Some Characteristics of Stravinsky's Diatonic Music Author(s): Pieter C. van den Toorn Source: Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Autumn - Winter, 1975), pp. 104-138 Published by: Perspectives of New Music Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/832545 Accessed: 27-03-2015 12:39 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/832545?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Perspectives of New Music is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Perspectives of New Music. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 143.107.83.231 on Fri, 27 Mar 2015 12:39:19 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF STRAVINSKY'S DIATONIC MUSIC PIETER C. VAN DEN TOORN Stravinsky'smusic has seemed stubbornlyto resist binding theoretical legislation.That thismay be consideredcurious is owing to the conviction- voiced by those familiarwith the literature-that there is a consistency,an identity,or distinctivenesshere that certainlyought to lend itselfto such legislation.Curious, too, because the attentionaccorded thismusic over the past fiftyyears has been staggering: the elusive (if at times highlysugges- tive) imprintof tonally functional relations has been circumventedin ap- peals to a "basic cell" rationale whereby "coherence" is attributed to the unfolding of some intervallicallyconceived cohesiveness; "neo-Classical" ventures have been juxtaposed with models drafted from Baroque and Classical C-scale literaturein an effortto track down the contamination, the departure fromtraditional (tonal) form,or the "impurities"or "wrong notes" with which Stravinskyhas been cited. Roy Travis, apropos the first pages of the Introduction to Le Sacre, has suggested that, by substituting "tonic sonority"for "tonic triad", we might find techniques analogous to those of tonal practice (as interpretedby Heinrich Schenker) ; and Allen Forte has subjected the whole of Petroushka (with its sizable "chunks" of diatonic material) to a Schenker-typeanalysis.' But I thinkit questionable whether the analytical methods in even the most revealing of these and similar endeavors can be considered all that appropriate with respect to the bulk of Stravinsky'swork (or with respect to any concern for consis- tency,identity, or distinctiveness),whether, respecting the last of these,the 1 Roy Travis, "Towards a New Concept of Tonality?", Journal of Music Theory (November, 1959); Allen Forte, Contemporary Tone Structures (New York: Columbia UniversityPress, 1955); or, for an example of the model approach, see Edward Cone's "The Uses of Convention: Stravinskyand his Models", Stravinsky, ed. Paul Henry Lang (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963). This content downloaded from 143.107.83.231 on Fri, 27 Mar 2015 12:39:19 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions STRAVINSKY'S DIATONIC MUSIC 105 transferof termsand concepts intimatelyassociated with tonal practice to a music which is at least problematic in this respectdoes not confuse rather than illuminate, jeopardizing at the same time any binding, "particular- izing" understanding this analytic-theoreticalreckoning might have af- forded the literaturefor which it was intended. Moreover, apart from the philosophical or psychological understanding to which some have ad- dressed themselves,existing attempts to bind in semi-technicalterms have had the most frightfulof results,a dialogue so misleading, so full of con- tradiction as to stupefy,frighten, or otherwiseoffend the most conscien- tious of readers. And we might cite the general confusionwhich permeates the pages of Paul Collaer's discussion as exemplary in this respect.2 For here, as in other such documents, a bewildering succession of descriptive terms and explanatory notions, invariably left un- or under-defined,de- prives the undertaking of all meaning and consequence: Stravinsky's music, everywhereand at once, is made to representor encompass every conceivable technique. And the descriptiveterms and explanatory notions associated with this literature may now seem symptomaticof confusion rather than of any understandingor coming to terms: "pantonality" and "pandiatonicism" appear, in the presence of "diatonicism", merelyto sug- gest the absence of tonally functional relations; and "poly-" or "bi-tonal- ity"-horrors of the musical imagination-have widely (and mercifully) been dismissed as too fantastic (unreal) or too illogical to warrant serious consideration.3 So we might take heed of these discomfortingsigns. It may be that this literature,with its multiplicityof "styles", its diverse and seeminglycon- flictingorientations ("Russian", "neo-Classical", "serial", the-in Arthur Berger's words-"congenital" one toward traditional harmony), its (un- fortunate?) sandwiched positionbetween the pillars of tonalityand twelve- tone orderingprocedures (pillars which, admittedly,might not eventually prove as pillar-like as they now seem), is quite incapable of yielding (or succumbing to) a truly useful set of binding theoretical propositions. Moreover, as long as this literaturecontinues to attract the kind of interest and attention it has in the past, the likelihood of such a design seems, ironically,all the more improbable. In our quest for a theoretical frame- work and an accompanying analytical approach (or approaches) which will satisfyour binding instincts-substantiate our sense of a distinctive presence-and prove effectivein dealing with the specificityof individual 2 A History of Modern Music, trans. Sally Abeles (Cleveland: World, 1961). 3 See, for example, Allen Forte, op. cit., p. 137; or, Benjamin Boretz, "Meta- Variations, Part IV: Analytic Fallout (I)", PERSPECTIVESOF NEW MUSIC,Vol. 11, No. 1, p. 149. This content downloaded from 143.107.83.231 on Fri, 27 Mar 2015 12:39:19 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 106 PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC works or groups of works,we may have to contend not with consistency, identity,or distinctiveness,but with consistencies,identities, and distinc- tivenesses,several preoccupations which may or may not correspondto the familiarorientation categories or "stylistictrends", each of these suggesting theoretical formulationswith (perhaps slightly) differentapproaches in analytical method. Which brings us to Arthur Berger's classic discussion of "Pitch Organi- zation in Stravinsky"4 where "binding theoretical legislation"-a "self- contained theory" as he puts it-is wisely forsaken (or left to some future date) in favor of a method of classificationwhich deals with what appear to be usefully definable consistencies,identities, or distinctivenesses: 1) diatonic writing (music accountable to the diatonic pitch collection) where pitch-class prioritymay assert itself by means other than tonally functional, so that, in addition to the familiar C-scale or "major scale", this assertion may implicate alternative interval orderingswith respect to the collection (e.g., E-scale or D-scale), this latter terminologyintroduced by Berger for purposes of circumventingtonal and modal implications where theyare clearly irrelevant; 2) octatonic writing (music accountable to the octatonic pitch collection) based on a kind of "background" (0, 3, 6, 9) symmetricalpartitioning of the 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, (2) interval order- ing of the scale; 3) octatonic-diatonicinteraction which, in Berger'swords, "produces a curious alchemy which bringstonal functionalityin its wake", circumstances demonstrated by his analysis of the Symphony of Psalms, firstmovement, where octatonic "blocks" are juxtaposed with diatonic "blocks" referableto the E-scale on E, throughwhich G, as a symmetrically- definedoctatonic partitioningelement, steadily asserts itself to provide, via the "half-cadence" which concludes the firstmovement, the grounds for "the tonal bias that obviouslygoverned its [the Symphony's]conception." And while it is the firstof these ("diatonic writing") which is of concern here, I shall want brieflyto discuss implications regarding the latter two classes, "octatonic writing" and "octatonic-diatonic interaction". For it is the persistenceof "octatonic writing" in this literature-or the partition- ing that may handily be inferredon its behalf-that seems most to justify the kind of classificationBerger indicates. Moreover, the very "character- istics" here to be examined apropos "diatonic writing"can best be under- stood as they interact with referentiallyoctatonic material. So, following these preliminaryremarks on octatonic construction,we can, in Part II, begin to explore the regularitiesgoverning this interactionwhich, in Part III, should provide an adequate foundation for a discussion of Histoire where the octatonic collection figuresonly slightly. 4 "Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky",PERSPECTIVES OF NEW MUSIC, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 11-42. 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