The Late Choral Works of Igor Stravinsky

THE LATE CHORAL WORKS OF IGOR STRAVINSKY: A RECEPTION HISTORY _________________________________________________________ A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia ________________________________ In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts ____________________________ by RUSTY DALE ELDER Dr. Michael Budds, Thesis Supervisor DECEMBER 2008 The undersigned, as appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled THE LATE CHORAL WORKS OF IGOR STRAVINSKY: A RECEPTION HISTORY presented by Rusty Dale Elder, a candidate for the degree of Master of Arts, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. _________________________________________ Professor Michael Budds ________________________________________ Professor Judith Mabary _______________________________________ Professor Timothy Langen ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my deepest gratitude to each member of the faculty who participated in the creation of this thesis. First and foremost, I wish to recognize the extraordinary contribution of Dr. Michael Budds: without his expertise, patience, and en- couragement this study would not have been possible. Also critical to this thesis was Dr. Judith Mabary, whose insightful questions and keen editorial skills greatly improved my text. I also wish to thank Professor Timothy Langen for his thoughtful observations and support. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS……………………………………………………………...ii ABSTRACT……………………………………………………………………………...v CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM OF STRAVINSKY’S LATE WORKS…....1 Methodology The Nature of Relevant Literature 2. “A BAD BOY ALL THE WAY”: STRAVINSKY’S SECOND COMPOSITIONAL CRISIS……………………………………………………....31 3. AFTER THE BOMB: IN MEMORIAM DYLAN THOMAS………………………45 4. “MURDER IN THE CATHEDRAL”: CANTICUM SACRUM AD HONOREM SANCTI MARCI NOMINIS………………………………………………………...60 5. “THE COLOUR OF A THUNDERCLOUD”: THRENI: ID EST LAMENTATIONES JEREMIAE PROPHETAE…………………………………...86 6. INTERLUDE: STRAVINSKY AND THE SERIALISTS…………….……......127 7. “THE MOUNTAIN BROUGHT FORTH A MOUSE”…………………………149 A Sermon, a Narrative, and a Prayer The Flood 8. TUNING THE FUNERAL DRUMS…………….………………………………189 Introitus Requiem Canticles 9. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS…………………………………………....226 iii APPENDIXES A. Stravinsky’s Original Works after The Rake’s Progress………………………..241 B. Select Discography of Stravinsky’s Late Works………………………………..244 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………………..248 iv THE LATE CHORAL WORKS OF IGOR STRAVINSKY: A RECEPTION HISTORY Rusty Dale Elder Dr. Michael Budds, Thesis Supervisor ABSTRACT Despite his preeminence in twentieth-century music, the late works of Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) remain in relative obscurity: seldom performed, inadequately recorded, poorly understood, and frequently disparaged. The troubled reception of these works stands in remarkable contradiction to the composer’s ever-increasing renown; few contemporary composers can rival Stravinsky in terms of popular acclaim, concert performances, recordings, or continuing influence. Stravinsky’s late pieces were the subject of enormous controversy in the 1950s and 1960s. Written using the fractious twelve-tone method of Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), these scores represent perhaps the most astonishing change of style ever undertaken by a composer of comparable stature. This thesis will survey the reception of Stravinsky’s major late vocal works in England and America, including In memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954), Canticum sacrum (1956), Threni (1958), A Sermon, a Narrative, and a Prayer (1961), The Flood (1962), Introitus (1965), and Requiem Canticles (1966). The reception of each piece will be traced chronologically, beginning with responses to première performances and progressing to contemporary scholarship. v CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION: THE PROBLEM OF STRAVINSKY’S LATE WORKS Despite his preeminence in twentieth-century music, the late works of Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) remain in relative obscurity: seldom performed, inadequately recorded, poorly understood, and frequently disparaged. The troubled reception of these works stands in remarkable contradiction to the composer’s ever-increasing renown; few contemporary composers can rival Stravinsky in terms of popular acclaim, concert performances, recordings, or continuing influence. In recent decades scholars have cano- nized the eternally chic Russian composer, electing him to a deified clique of artists who have come to personify their respective eras, notably Josquin Desprez (c.1440-1521), Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), and Richard Wagner (1813-1883). Unlike others in this ra- rified company, however, Stravinsky’s eminence is based exclusively on compositions from his early “Russian” and middle “neoclassical” style periods, particularly L’oiseau de feu (1910), Petrushka (1911), Le sacre du printemps (1913), Les noces (1923), Octet (1923), Oedipus Rex (1927), Symphony of Psalms (1930), and The Rake’s Progress (1951). While the late works of other masters, such as Bach’s Das musikalische Opfer (1747) or the Missa solemnis (1824) of Beethoven, are universally lauded, Stravinsky’s last compositions remain dubious. The reception afforded Stravinsky’s late works represents an extraordinary incongruity to the composer’s international celebrity and a significant blight on his legacy. 1 Numerous aspects of Stravinsky’s life and music remain enigmatic. For decades scholars have endeavored to make sense of his oeuvre, with its chameleon-like transfor- mations of genre, language, medium, and style, all of which belies its deeper unity. Even more riddles stem from the composer’s voluminous statements and misstatements concerning his biography, his music, and the music of fellow composers. Stravinsky’s words, received initially as gospel, have frequently proved contradictory, self-serving, and even obfuscating. Consider, for example, the composer’s charge concerning com- promises he found in the late music of Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901). This critique was delivered during a pivotal series of lectures at Harvard University, while his champion- ship of neoclassicism was at its height. Think how subtle and clinging the poison of the music drama was to have insinuated itself even into the veins of the colossus Verdi. How can we help regretting that this master of traditional opera, at the end of a long life studded with so many authentic masterpieces, cli- maxed his career with Falstaff which, if it is not Wagner’s best work, is not Verdi’s best opera either?1 Hindsight has shown the colossal irony of Stravinsky’s indictment.2 Verdi’s adaptation of the ideas of Wagner presaged an even more astonishing transformation late in Stravinsky’s creative life: a decade and a half after his censure of Verdi, Stravinsky em- braced twelve-tone serialism, the fractious compositional system of his own rival, Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). 1 Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl (New York: Vintage Books, 1947), 63. Scholars have since brought to light that these lectures were ghostwritten by Stravinsky associates Roland-Manuel and Pierre Souvtchinsky. 2 Stravinsky, perhaps realizing the irony of this earlier statement in light of his own artistic conversion, later qualified his criticism of Verdi. See Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1959), 83; and Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Themes and Episodes (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966), 3. 2 Stravinsky’s turn to serialism in the 1950s sent shock waves through the world of contemporary music, a world polarized between the competing schools of neoclassicism, of which Stravinsky had been the standard bearer, and the twelve-tone serialism of Schoenberg. Stravinsky’s neoclassicism had dominated European music for three decades, offering to its many adherents a sense of order after the chaos of World War I by returning to the forms, genres, and expressive values of the eighteenth century and be- fore. Kept in the shadows by the hegemony of neoclassicism, the dedicated followers of Schoenberg’s twelve-tone method developed their music in relative obscurity. It was only in the aftermath of World War II that Schoenberg and his followers emerged as the predominant faction in contemporary music. A potent new generation of musicians, in- spired by Anton von Webern (1883-1945), rejected the conservative tradition of neoclassicism in favor of an intensified strain of serialism. Stravinsky, having exhausted his neoclassic urge with his Mozartian opera, The Rake’s Progress, fell under the spell of Webern as well. Soon after Schoenberg’s death, Stravinsky began to experiment incre- mentally with serial methods, developing a unique brand of dodecaphonic serialism that he would employ for the rest of his creative life. A dedicated minority, serial composers celebrated Stravinsky’s adoption of Schoenberg’s methods, realizing that the Russian composer’s celebrity and respectability would help bolster their beleaguered cause. In contrast, many Stravinsky loyalists, heavily invested in the neoclassical style, felt a deep sense of personal betrayal and worse: that the composer had betrayed his own creative genius. Finding fresh ammunition with which to accuse the composer of academicism and emotional miserliness, old enemies attacked Stravinsky’s serial works as slick, cerebral 3 exercises.

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