2020 05 EXILES Late Stravinsky

Exiles from Revolution Stravinsky; the modernist’s homecoming

This is the last of five sessions about exiles from the October Revolution.

Again, the primary focus is on Stravinsky – this time his brief return to the USSR in 1962.

A decade earlier the idea of some sort of rapprochement between Stravinsky and Soviet Music would have been almost inconceivable – how would a composer pursuing modernism have fitted into the frozen conservatism of Stalinist Socialist Realism?

Even with the Khrushchev Thaw, how would Stravinsky’s latest style be accepted by Soviet critics?

Along the way this session encounters another exile, Volkonsky, whose family returned to the USSR, and who took up the challenge of bringing modernism to the USSR.

We will end with one of Stravinsky’s final works, Requiem Canticles, a ritual which links back to Les Noces, which was covered in Session 3.

Stravinsky and the USSR before the homecoming From the late 1920s, Stravinsky, the émigré, was purged from the Soviet repertoire.

He was attacked by musicologists. In 1933 Советская Музыка / Soviet Music carried an article by Arnold Alshvang, which started: ”Stravinsky is an important and almost complete artistic ideologist of the imperialist bourgeoisie”. [Schwarz p 354]

In the mid 1930s, when he was writing An Autobiography, Stravinsky seems quite relaxed about the Bolsheviks.

His book contains one explicit criticism: as a patriot, desperately humiliated … by the monstrous Peace of Brest-Litovsk… [Stravinsky p 73]

And Stravinsky is almost whimsical about his lack of success in USSR: From this I conclude that a change of regime cannot change the truth of the old adage that no man is a prophet in his own country [Stravinsky p 141]

Stravinsky’s attitude changed in the late 1930s as Socialist Realism was unveiled in the USSR, and as he emigrated to the USA.

Stravinsky on Socialist Realism In his Norton Lectures at Harvard, in autumn 1939, Stravinsky was dismissive of Socialist Realism, the new Soviet orthodoxy:

According to present Russian mentality, there are basically two formulas that explain what music is: [a] … Kolkhosians [collective farm workers] surrounded by tractors and automachines (that is the term) dancing with a reasonable gaiety (in keeping with the requirements of communist dignity) to the accompaniment of a people’s chorus

[b] … an elevated style… called upon “to contribute to the formation of the human personality imbued with the environment of its great epoch”.

And Stravinsky gleefully quoted a recent description of Shostakovich’s Fifth Symphony by Alexis Tolstoy: Here we have the “Symphony of Socialism”. It begins with the Largo of the masses working underground… The Allegro in its turn symbolises gigantic factory machinery and its victory over nature. The Adagio represents the synthesis of Soviet culture, science and art… As for the Finale, it is the image of the gratitude and the enthusiasm of the masses. [Stravinsky Poetics p 114-5]

Late Stalinism 1948 was an important year in Soviet Music. The Union of Soviet Composers was given a new leadership, tasked with bringing everyone in line with a stricter late-Stalin era interpretation of Socialist Realism.

Boris Asafiev was the new Chairman of the USC. In the 1920s he had been a great champion of Stravinsky, so, to toe the new line, he had to disavow any earlier convictions. He denounced Stravinsky (along with a legion of other Western artists and thinkers) as an obscurantist and fascist. [Hakobian p 179]

Tikhon Khrennikov was the new General Secretary of the USC. In his first speech in the new post he specifically damned Stravinsky. Rite of Spring expresses Russian “Asianism” in boisterous chaotic intentionally coarse screaming sonorities. Khrennikov also attacked Stravinsky’s other “Russian” works: Petrushka, Les Noces, Rossignol, Mavra… [Schwarz p 225]

The Thaw The Khrushchev Thaw gradually brought Stravinsky back into polite society.

In 1955 Rodion Shchedrin in Советская Музыка / Soviet Music argued for distinguishing youthful Stravinsky “the disciple of Rimsky Korsakov”, from the later Stravinsky “the enemy of his homeland”. [Schwarz p 286]

In 1956 leading musicologist Pavel Apostolov argued for being open to early modernism: Debussy, Ravel, Mahler, Strauss and Stravinsky…

but drawing a line at Western music written after the mid 1920s: “the gangrened appendix of decadence”. [Schwarz p 306]

After years of isolation, the USSR had the self-confidence to resume cultural exchanges. Musical visitors included: 1957 Glenn Gould 1958 Stokowski 1959 Bernstein, and the New York Philharmonic

Bernstein programmed Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and Piano Concerto the first time these works had been performed in the USSR since the 1920s.

An Invitation Stravinsky found himself involved in one of these cultural exchanges in Los Angeles. In June 1961, he conducted a couple of his own works: Violin Concerto and Symphony of Psalms. Soviet composers Tikhon Khrennikov and Kara Karayev also had works in the same concert.

Stravinsky wrote to his old friend, Pierre Suvchinsky Hopeless music by Khrennikov and Karaev. This is incredible rubbish, which I couldn’t escape, particularly because they visited my place the day before for dinner and they invited me to celebrate my eightieth birthday with them in Moscow … what a horror … I do not believe that this invitation signals a sincere and final change towards me and my music because Khrennikov isn’t Yudina, and because the Shostakovich cult isn’t a myth. It is horrible to have to smile when I want to vomit. [letter 12 June 1961, quoted Ivashkin p 12]

Just one week later Stravinsky wrote to Suvchinsky again. He’d received an official invitation. Furthermore, he’d accepted it! [VS & Craft p 469]

Before setting off to Moscow Stravinsky said: Nostalgia has no part in my proposed visit to Russia. My wish to go is due primarily to the evidence I have received of a genuine desire or need for me by the younger generation of Russian musicians. No artist’s name has been more abused in the Soviet Union than mine, but one cannot achieve anything with the Russians by nursing a grudge. [Schwarz p 355]

1962 Visit: the concerts Stravinsky’s visit to the USSR was for three weeks in September and October 1962. That was just before the Cuban missile crisis.

Highlights of the visit: Performances of Stravinsky’s music – four concerts in Moscow, and two in Leningrad Bolshoi visit to hear Prokofiev’s War and Peace Lectures to composers … we’ll come back to this later. Leningrad excursions: Lomonosov (Oranienbaum) the town where Stravinsky was born, And a visit to his niece Xenia who lived a few doors away from his former St Petersburg home by the Kryukov Canal.

The concerts were performed by the Moscow Philharmonic and the Leningrad Philharmonic. Stravinsky conducted most of the music. His assistant, Robert Craft, helped rehearse the orchestras, and conducted the public performances of a couple of works.

The works were selected by the orchestras. Stravinsky commented later that he would have preferred to have included some of his recent works but these were considered too far outside the players’ experience.

1962 Visit: the concerts The works I have found listed for these concerts in various sources are:

Fireworks (1909) Firebird (1910) Petrushka (1911) Rite of Spring (1913) conducted Craft Volga Boatmen (1917) Le Baiser de la fée (1928) conducted Craft Capriccio (1929) soloist Tatyana Nikolayeva Ode (1943) Symphony in Three Movements (1946) Orpheus (1947)

The inclusion of neo-classical works, from Le Baiser de la fée to Orpheus, shows that Soviet officialdom was now reconciled to this aspect of his creative style.

While the Soviet orchestras felt uncomfortable performing Stravinsky’s latest works, the New York City Ballet presented Agon (1957) a few weeks later, during their eight week 1962 tour.

1962 Visit: the concerts The concerts were a huge success; the audience packed with celebrities, and recorded for television.

There were so many curtain calls at the end of the first concert in Moscow that Stravinsky finally put on his overcoat to demonstrate he was expecting to leave very soon. His final words to the audience: “you can’t imagine how happy I am today”. [Walsh p 465]

The New York Times reported a similar atmosphere at the first Leningrad concert. Stravinsky was introduced to the audience by Gerisovsky [a now apparently forgotten Soviet composer] who said Stravinsky had left Russia when it was still under the oppression of the Tsars “but he always remained a Russian composer spreading the glory of Russian art”. [NYT 8 Oct, VS & RC p 469]

LINK 1 (2 x 30 mins)

Here are two thirty minute TV recordings from the 1962 concerts which you can sample…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzmXY63av6o Moscow concert – Petrushka & Volga Boatmen – Moscow Philharmonic

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHgsTq-yNoo Leningrad concert – Fireworks & Firebird – Leningrad Philharmonic

1962 Visit: emotional highlights Robert Craft commented that during the visit Stravinsky: relaxed into colloquial Russian that would have been unthinkable in his Los Angeles home; his praise of Soviet achievements was effusive, and he started underlining the Russianness of all his works… something he had been denying for almost four decades.

In a private meeting with Khrushchev and Culture Minister Ekaterina Furtseva, Khrennikov says Khrushchev offered: Restoration of Stravinsky’s estate at Ustilug / Ustyluh Permanent residency of the USSR Igor’s burial in Russia (… this was tactfully discussed with Igor’s wife, Vera). [Ivashkin p 14]

At the final banquet, after various speeches from the hosts, Stravinsky said: A man has one birthplace, one fatherland, one country—he can have only one country— and the place of his birth is the most important factor in his life. I regret that circumstances separated me from my fatherland, that I did not give birth to my works here and above all that I was not here to help the new Soviet Union create its new music. I did not leave Russia of my own will, even though I disliked much in my Russia and in Russia generally. Yet the right to criticise Russia is mine, because Russia is mine and I love it, and I do not give any foreigner that right. [Walsh p 467]

1962 visit: encounters with Soviet composers Remember Stravinsky’s comments just before he set off for the USSR: My wish to go is due primarily to the evidence I have received of a genuine desire or need for me by the younger generation of Russian musicians.

The Union of Soviet Composers arranged several events for Stravinsky and young composers.

Robert Craft describes how they sat through a series of recordings of modernist compositions by: Sviridov, Salmanov, Ustvolskaya and Mirzoyan. Stravinsky’s disdainful response to some of this music was used, several months later, by conservative commentator Leonid Ilyichev to discredit the “pathetic untalented imitators” of Western avant garde music. [Schwarz p 356]

Peter Schmelz interviewed several Soviet composers who had met Stravinsky, forty years later… Boris Tishchenko was overwhelmed by having met Stravinsky: It was a subject of absolutely cosmic scale for Russian musicians. I remember every word he spoke… To be so close to him, shake his hand… [Schmelz p 60]

Sergei Slominsky was underwhelmed: I did not show him my scores… it seemed to me that he absolutely didn’t want to see them. It was funny. He behaved disdainfully to ward Ustvolskaya and Salmanov. He was not gentle. But when I asked him about his compositions, he spoke with interest. [Schmelz p 61]

1962 visit: encounters with Soviet composers Stravinsky gave several talks to young composers about dodecaphonic music. This was increasingly important in Stravinsky’s work and was overwhelmingly important in new Western music of the 1950s.

Dodecaphony had been launched by Arnold Schoenberg in 1923. While Stravinsky had been pursuing neo-classicism as the antidote to late Romanticism, the “Second Viennese School” had developed a new organisational approach to composition, systematically using all twelve notes of the chromatic scale.

Anton Webern (died in 1945) had become the main influence for the latest wave of modernists, who followed the siren of total organisation.

Robert Craft, who first started working with Stravinsky in 1948, had an interest in dodecaphonic music, and he gradually persuaded Stravinsky to try it. The death of Schoenberg in 1951 perhaps cleared a psychological barrier for Stravinsky since the 1920s Stravinsky and Schoenberg had been positioned as polar opposites.

1962 visit: encounters with Soviet composers In the USSR, dodecaphony was beyond the pale… certainly for public performance.

The standard academic text at the time of Stravinsky’s visit was Shneyerson On Music Living and Dead, first published in 1960.

It lambasted Schoenberg, whose “role in the history of music was extremely negative. He succeeded in confusing and destroying much in musical life, but he did not succeed in creating anything.” [Schmelz p 41]

But, as an academic text it, included many worked examples of dodecaphonic practice. Schmelz stresses how important these were to young composers, who painstakingly studied them. Interestingly, when the second edition of On Music Living and Dead was published, in 1964, the number of worked examples of the forbidden fruit had significantly increased.

Back to 1962… during a two hour lecture on dodecaphony in the Leningrad House of Composers, standing under a portrait of Glazunov, Stravinsky was asked: “doesn’t [dodecaphony] constrain inspiration? Isn’t it a new dogmatism?”

Stravinsky replied: “of course it is a dogmatism but don’t dismiss it because of that. So was the old system constricting and dogmatic to bad composers”. [Schwarz p 426]

Canticum Sacrum as an example of Stravinsky’s new dodecaphonic technique The earliest example of Stravinsky using dodecaphony is found in brief elements of Cantata (1952).

The first example of an entire movement within a work being dodecaphonic comes from 1955: Surge, aquilo the second movement of Canticum Sacrum ad Honorem Sancti Marci Nominis / Sacred Canticle honouring the name of St Mark.

This work is dedicated to: The City of Venice, in praise of its Patron Saint, the Blessed Mark, Apostle.

A Latin version of the dedication is sung as a brief introduction: Urbi Venetiae in laude Sancti sui Presidis Beati Marci Apostolis.

The main body of the work has five sections; the middle section is approximately half the duration of the entire work. It is suggested that this structure is intended to parallel the five domes of St Mark’s Basilica.

The texts are all biblical – from either the Old Testament, or the gospel of St Mark. The work includes a wide variety of musical styles, covering the span of European musical history.

Surge, aquilo is entirely dodecaphonic. The text is from Song of Songs. The vocal part for solo tenor is florid reminiscent of Monteverdi, who had a significant link to of St Mark’s Basilica. The instrumental accompaniment (flute, cor anglais, harp, and three double basses) is reminiscent of mature Webern.

Surge, aquilo, et veni, auster: Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; perfla hortum meum, et fluant aromata illius. blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Veniat dilectus meus in hortum suum, Let my beloved come into his garden, et comedat fructum pomorum suorum. and eat his pleasant fruits. Veni in hortum meum, soror mea, sponsa; I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse: messui myrrham meam cum aromatibus meis; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice; comedi favum cum melle meo; I have eaten my honeycomb with my honey; bibi vinum meum cum lacte meo; I have drunk my wine with my milk: comedite, amici, et bibite, eat, O friends; drink, et inebriamini, carissimi. yea, drink abundantly, O beloved. (Song of Songs 4:16 + 5:1 Vulgate) (KJV)

LINK 2 (3 mins)

Here’s a performance conducted by Simon Preston www.youtube.com/watch?v=53w4ueEFUtU Stravinsky: Canticum Sacrum - 2. Surge, aquilo, cond Simon Preston

Soviet reviews of Stravinsky’s late period Soviet critics were dismissive of dodecaphonic music, regardless of whether it was written by Stravinsky.

Israel Nesteyev reviewed Canticum Sacrum Soviet Music journal in 1958. He re-titled the work: Holy Cacophony, and asked: “how ravaged, how emasculated must have been the soul of the composer capable of creating such dreadful music”. [Schwarz p 354-5]

Agon The Soviet public had the opportunity to see Stravinsky’s dodecaphonic ballet Agon in October 1962, days after Stravinsky’s own visit ended; New York City Ballet toured with Balanchine’s production.

Agon has dodecaphonic music, there are twelve performers on stage, and the ballet consists of four sets of three dances (yes… 4 x 3 = 12).

Soviet critics were unimpressed: could hardly be [Stravinsky’s] best works… is nearer to mathematics than to art… this work is being addressed to our brain, says nothing to our heart… morbid tragedy… Balanchine’s production was cold and somewhat inhuman. [see Marcy]

Andrei Mikhailovich Volkonsky (1933-2008) At the time of Stravinsky’s visit in 1962, the Soviet Union had already had the premiere of its first home grown dodecaphonic music.

This was Volkonsky’s Musica Stricta, a four movement piece for solo piano written in 1956-7, first performed in public by Maria Yudina in April 1961.

Volkonsky is a fascinating character – a double émigré. His family fled the Revolution, and settled in Geneva, where Andrei was born in 1933. He was accepted into Geneva conservatoire, where his piano teacher was Dinu Lipatti. But in 1947 the family decided to return to their Russian roots.

Volkonsky was accepted by Moscow Conservatoire, where he studied composition initially with Shaporin, later with Shebalin. He was expelled from the Conservatoire, but somehow was accepted into the Union of Soviet Composers.

From the beginning his works attracted attention. His Concerto for Orchestra of 1953 was neo-classical, and one critic – Kukharsky – noted “Stravinskyisms conditioned by his bourgeois past”. [Hakobian p 225]

Volkonsky Criticism of Volkonsky mounted with Musica Stricta: Dodecaphonic music was not approved for general consumption. The dedication to Maria Yudina was also seen as a challenge; Yudina was a persistent critic of the Soviet regime.

His next major work, Suite of Mirrors, was premiered in February 1962. Criticism intensified. A meeting with Khrushchev was planned to win this talented composer back to the cause, but Volkonsky went missing, staying with a friend in Georgia for several months.

In 1965, after a performance of his next non-conformist work, Laments of Shchaza, the Union of Soviet Composers took action, and removed Volkonsky’s accreditation as a composer. He built a new career as a performer, founding and leading a “music before Bach” ensemble, Madrigal.

For several years Volkonsky was a focal point for unofficial art in the USSR. Art exhibitions and post-concert parties were held in his apartment.

Volkonsky The poet Gennadi Aygi describes Volkonsky’s significance in the USSR: What was important for us was that he alone had a connection with the West. After the war, his family returned to the Soviet Union from [the West], and Andrei, ignoring the danger, continued to maintain his connections with foreign friends. All works of Western literature reached him: Ionesco, Beckett, Kafka, and through him we became acquainted with the Encyclopaedia of Abstract Art… He was the first to bring into our lives the music of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Through him we became familiar with the newest music of Schoenberg and Webern… in that sense he was a teacher of artists, poets, and musicians alike. He himself never suspected that, thanks to his marvellous, impulsive, brilliant nature, his artistry, he was our Teacher. [Aygi quoted Schmelz p 69-70]

Volkonsky’s role in unofficial art didn’t suit the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. It was time to ease Volkonsky out of the USSR.

In the early 1970s the basis of his salary was changed, so he received a casual hourly rate for his performances, radically reducing his earnings.

In December 1972 he was expelled from the Union of Soviet Composers, which ended all employment and royalty payments, and left him open to charges of social parasitism.

Volkonsky married a Jew, and applied for an exit visa to Israel. For several months the state humiliated him, neither allowing him to work, nor issuing a visa. Finally he left in May 1973. Soon after that he settled in Paris.

Musica Stricta Andrei Volkonsky’s Musica Stricta is often cited as the first Soviet work to use dodecaphonic techniques. Written in 1956-7. Dedicated to Maria Yudina, who gave its first performance in April 1961.

It is in four movements: I Andantino II Allegretto III Lento rubato IV Allegro marcato

Volkonsky later admitted that while he understood dodecaphonic technique in principal, “[in Musica Stricta] I did everything incorrectly… there are octaves, for example, which Schoenberg forbade, and there are also triads, which he also forbade. But I simply didn’t know that; I thought I had written a twelve-tone composition… I named it Musica Stricta because of the strict techniques, although I used them entirely according to my own manner.” [Schmelz p 88]

LINK 3 (10 mins) www.youtube.com/watch?v=sP229E_SC4M Volkonsky: Musica stricta played Alexei Grots, piano

Soviet relaxation on dodecaphony Let’s go back to Stravinsky’s 1962 lectures to Soviet composers about dodecaphony. At the end of one of the lectures he turned to address Khrennikov [Head of the Union of Soviet Composers] “You too Tikhon Nikolayevich will be trying it soon”. “Everyone laughed”, says Robert Craft… “including Khrennikov”.

In his official capacity, Khrennikov continued to berate dodecaphony: “We all know that certain Soviet composers show a heightened interest in twelve-tone gimmicks. Influences of the avant-garde music have worked their way into some Socialist countries, even becoming widespread there. This is a bad sign” [conference in October 1963 Schwarz p422]

However, there was a gradual relaxation in attitude to dodecaphony in Soviet music.

Canny new generation Soviet musicians used dodecaphonic music under the banner of Socialist Realism; when their music illustrated conflict between Good and Evil, they clothed Good in conventional tonality, and Evil in cacophonous dodecaphony.

Among senior composers, Shostakovich used dodecaphonic techniques in Twelfth String Quartet (1968) and Fourteenth Symphony (1969). In the journal Юность / Youth in May 1968 Shostakovich wrote: If a composer sets himself the obligatory task of writing dodecaphonic music, then he artificially limits his possibilities, his ideas. The use of elements from these complex systems is fully justified if it is dictated by the concept of the composition. [Quoted Fay p 258]

Khrennikov tries dodecaphony: Second Piano Concerto After years of polemical orthodoxy, it was a surprise to find Khrennikov turning to “twelve-tone gimmicks”.

Second Piano Concerto starts with an extended piano solo. At first a single line of crochets, then gradually adding harmony. The first twelve notes are a dodecaphonic tone row, but as the piano solo progresses it becomes more conventional, until it resembles Skryabin. Yes… it’s a musical joke.

There are three movements: I Introduction. Moderato II Sonata. Allegro con fuoco III Rondo. Giocoso - Andantino

This is a compact virtuosic concerto clearly rooted in Russian piano tradition. Khrennikov said his musical heroes were: Bach, Tchaikovsky, and Prokofiev; the influence of all three can be heard in this concerto… especially Prokofiev. There is some archetypal Soviet orchestration; in the third movement tambourines accompany the piano, reminding me of Khachaturian, who was a close friend of Khrennikov.

The concerto ends by reprieving the final section of the first movement; music which is neither heroic nor positive, but rather equivocal.

Tikhon Nikolaevich Khrennikov (1913-2007): Second Piano Concerto This concerto was written in 1971, almost forty years after his First Piano Concerto.

First performance 8 February 1972, Moscow, USSR State Symphony Orchestra conducted Svetlanov Piano soloist Khrennikov

Here’s a link to Khrennikov performing the concerto in 1981. (The music starts at 1’20, after the announcer introduces the piece, list the movements, and the players.)

LINK 4 (20 mins) www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvU_Wkpe8mE Khrennikov: Second Piano Concerto Moscow PO cond Kitayenko, pianist Khrennikov

Stravinsky Requiem Canticles (1966) We are going to end this session with one of Stravinsky’s final works; Requiem Canticles. He wrote it during 1965-6, and it was first performed at Princeton, 8 October 1966.

His widow said: He and we knew he was writing it for himself.

It was performed during Stravinsky’s funeral in Venice in 1971.

The text is extracted from the Roman Catholic Requiem; it represents about 10% of the liturgy. The style is dodecaphonic, but Stravinsky often makes the music sound like extended tonality or bitonality.

Stravinsky wrote notes to accompany Robert Craft’s recording of Requiem Canticles: most listeners seemed to find it the easiest to take home of my last-period – or last-ditch-period – music, and though I know of no universal decision as to whether it is to be thought of as compressed or merely brief, I think the opus may safely be called the first mini or pocket Requiem.

Stravinsky Requiem Canticles Stravinsky’s notes also acknowledge (in a roundabout way) that this music might include a few reminiscences of his life as a composer: some people professed to hear curious echoes … Oedipus Rex in the Tuba mirum, The Wedding [Les Noces] in the Postlude...

The beginning sounds like Symphony in C… except for a key change,.

Why would it be appropriate for the trumpet in Tuba mirum to echo Oedipus Rex? Well in Oedipus Rex the trumpet call is where the narrator announces: “And now you will hear the messenger describe Jocasta’s doom”.

At the end of Requiem Canticles the tolling bells are a remarkable echo of the end of Les Noces; like Les Noces there is a sense that we have been observing and overhearing a ritual.

Is Requiem Canticles the ‘Dispatches’ counterpart to Les Noce’s ‘Matches’?

Stravinsky Requiem Canticles The structure of Requiem Canticles is six short vocal movements, divided by an Interlude, and framed by Prelude and Postlude.

Singers: solo contralto, solo bass and mixed choir. Orchestra: flutes, bassoons, horns, trumpets, trombones, percussion, harp, piano, celesta and strings.

The orchestra is never used in full force. Prelude strings alone Interlude woodwind, horn and timpani Postlude flutes, horns and percussion.

These orchestral sections are a sort of truncated version of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief… Prelude depicts mourning; tense ostinato, against which occasionally we hear lamenting solo violin Interlude as a funeral procession Postlude is acceptance of death.

Robert Craft described the Postlude as the chord of Death, followed by silence, the tolling of bells, and again silence, all thrice repeated, then the three final chords of Death alone. [Boosey & Hawkes web site]

Stravinsky Requiem Canticles

I Prelude II Exaudi orationem meam, ad te omnis caro veniet. O hear my prayer, all flesh shall come to Thee III Dies irae, dies illa, The day of wrath, that day Solvet saeclum in favilla, will dissolve the world in ashes, Teste David cum Sibylla. David being witness along with Sibyl. Quantus tremor est futurus, How great will be the quaking, Quando Judex est venturus, when the Judge is about to come, Cuncta stricte discussurus! strictly investigating all things. IV Tuba mirum spargens sonum The trumpet, scattering a wondrous sound Per sepulchra regionum through the sepulchres of the regions, Coget omnes ante thronum will summon all before the throne. V Interlude VI Rex tremendae majestatis, King of fearsome majesty, Qui salvandos salvas gratis, Who gladly saves those fit to be saved, Salva me, fons pietatis. save me, O font of mercy. VII Lacrimosa dies illa, Tearful will be that day, Qua resurget ex favilla, on which from the glowing embers will arise Judicandus homo reus, the guilty man who is to be judged. Huic ergo parce Deus: Pie Jesu Domine, Then spare him, O God. Merciful Lord Jesus, Dona eis requiem. Amen. grant them rest. Amen.

VIII Libera me Domine, de morte aeterna, Deliver me, O Lord, from everlasting death, in die illa tremenda: on that dreadful day: Quanto coeli movendi sunt et terra: When the heavens and the earth shall be moved: Dum veneris judicare saeculum per ignem. When Thou shall come to judge the world by fire. Tremens factus sum ego, et timeo, I quake with fear and I tremble, dum discussio venerit, atque ventura ira. awaiting the day of account and the wrath to come. Quando coeli movendi sunt et terra. When the heavens and the earth shall be moved: Dies illa, dies irae, calamitatis et miseriae, That day, the day of anger and calamity, of misery, dies magna et amara valde. that great day and most bitter. Libera me. Deliver me. IX Postlude

LINK 5 (15 mins) www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzR6NK2YMwE Stravinsky: Requiem Canticles Robert Craft conducts the Philharmonia Orchestra and the Simon Joly Chorale

Coda: Stravinsky and exile To end this series on musical exiles, let’s go back to Stravinsky addressing Soviet composers in 1962:

A man has one birthplace, one fatherland, one country—he can have only one country— and the place of his birth is the most important factor in his life. I regret that circumstances separated me from my fatherland, that I did not give birth to my works here and above all that I was not here to help the new Soviet Union create its new music. I did not leave Russia of my own will, even though I disliked much in my Russia and in Russia generally. Yet the right to criticise Russia is mine, because Russia is mine and I love it, and I do not give any foreigner that right.

And add the perspective of another exile – the Czech writer Milan Kundera:

Without a doubt, Stravinsky… bore within him the wound of his emigration; without a doubt, his artistic evolution would have taken a different path if he had been able to stay where he was born. In fact the start of his journey through the history of music coincides roughly with the moment when his native country ceases to exist for him; having understood that no country could replace it, he finds his only homeland in music; this is not just a nice lyrical conceit of mine, I think it in an absolutely concrete way: his only homeland, his only home, was music, all of music by all musicians, the very history of music; there he ultimately found his only compatriots, his only intimates, his only neighbours from Pérotin to Webern; it is with them that he began a long conversation, which only ended with his death.

He did all he could to feel at home there: he lingered in every room of that mansion, touched every corner, stroked every piece of furniture… [Kundera Testaments Betrayed p 96-7]

Bibliography

Laurel Fay Shostakovich: a Life 2000 Levon Hakobian Music of the Soviet Era (2nd Edition) 2017 Alexander Ivashkin Stravinsky and Khrennikov: an unlikely alliance 2013 Milan Kundera Testaments Betrayed 1995 Rachel Marcy Dancers and Diplomats: 2014 New York City Ballet in Moscow, October 1962 Anthony Payne Requiem Canticles (in Tempo Summer 1967) 1967 Jeffery Perry A Requiem for the Requiem 1993 On Stravinsky's Requiem Canticles Peter Schmelz Such freedom, if only musical 2009 Unofficial Soviet music during the Thaw Boris Schwarz Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia 1917-1970 1972 Igor Stravinsky An Autobiography 1936 Igor Stravinsky Poetics of Music (Norton lectures 1939-40) 1942 V Stravinsky & R Craft Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents 1978 Stephen Walsh Stravinsky: Second Exile France and America 1934-71 2010