orchestra in 1956, made a famous recording of it in 1966, and included it on his Chicago Symphony debut program three years later. And it is fitted out with miniatures to fill in, with novelistic detail, the rest of the picture of this stretch of time. Small works tell us things about a composer that the big pieces do not, just as, in order to truly know a great writer, we need to read the short stories or essays as well as the novels.

here is really no one way through a program this rich in connections andT interrelationships. But Pierre Boulez’s original sketch of programs for Chicago Boulez has devised a particular itinerary that balances works of radically different sizes, destinations, as well as familiar landmarks. flows naturally from piece to piece, juxtaposes The program does something concerts rarely distinct sonorities, groups together works with attempt: it tracks the intersecting lives of shared histories, and reveals often overlooked contemporaries and places individual works of connections. The journey Boulez originally art in a context of influences and shared ideas. planned to lead here in Chicago he has now This week’s concert exemplifies what Boulez turned over to Cristian Măcelaru, but Boulez is once called “polymorphous groupings,” which still, in the truest sense of the word, our guide.

4 Born August 22, 1862, Saint Germain-en-Laye, France. Died March 25, 1918, Paris, France. Jeux

In , Sergei of Spring together at the piano—Debussy played Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet the lower part at sight, without diffi culty—before presented two premieres. Stravinsky put the fi nishing touches on his Th e fi rst, on the fi fteenth score. Around the same time, Debussy asked of the month, met with Stravinsky’s advice about the orchestration of his incomprehension and was new ballet, Jeux. quickly overlooked; the second, given two weeks he original idea for Jeux was hatched later, provoked a famous over lunch in the grill room of the Savoy scandal and made its Hotel in London in 1912. Debussy had composer the darling of Paris. acceptedT an invitation to meet with Diaghilev Stravinsky’s Th e Rite of Spring is, of course, the and the dancer-choreographer , work that made history; Debussy’s Jeux is the who together had made a sensational, con- forgotten failure, and the immediate fate of these troversial ballet of Debussy’s Prelude to Th e two works nearly ruined the friendship between Afternoon of a Faun earlier in the year that the the composers. Debussy was irritated that Th e composer had disliked. Now Debussy listened Rite of Spring was heralded everywhere as the while Nijinsky sketched on the tablecloth and watershed score of the new century—“It’s prim- Diaghilev proposed a new ballet about a game itive music with all the modern conveniences,” of tennis that is interrupted by the crash of an he said. Although the two men continued to airplane. According to the painter Jacques-Émile exchange letters, they said nasty things behind Blanche, who also was present, the plan provided each other’s backs and saw very little of each for “no ensembles, no variations, no pas de deux, other after 1914. only boys and girls in fl annels, and rhythmic Stravinsky and Debussy fi rst met backstage movements.” Debussy rejected the subject point after the premiere of Th e Firebird in June 1910. blank until Diaghilev off ered to double his fee. (Debussy spoke kindly of the music, though Th e scenario was eventually rewritten—wisely, he later told Stravinsky, “After all, you had to the plane crash was eliminated—as a study of begin somewhere.”) Shortly after the premiere jealousy and love between two girls and their of Stravinsky’s next work, , they met tennis partner—“a sort of L’après-midi d’un faune for lunch, drank champagne, and had their in sports clothes,” as Pierre Boulez has written. It picture taken together. Debussy gave Stravinsky was called Jeux. “Th is is the decorous title for the a walking stick inscribed with their initials, ‘horrors’ enacted between these three persons,” and a close friendship developed. One night in Debussy wrote to Stravinsky. Here is the synop- 1912, the two composers ran through Th e Rite sis given to the fi rst audience:

ComPoSeD moSt reCent contrabassoon at these performances), august–November 1912 CSo PerformanCeS four horns, four trumpets, three trom- March 30, 31 & april 1, 1995, orchestra bones and tuba, timpani, xylophone, fIrSt PerformanCe hall. Pierre Boulez conducting cymbals, tambourine, triangle, celesta, May 15, 1913; Paris, France two harps, strings InStrumentatIon fIrSt CSo PerformanCeS two fl utes and two piccolos, three aPProXImate November 29 & 30, 1962, orchestra oboes and english horn, three PerformanCe tIme hall. hans rosbaud conducting and bass clarinet, three 17 minutes bassoons, sarrusophone (played by the

5 The scene with some regularity, making possible a wider is a garden appreciation of its individual sound world and at dusk; a its originality. tennis ball has been he extraordinary formal freedom of Jeux, lost; a boy in particular, anticipates music written and two girls much later. Listeners in 1913, and for are searching manyT years thereafter, were puzzled by the way for it. The Debussy’s music continually evolves—“instantly artificial renewing itself,” as Boulez has written—in a light of the fluid exchange of thematic ideas. A sense of large electric repetition is virtually absent from this score, and lamps when a musical idea does return, it is somehow shedding transformed—its color or rhythm subtly altered. fantastic rays Jeux was denounced as formless—and dismissed about them as the work of an aging, outdated composer— suggests rather than a brave new vision of form itself. the idea of This is Debussy’s final and most sophisticated Debussy and Stravinsky childish essay in writing for orchestra. Boulez has com- games: they mented how, in this score, play hide and seek, “orchestration-clothing,” that ele- they try to catch one another, they quarrel, mentary idea, disappears in favor of they sulk without cause. The night is warm, “orchestration-invention”; the imagination of the sky is bathed in pale light; they embrace. the composer is not limited by first compos- But the spell is broken by another tennis ball ing the musical text and then decking it out thrown in mischievously by an unknown with marvels of instrumentation; the orches- hand. Surprised and alarmed, the boy and tration itself reflects not only the musical girls disappear into the nocturnal depths of ideas, but the kind of writing intended to the garden. give account of it.

Although the ballet was not a success—it was Jeux is a masterpiece of color and character— dropped after only a few performances—and Debussy writes dozens of precise indications: Debussy was again displeased with Nijinsky’s passionate, sweet and expressive, violent, choreography, the music is one of his greatest nervous, ironic, joyous—and it packs a achievements. Jeux is Debussy’s last orchestral surprisingly strong emotional punch. But it is a score; it is both a work of summation—the quiet work (many pages do not rise above a piano finest realization of ideas going back at least to marking, the first mezzo forte in the score does The Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun composed not appear until the sixty-seventh measure), and twenty years earlier—and a work that looks far although it is densely packed, Jeux often sounds into the future. Its innovations passed unnoticed dreamy and ephemeral compared to other music. for many years; nearly half a century after the When Stravinsky’s savage Rite of Spring hit premiere it became a new point of reference for the same stage two weeks after the premiere of the avant-garde and enjoyed the status of a cult this music, the gentle revolution of Jeux was all classic. Since the 1960s, Jeux has been played but forgotten.

6 Born March 7, 1875, Ciboure, France. Died December 28, 1937, Paris, France. Trois poèmes de Mallarmé

In the spring of 1913, “With me, composition bears all the symp- Stravinsky and Ravel toms of a serious illness: fever, insomnia, loss of spent two months together appetite,” Ravel wrote to the wife of the Italian in Clarens, Switzerland, composer from Clarens. “After on the shore of Lake three days of that there emerged a song to words Geneva, collaborating on by Mallarmé.” Th e song is “Soupir,” the fi rst a new performing edition of the three Mallarmé songs he would write in of Khovanshchina, the the thrall of Schoenberg. In that same letter, opera Mussorgsky left he dreamed of a concert that would pair Pierrot unfi nished at his death. lunaire with its musical off spring: Stravinsky’s During that time, Ravel got a chance to look at Japanese lyrics and the set of Mallarmé songs the score Stravinsky was fi nishing up in time for that he had not yet even fi nished. Th at fantasy its world premiere in May. “You must hear concert never took place, but once Ravel com- Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring,” he wrote to a friend pleted his Trois poèmes de Mallarmé, they were from his hotel in March: “I really believe that the premiered together with the Stravinsky songs in fi rst night will be as important as that of Paris, in January 1914. Ravel originally intended [Debussy’s] Pelleas and Melisande.” to set only two Mallarmé poems to music. Th e But the work that tantalized Ravel even second song was composed in May, after he more was Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire, which returned to Paris. But then in August, Ravel had been premiered in Berlin the previous fall. said he had fi nished another Mallarmé setting. Stravinsky had heard the piece in a subsequent By coincidence—and prompted no doubt by the Berlin performance, had fallen under its spell, publication in 1913 of a major new edition of and could not stop talking about it—in fact, he Mallarmé’s poetry—Debussy was writing his had already composed his Th ree Japanese Lyrics own Mallarmé songs at the same time; curiously, (performed next on this program) as a kind of both composers chose two of the same poems. musical response to Pierrot. Ravel attempted to Th e powerful example of Schoenberg’s Pierrot schedule a performance of Pierrot lunaire in Paris lunaire inspired both Stravinsky and Ravel so he could hear for himself a kind of music so to search for a new adventurousness in their new and unprecedented that no description, not writing without diluting the individuality of even Stravinsky’s detailed and insightful account, their own voices. “You should never be afraid could suggest the expressive power and novel of imitating,” Ravel said many years later. sounds of the score. When he was unable to do “I joined the Schoenberg school to write my so, he composed his own music, the Trois poèmes Poèmes de Mallarmé. . . . If it didn’t become quite de Mallarmé, under the infl uence of Schoenberg’s Schoenberg, it is because, in music, I am not so work, just as Stravinsky had done with his Th r e e wary of charm, which is something he avoids to Japanese Lyrics. Th e diff erence, of course, is that the point of asceticism, martyrdom even.” Th e Stravinsky had heard Pierrot, while Ravel got his circle of infl uence continued: Stravinsky was so idea of the piece second hand. taken with the opening of Ravel’s second song,

ComPoSeD fIrSt CSo PerformanCeS aPProXImate 1913 These are the fi rst CSo performances. PerformanCe tIme 11 minutes fIrSt PerformanCe InStrumentatIon January 14, 1914; Paris, France voice, two fl utes and piccolo, two clarinets and bass clarinet, piano, 7 “Placet futile,” that he echoed the same effect in cannot analyze, but only sense, its effect,” the of his Soldier’s Tale in 1918. as the composer wrote. Mallarmé described “Soupir,” the first poem Ravel chose to set, as lthough Ravel had known and “an autumnal reverie.” Ravel dedicated the song admired the writings of the late to Stravinsky. (This was a time of generous nineteenth-century symbolist poet musical reciprocity: Stravinsky had already StéphaneA Mallarmé for many years, he had dedicated the third of his Three Japanese Lyrics only set his words to music once before (the to Ravel.) Ravel’s second song is a setting song “Sainte,” composed in 1896, early in of a love poem that Mallarmé himself said his career). Now, nearly two decades later, evokes a painting by Boucher or Watteau. Ravel’s supple language was ideally suited The last song, of complex and harmonically to Mallarmé’s art, “where all the elements bold design, carried Ravel to an extreme of are so intimately bound up together that one to which he never returned.

Trois poèmes de Mallarmé

Soupir SIGH Mon âme vers ton front où rêve, ô calme soeur, My soul rises toward your brow where, O peaceful sister, un automne jonché de taches de rousseur, a dappled autumn dreams, et vers le ciel errant de ton oeil angélique and toward the roving sky of your angelic eye, monte, comme dans un jardin mélancolique, as in a melancholy garden, fidèle, un blanc jet d’eau soupire vers l’Azur! faithful, a white plume of water sighs toward heaven’s blue! —Vers l’Azur attendri d’Octobre pâle et pur —Toward the compassionate blue of pale and pure October qui mire aux grands bassins sa langueur infinie that onto vast pools mirrors infinite indolence et laisse, sur l’eau morte où la fauve agonie and, over a swamp where the dark death of leaves des feuilles erre au vent et creuse un froid sillon, floats in the wind and digs a cold furrow se traîner le soleil jaune d’un long rayon. letting the yellow sun draw out into a long ray.

8 Placet futile FUTILE PETITION Princesse! à jalouser le destin d’une Hébé Princess! envious of the youthful Hebe qui poind sur cette tasse au baiser de vos lèvres; rising up on this cup at the touch of your lips, j’use mes feux mais n’ai rang discret que d’abbé I spend my ardor, but have only the low rank of abbot et ne figurerai même nu sur le Sèvres. and shall never appear even naked on the Sèvres.

Comme je ne suis pas ton bichon embarbé Since I’m not your whiskered lap-dog, ni la pastille, ni du rouge, ni jeux mièvres nor candy, nor rouge, nor sentimental pose, et que sur moi je sais ton regard clos tombé, and since I know your glance on me is blind, blonde dont les coiffeurs divins sont des orfèvres! O blonde, whose divine hairdressers are goldsmiths!

Nommez-nous—toi de qui tant de ris framboisés appoint us—you in whose laughter so many berries se joignent en troupeaux d’agneaux apprivoisés join a flock of tame lambs chez tous broutant les voeux et bêlant aux délires, nibbling every vow and bleating with joy,

Nommez-nous—pour qu’Amour ailé appoint us—so that Eros winged with a fan d’un éventail m’y peigne flûte aux doigts endormant ce bercail, will paint me upon it, a flute in my fingers to lull those sheep, Princesse, nommez-nous berger de vos sourires. Princess, appoint us shepherd of your smiles.

Surgi de la croupe et du bond RISEN FROM HAUNCH AND SPURT Surgi de la croupe et du bond Risen from haunch and spurt d’une verrerie éphémère of ephemeral glassware sans fleurir la veillée amère without causing the bitter eve to bloom, le col ignoré s’interrompt. the ignored neck is stopped.

Je crois bien que deux bouches n’ont bu, I, sylph of this cold ceiling, ni son amant ni ma mère, do not believe that two mouths— jamais à la même chimère, neither my mother’s nor her lover’s— moi, sylphe de ce froid plafond! ever drank from the same mad fancy.

Le pur vase d’aucun breuvage The pure vase empty of fluid que l’inexhaustible veuvage which tireless widowhood agonise mais ne consent, slowly kills but does not consent to, naïf baiser des plus funèbres! innocent but funereal kiss! À rien expirer annonçant To expend anything announcing une rose dans les ténèbres. a rose in the dark.

—Translations by Ned Rorem

9 Born June 17, 1882, Oranienbaum, Russia. Died April 6, 1971, New York City. Three Japanese Lyrics Two Poems of Balmont

Arnold Schoenberg’s In Berlin, Stravinsky met Schoenberg for the Pierrot lunaire was fi rst fi rst time, and on December 8, he attended a per- performed in Berlin on formance of Pierrot lunaire, following the music October 16, 1912. in a score the composer handed him. Stravinsky Stravinsky arrived in was so stunned by this work that for years he Berlin little more than a could not admit its full impact. Decades later, month later, to join Sergei after Schoenberg had died, he called the experi- Diaghilev for the winter ence “the most prescient confrontation in my life” season of the Russian and pronounced Pierrot lunaire the “solar plexus Ballet. Fresh from the as well as the mind of early twentieth-century triumph of Th e Firebird, Stravinsky was just music.” Th at very month in Berlin, Stravinsky fi nishing a new ballet about the pagan rituals of orchestrated a little Japanese song he had written springtime that would soon send shock waves for voice and piano before leaving Russia; back throughout the music world. Later on, musicians at his temporary home in Clarens, Switzerland, would marvel that these two epochal works, Th e he composed two additional settings of Rite of Spring and Pierrot lunaire, were conceived Japanese poems. almost simultaneously, each composer unaware Stravinsky took his texts from an anthology of the other’s achievement. In his suitcase, of Japanese poems translated into Russian. Stravinsky carried brand new settings of two “Th e impression which they made on me,” he poems by the Russian symbolist Konstantin wrote, “was exactly like that made by Japanese Balmont, which, with their repeating, kaleido- paintings and engravings. Th e graphic solution scopic patterns and edgy rhythms, echo Th e Rite of problems of perspective and space shown by of Spring. Th ey also continue the recent interest their art incited me to fi nd something analogous in bitonality of Petrushka (neither song has a in music.” Stravinsky’s titles are the names of key signature). the ancient poets. Th ese Th ree Japanese Lyrics,

Three Japanese Lyrics

ComPoSeD fIrSt CSo PerformanCeS aPProXImate october 1912–January 1913 These are the fi rst CSo performances. PerformanCe tIme 4 minutes fIrSt PerformanCe InStrumentatIon January 14, 1914; Paris, France voice, two fl utes and piccolo, two clarinets and bass clarinet, piano, string quartet

Two Poems of Balmont

ComPoSeD fIrSt CSo PerformanCeS aPProXImate 1911, for voice and piano These are the fi rst CSo performances. PerformanCe tIme 3 minutes 1954, orchestral version InStrumentatIon voice, two fl utes, two clarinets, piano, fIrSt PerformanCe string quartet date unknown

10 written during the final stages of The Rite of signature of four flats; the other two have none Spring, are openly indebted to Pierrot lunaire in at all). Four decades later, in 1954, Stravinsky their extraordinary scoring for an uncharacter- orchestrated his two little Balmont settings for istic (but very Schoenbergian) small ensemble of the same Pierrot-flavored ensemble. Together, flutes, clarinets, piano, and strings. The tonality these two groups of songs reflect the impact of these songs, like that of the Balmont settings, of Schoenberg as much as they complement is ambiguous (the first song, “Akahito,” has a key Stravinsky’s own Rite of Spring.

Three Japanese Lyrics

Akahito

Ja belye tsvety v sadu I have flowers of white. Come and see tebe khotela pokazat’. where they grow in my garden. But falls No sneg poshol. Ne razobrat’, the snow: I know not my flowers from gde sneg i gde tsvety! flakes of snow.

Mazatsumi

Vesna prishla. Iz treshchin ledyanoj The Spring has come! Through those chinks of kory zaprygali, igraya v rechke prisoning ice the white floes drift, foamy flakes pennye strui: oni khotyat byt’ that sport and play in the stream. How glad they pervym belym tsvetom radostnoj vesny. pass, first flowers that tidings bear that Spring is coming.

Tsaraiuki

Chto eto beloe vdali! What shimmers so white faraway? Thou Povsyudu, slovno oblaka mezhdu kholmami. wouldst say ’twas nought but cloudlet in To vishni raztsveli; the midst of hills. Full blown are the cherries! prishla zhelannaya vesna. Thou art, come, beloved Springtime.

—Translations by Robert Burness

(Please turn the page quietly.) 11 Two Poems of Balmont

Nezabudochka The Flower Nezabudochka – tsvetochek The Forget-me-not is blooming, Ochen’ laskovo tsvetyot, all for you, my love, for you, Dlya tebya moj drug-druzhochek, by a brook its petals growing Nad voditseyu rastyot. opening their tender blue.

Nad voditsej, nad krinitsej, Then at night when the starlight looks Nad vodoyu klyuchevoj, down on you to shine, Na zare s zvezdoj-zvezditsej when the dawn breaks night’s last star Govorit – ty budto moj. fading seems to say: “Will you be mine?”

Nezabudochka – tsvetochek The Forget-me-not is blooming, Nezhno-sinen’kij glazok, tender eyes so sweet and blue. Vsyo zovyot tebya, druzhochek, Do you hear me, lovely flower? Slyshish’ tonkij golosok? Listen to the flower’s voice!

Golub’ The Dove Golub’ k teremu pripal, On the window sill the rose Kto tam, chto tam, podsmotrel. and there on the roof the dove, Golub’ telom nezhno-bel, do you see them now, oh look. Na okontse zh tsvetik al. The dove flying to the rose?

Belyj golub’ vorkoval, Red the flower, white the dove, On tsvetochkom zavladel, red and white together lie, On yevo zacharoval, white and red together love, Nasladilsya, uletel. but then the dove flies away.

Akh ty belyj golubok, Oh my beautiful white dove, Pozabyl ty al tsvetok, you forget my sill above, Akh ty belyj golubok, oh my beautiful white dove, Vorotis’ khot’ na chasok. fly back to your waiting love.

—Translations by

12 Igor Stravinsky three Pieces for Clarinet Solo

A mere fi ve years separate enormous range and an extremely wide dynamic the great, epochal palette, from the nearly inaudible to fortissimo. orchestral roar of Th e R i t e Th e fi rst piece, which explores the clarinet’s low of Spring and these tiny, register, began life as a song and was sketched as unaccompanied pieces. early as 1916. Th e second is Stravinsky’s “imita- But after Th e R i e, t which tion” of improvisation (he had recently heard live changed the history of jazz for the fi rst time), written without bar lines. music, Stravinsky himself Th e third revisits the and ragtime of Th e was a changed man. He Soldier’s Tale. began to focus on minia- tures and on works scored for a mere handful of musicians, as if he knew that he had taken large-scale orchestral composition to its limit. Th e culmination of this new fascination with spartan musical textures was Th e Soldier’s Tale, which calls for seven players. But the trend reached its extreme in these three solo clarinet pieces that serve as a footnote to that historic score. Composed immediately afterwards, they were written as a thank-you present for Werner Reinhart, whose family fortune, made in coff ee and cotton, had fi nanced the fi rst production of Th e Soldier’s Tale in September 1918. Reinhart was an amateur clarinetist—he played in the local orchestra in his hometown of , Switzerland—and a patron of the arts with Werner Reinhart (left), with Australian violinist Alma wide-ranging interests. (In 1922, he purchased Moodie and the poet the Château de Muzot so that the poet Rainer Maria Rilke could live there rent free in his last years.) A footnote. Volkart Brothers, run by Werner’s Th ese three short monologues are among nephew Andreas Reinhart since 1985, now Stravinsky’s “biggest” little works. For them, oversees a foundation that supports social and Stravinsky picked an instrument with an environmental issues as well as the arts.

ComPoSeD fIrSt CSo PerformanCeS aPProXImate october–November 1918 November 4, 5 & 6, 2004, orchestra PerformanCe tIme hall. John Bruce yeh as soloist 7 minutes fIrSt PerformanCe November 8, 1919; , moSt reCent CSo PerformanCe Switzerland January 11, 2008, orchestra hall. John Bruce yeh as soloist

13 Igor Stravinsky Cat’s Cradle Songs

Living in Switzerland accomplishment Stravinsky was particularly during the early months proud of. As he wrote in his Memoirs, “If any of of World War I, these pieces sound like aboriginal folk music, it Stravinsky took refuge in may be because my powers of fabrication were collections of folk poetry able to tap some unconscious ‘folk’ memory.” Th e and short stories that he spare, yet surprisingly rich, accompaniment is for had brought with him three clarinetists (including the higher-pitched from Russia. He some- E-fl at clarinet), and Stravinsky is particularly times found comfort in resourceful at using all the registers and colors savoring the mere of this versatile family of instruments. Th e texts patterns of syllables and sounds, “which produce are traditional Russian lullabies Stravinsky found an eff ect on one’s sensibility very closely akin to in the pages of his own collections. Th e fi rst that of music.” Soon he began to write his own performance was given in Vienna, under the aus- Russian songs. But these are not exercises in pices of Arnold Schoenberg’s Society for Private nostalgia. Having internalized the essence of his Performances. Afterwards, wrote Russian literary and musical roots, he was now to : “Th e Stravinsky was wonderful. allowing it to come out in his own music. Th ese songs are marvelous, and this music moves Th e four short Cat’s Cradle Songs are among me wholly and beyond belief. I love it, and the the fi rst pieces to reveal a new direction in lullabies are indescribably touching. How these Stravinsky’s output. In each of these songs, the clarinets sound!” Stravinsky’s fascination with vocal lines are simple, short, narrow in range, and the animal kingdom continued. His next work, familiarly popular in style. Yet the melodies are , was a burlesque about a fox, a rooster, a original, even though they do not sound it—an cat, and a goat.

ComPoSeD fIrSt CSo PerformanCe InStrumentatIon 1915–16 July 23, 1967, ravinia Festival. voice, three clarinets Cathy Berberian as soloist, luciano fIrSt PerformanCeS Berio conducting aPProXImate November 20, 1918; Paris, France (with PerformanCe tIme These are the fi rst CSo subscription piano accompaniment) 4 minutes concert performances. June 6, 1919; Vienna, austria (version with three clarinets)

14 Cat’s Cradle Songs

Spi, kot Sleep, Cat Spi, kot, na pechke, na vojlochke. Sleep, cat, on the stove, on the felt ledge, Lapki v golovkakh, lis’ya shubka na plechakh. your paws behind your head, a fox-fur coat on your shoulders.

Kot na pechi Cat on the Stove Kot na pechi sukhari tolchyot, The cat on the stove crumbles the dry biscuits, Koshka v lukoshke shirinku sh’yot, the kitty in the basket sews a little cloth, Malen’ki kotyata v pechurkakh sidyat the kittens sit on their little stoves Da na kotika glyadyat, and watch the pussycat, Chto na kotika glyadyat and while they watch the pussycat I sukhari edyat. they eat the dry biscuits.

Baj-baj Lullaby Bayushki-bayu, pribayukivayu Hushabye baby, let me rock you. Kach’, kach’, privezyot otets kalach, Swing! Swing! Daddy will bring you a bread roll, Materi sajku, synku, balalajku, a pastry for mommy, a balalaika for sonny, A bayu, bayu, pribayukivayu hushabye baby, let me rock you. Stanu ya kachati, I will swing you V balalaichku igrati, and play the balalaika. A bayu, bayu, pribayukivati. Hushabye baby, let me rock you.

U kota, kota The tomcat has U kota, kota The tomcat has Kolybel’ka zolota a little golden cradle, A u dityatki moevo but my baby has I poluchshe tovo. an even better one.

U kota, kota The tomcat has I podushechka bela a little white pillow, A u dityatki moevo but my baby has I beleye tovo. an even whiter one.

U kota, kota The tomcat has I postelyushka myagka a soft little bed A u dityatki moevo but my baby has I pomyakhche tovo. an even softer one.

U kota, kota The tomcat has Odeyalechko teplo a warm little blanket A u dityatki moevo but my baby has I tepleye tovo. an even warmer one.

—Translations by Nicholas Winter

15 Igor Stravinsky Suite from Pulcinella

How odd Stravinsky’s and the composer were strolling in the Place Pulcinella must have de la Concorde, he proposed that Stravinsky sounded in 1920— take a look at some eighteenth-century scores charming, witty, with the idea of orchestrating them for a ballet. disarmingly simple “When he said that the composer was Pergolesi, eighteenth-century music I thought he must be deranged,” Stravinsky later from the man who had remembered, thinking unhappily of the Stabat shocked Paris only seven Mater and the opera La serva padrona. Finally, years earlier with the Stravinsky promised to at least take a look. fi erce of Th e “I looked, and I fell in love,” the composer Rite of Spring. But Pulcinella was also, in its own recalled. And so the two men began to plan. way, radical: Stravinsky seemed to be saying that Diaghilev showed Stravinsky a manuscript the music of the future might well learn from the dating from 1700 which he had found in Italy; lessons of the distant past. Pulcinella is usually the subject of its many comic episodes was credited as the fi rst music of neoclassicism. It Pulcinella, the traditional hero of the Neapolitan did, certainly, signal a shift in Stravinsky’s own commedia dell’arte, and a perfect focus for the thinking that served him well for years to come. action of their own eighteenth-century ballet. “Pulcinella was my discovery of the past,” the Meanwhile, Stravinsky had been sifting through composer wrote—“the epiphany through which the pile of manuscripts that Diaghilev had thrust the whole of my late work became possible.” “It in his hands, picking and choosing among trio was a backward glance, of course,” he later said, sonatas, assorted orchestral works, and operatic “but it was a look in the mirror, too.” selections (some of them not even by Pergolesi, as For all its importance to Stravinsky’s musical we have since learned). development, the idea for Pulcinella was not his, Th en Stravinsky set to work in a fashion but that of the great Russian impresario Sergei entirely new to him. “I began by composing on Diaghilev. By 1919, Diaghilev and the young the Pergolesi manuscripts themselves, as though composer were no longer on the best of terms, I were correcting an old work of my own,” he and Diaghilev was determined to patch up their later wrote. “I knew that I could not produce a diff erences and revive the collaboration that ‘forgery’ of Pergolesi because my motor habits had produced Th e Firebird, Petrushka, and Th e are so diff erent; at best, I could repeat him in my Rite of Spring. One spring afternoon, when he own accent.”

ComPoSeD moSt reCent InStrumentatIon Ballet: 1919–april 20, 1920 CSo PerformanCeS two fl utes and piccolo, two oboes, March 5, 6 & 8, 2009, orchestra hall. two bassoons, two horns, trumpet, Suite: 1922 roxana Constantinescu, Nicholas Phan, trombone, a quintet of solo strings and kyle ketelsen as soloists; Pierre (two violins, viola, cello, and bass), fIrSt PerformanCe Boulez conducting (complete ballet) orchestral strings Ballet: May 15, 1920; Paris, France March 9, 2009, Carnegie hall. roxana Suite: december 22, 1922; Boston, aPProXImate Constantinescu, Nicholas Phan, and Massachusetts PerformanCe tIme kyle ketelsen as soloists; Pierre Boulez 20 minutes conducting (complete ballet) fIrSt CSo PerformanCeS January 14, 1935; Pabst Theatre in CSo reCorDIng CSo PerformanCe, the Milwaukee, wisconsin. The composer 2009. roxana Constantinescu, ComPoSer ConDuCtIng conducting (suite) Nicholas Phan, and kyle ketelsen as april 17, 1965, orchestra hall. irene soloists; Pierre Boulez conducting. January 17 & 18, 1935, orchestra hall. Jordan, Nicholas di Virgilio, and donald CSo resound The composer conducting (suite) Gramm as soloists (complete ballet)

16 What Stravinsky created was, in fact, some- concerto grosso), with no percussion. The ballet’s thing entirely his own. He left Pergolesi’s original vocal lines are taken by instruments. bass lines and melodies alone, but the inner The suite opens with a stirring sinfonia, the harmonies, the rhythms, and the sonorities all ballet overture (and before that, one of Pergolesi’s bear Stravinsky’s stamp, in one measure after trio sonata another. “The remarkable thing about Pulcinella,” movements). Stravinsky later said, “is not how much but how The Serenata, little has been added or changed.” His achieve- with its ment, then, is all the more remarkable. mournful The music was misunderstood from the first melody over rehearsals. Diaghilev, expecting a harmless adap- a rocking tation like Respighi’s recent tribute to Rossini, accompani- La boutique fantasque, was shocked. “He went ment, began about for a long time with a look that suggested life as an the Offended Eighteenth Century,” the composer opera aria for reported. Diaghilev was not even sure whether tenor. Three to acknowledge Stravinsky as the composer of connected Pulcinella or merely as its arranger. Stravinsky movements had the last word: (Scherzino, Allegro, I was . . . attacked for being a pasticheur, Andantino), chided for composing “simple” music, all borrowed blamed for deserting “modernism,” accused from trio of renouncing my “true Russian heritage.” sonatas, People who had never heard of, or cared are now about, the originals cried “sacrilege”: “The enlivened by classics are ours. Leave the classics alone.” Stravinsky’s witty instrumentation, subtle use of To them all, my answer was and is the same: syncopation, and the steady pulse of the rhyth- You “respect,” but I love. mic ostinato. The ensuing Tarantella trips over its own insistent rhythmic figures until it dashes The ballet had its premiere at the Paris Opera headlong into a toccata, drawn from one of House in May 1920. The choreography was by Pergolesi’s harpsichord sonatas and now revived Léonide Massine, with scenery and costumes as a boisterous fanfare for full orchestra. The by Picasso. (The collaboration of these two had winds take center stage in the Gavotta, with its been part of Diaghilev’s lure.) Pulcinella was a two increasingly elaborate variations. Stravinsky success, “one of those productions,” the composer fashioned an outrageous duet for double bass and reported, “where everything harmonizes, where trombone from a sinfonia for cello and double all the elements—subject, music, dancing, and bass. The Menuetto (another opera aria) gradu- artistic setting—form a coherent and homoge- ally builds momentum until it bursts in on the neous whole.” Yet only the music endures today. syncopated flurry of the finale, the same music which brings down the curtain on the full ballet. n 1922, Stravinsky compiled an orchestral The music ends with flourishes, repeated over suite of eleven sections from the complete and over, as if the musicians were taking their ballet and scored for the same orchestra: bows, heads bobbing up and down. Iwoodwinds without clarinets, brass, strings In his old age, Stravinsky remarked with divided into concertino and ripieno groups (the typical candor that Pulcinella was the only work solo and full orchestra divisions of the baroque of Pergolesi’s that he really liked.

17 Igor Stravinsky Suite no. 1 for Small orchestra

In the second decade of Stravinsky sent all eight of these easy pieces to the twentieth century, the writer André Gide, who tried them out with Stravinsky began to a young student and was furious that Stravinsky compose what he called had neglected to include rehearsal numbers to “easy” pieces. Small in help keep the players together (“You fi nd your scale and relatively simple to perform, they could be dismissed as mere trifl es, except that the clarity of their style and textures, and the simplicity of their forms point to the next stage in Stravinsky’s ever-changing, chameleon-like career—the back-to-basics sensibilities of Th e Soldier’s Tale and the great neoclassic scores. He later fashioned two short suites for small orchestra that are collections of “easy” piano pieces written between 1914 and 1917. Th e earliest of them, published as Th ree Easy Pieces Igor Stravinsky (left) with André Gide, 1917 for piano duet, are the March, Waltz, and Polka that open the Second Suite that is performed here next week. Stravinsky followed them up place just as you lose the child, or the child loses with a new group of Five Easy Pieces for his his place . . .”). Th at’s when Stravinsky decided young children, Th eodore and Mika, to play. not to entrust these little jewels to amateurs and Th is set included national dances—a Napolitana, children any longer, but to dress them in sophis- suggested by his visit to Naples the following ticated orchestral colors and publish them as year; Española, written after a trip to Spain grown-up suites. in 1916; and a Balalaïka, inspired no doubt by homesickness for his native Russia. Together with an introductory andante, those three dances Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago were orchestrated as his Suite no. 1. Symphony Orchestra.

ComPoSeD moSt reCent InStrumentatIon 1916–17, piano pieces CSo PerformanCeS two fl utes and piccolo, oboe, two September 21 & 23, 2003, orchestra clarinets, two bassoons, horn, trumpet, 1917 to 1925, orchestral suite hall. william eddins conducting trombone and tuba, bass drum, tenor drum, cymbals, piano, strings fIrSt PerformanCe CSo PerformanCe, the March 2, 1926; haarlem, ComPoSer ConDuCtIng aPProXImate the Netherlands. The com- July 13, 1963, ravinia Festival PerformanCe tIme poser conducting 7 minutes fIrSt CSo PerformanCe November 12, 1940, orchestra hall. The composer conducting

© 2014 Chicago Symphony Orchestra

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