The Apollonian Clockwork: On Stravinsky (Amsterdam University Press - Amsterdam Archaeological Studies)

313 Pages·2006·48.57 MB·English

by  Louis Andriessen

Louis Andriessen and
Elmer Schönberger
The Apollonian
Clockwork
On Stravinsky
3 a
msterdam cademic rchive
A A A
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the apollonian clockwork
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The Amsterdam Academic Archive is an initiative of Amsterdam University Press. The
series consists of scholarly titles which were no longer available, but which
are still in demand in the Netherlands and abroad. Relevant sections of these
publications can also be found in the repository of Amsterdam University Press:
www.aup.nl/repository. At the back of this book there is a list
of all the AAA titles published.
voorwerk Andriessen AAA 14-03-2007 15:22 Pagina iii
Louis Andriessen and
Elmer Schönberger
The Apollonian Clockwork
On Stravinsky
translated from the dutch by
jeff hamburg
3 a
msterdam cademic rchive
A A A
voorwerk Andriessen AAA 21-02-2006 10:46 Pagina iv
The Apollonian Clockwork. On Stravinskyby Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger
was first published in English in 1989 by Oxford University Press,
Oxford/New York (isbn019 315461 7).
Cover design: René Staelenberg, Amsterdam
isbn90 5356 856 5
nur660/662
© Amsterdam University Press • Amsterdam Academic Archive, 2006
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above,
no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means
(electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise)
without the written permission of both the copyright owner
and the author of the book.
voorwerk Andriessen AAA 21-02-2006 10:46 Pagina v
preface to the AAA-edition
Stravinsky demeure, as Pierre Boulez once wrote. Stravinsky remains. Stravinsky lives on,
even though Stravinsky the man died in 1971.
That man named Igor Fyodorovich was born near St Petersburg; he became a resident
of Switzerland, France and California; he died in New York and was buried in Venice. He
came into this world a Russian, lived in it a Frenchman, and departed it an American.
He studied with grand old men from the nineteenth century, worked with leading
artists of the twentieth, and engaged with creative spirits who continue to touch our
lives in the twenty-first. He shocked the musical world with his Rite of Spring; he rein-
vented the musical world with his Pulcinella; he startled the musical world with his Move-
ments. He bestrode the narrow world like a Colossus; and we petty men and women still
walk under his huge legs (legacy), and peep about. Yet what do we really know of the real
Stravinsky? Over the years, thanks to the efforts of many, not least the composer him-
self, ‘Stravinsky has become “Stravinsky”’. Stravinsky remains one of the most familiar
and at the same time one of the most enigmatic figures of the past hundred years.
The Apollonian Clockwork, you might say, is a journey in quest of the ‘real’ Igor Fyodor-
ovich Stravinsky. That we never really find him tells us as much about such quests as it
does about Stravinsky. But as a different Louis (Robert Louis Stevenson) reminds us, to
travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive. And this journey is certainly full of hope.
We follow our Louis and Elmer to New Yorkwhere they fail to learn anything directly
from the ‘charming’ Vera Stravinsky and the ‘orphan’ Robert Craft, though they leave
with a song in their step. We follow the pair round Lake Geneva, where they fail to find
much evidence of the man who composed ‘the music for Fantasia’ there, but who later
discover a truth about Dumbarton Oaksthrough playing ‘bad taste’ piano duet arrange-
ments of Bach. We travel from one city of canals to another, from Amsterdam to St
Petersburg, where we hear a Russian carillon made by a Dutchman. ‘Bells are always
pealing in Russian music and bells are always pealing in the music of the singer’s son.’
These bells ring out at the end of their/our journey and, through them, we glimpse –
darkly – something of the truth not only of ‘Stravinsky’ but also of Stravinsky.
While The Apollonian Clockworkis undoubtedly a serious work of musicology, it merci-
fully reads as neither scientific textbook nor solemn tribute. Reading it is like wander-
ing the streets of Venice, ‘the city [Stravinsky] loved more than any other’. There is no
obvious starting or finishing point (though there’s little point starting where the maes-
tro finished, at the island cemetery of San Michele, as he now only decomposes there).
You know the main landmarks but, approaching them from an unfamiliar angle, you
are continually taken aback. Sometimes, by accident, you end up where you began, but
you discover a hidden gem along the way. There’s a sense of adventure and a sense of
fun. Let’s not begin on the Rialto (The Rite), where all the other tourists throng, but on
the quiet Calle Goldoni (Chanson russe) or in the basilica of Santi Giovanni e Paulo (Requiem
Canticles). And then we might suddenly find ourselves back with the crowds in the Piazza
San Marco, where orient and occident once met (the distant echo of ‘an eastern cathe-
dral’, the opening of the Canticum Sacrum, ad honorem Sancti Marci nominis). As the
v
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authors point out, both Stravinsky’s journey as an émigré through the world and the
compositional journey he took through the history of music followed labyrinthine
paths with sidetracks and detours. Our journey with Louis and Elmer follows a similar
route, similarly revelatory, similarly full of surprises at every turn.
The working hypothesis of Andriessen and Schönberger is that – despite these many
twists and turns, despite the many reinventions of ‘Stravinsky’ by Stravinsky and others
– there remains a recognizable, albeit elusive core to his music, to which we can gain
access via certain fingerprints. They introduce us to his way of thinking about chords;
his understanding of octotony; his ‘utopian unison’; his rhythmic tics. We find these
fingerprints in early and late works; we find them in original compositions and arrange-
ments, between which no distinction can be made. And we find them in his attitude to
other music: ‘The thing that Bach recognized in Vivaldi is the same thing that Stravin-
sky recognized in Bach – himself.’
Stravinsky once declared that he suffered from a rare form of kleptomania. This was
his way of explaining the aspect of his music that had been labelled ‘neoclassical’. He
struck a new relationship with music from the past, which, magpie-like, he stole wher-
ever he found it and re-forged in his own image. It did not much matter what the music
was, though the composers whose music he chose to plunder were those with whom he
had most in common – ‘know-it-alls, money-grabbers and anally fixated hypochondri-
acs’. What makes Stravinsky recognizably Stravinsky, and not just pasticheMonteverdi,
Bach, Pergolesi, Mozart or Tchaikovsky, is what he did with what he found. This is the
central message of The Apollonian Clockwork. Andriessen and Schönberger assert that the
importance of allStravinsky’s music lies in its attitudetowards already existing musical
material, not in the nature of that found material itself. The true influence of Stravin-
sky, then, is not to be heard in those composers who merely imitate the superficial fea-
tures of his style: ‘Everyone, after all, has been influenced by Stravinsky’. No. ‘The true
influence of Stravinsky keeps beginning all over again.’ It is by means of a Stravinskian
attitude that music has been able to renew itself, an attitude that is evident in the music
of, among others, Varèse, Messiaen, Nancarrow, Carter, Birtwistle, Adams and, of
course, Andriessen.
Like his hero and mentor, like all good composers, Andriessen too is a kleptomaniac.
In Stravinsky he hears all manner of things that he steals to use in his own music. It is
these things that he tells us about in the book: ostinato basses, seventh chords, form as
process rather than something already formed, Ravel, anti-Romanticism, Brechtian
irony. This book is as much ‘on Andriessen’ as it is ‘on Stravinsky’. Indeed, it is a kind of
palimpsest in which Andriessen and Schönberger write ‘on (top of) Stravinsky’; Stravin-
sky is written ‘over’, in English and Dutch. (Remember that Stravinsky claimed – dis-
honestly – that he began writing his Pulcinellaon the Pergolesi manuscripts.) In this way
our authors are more honest, more authentic (truthful) than those whose texts pretend
(and inevitably fail) to be objective. Because our authors know that the writing of histo-
ry can never be objective, they have some fun. Like Stravinsky, they play with the past.
So let’s play. Who was the ‘Babar of the French china shop’? Who are the ‘Liberaces of
Baroque music’? What is the ‘principle of the right wrong-note’? What is ‘zoonology’?
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What do Stravinsky and Disney’s Scrooge McDuck have in common? The answers to
this quiz are to be found in the pages of this book. The answers will bring a smile to your
face. Through laughter we are invited to look afresh at what we thought we knew about
Stravinsky and the musical environments in which he lived and worked, and in which
his music – even today – is received.
Much has changed in our world since Het Apollinisch Uurwerk: Over Stravinskywas first
published. St Petersburg was then still known as Leningrad. The ‘east’ of Stravinsky’s
birth was still separated from the ‘west’ of his death by concrete wall and entrenched
ideology. Since 1983 we have come to learn much about Stravinsky’s life, thanks to
Stephen Walsh; we have come to learn much about Stravinsky and the Russian tradi-
tions, thanks to Richard Taruskin. You must turn to these distinguished scholars if you
require chronological exegesis, thorough analysis and meticulous footnoting. But if you
are only ever planning to read one work on Stravinsky, then I strongly recommend you
keep reading the book you are now holding. It remains as fresh today as it was when it
first appeared. It certainly tells us important things about Stravinsky’s life (his friends,
colleagues and accomplices). It tells us important things about Stravinsky’s deep-root-
ed Russianness (via, among other creatures, Misha the bear). It also tells us a great deal
about Stravinsky’s form, harmony, counterpoint, melody, rhythm and aesthetics. But
above all it tells us that Louis Andriessen and Elmer Schönberger love Stravinsky’s
music. That is the true importance of this book. If, by the time you have finished read-
ing it, not even a fleck of their shared enthusiasm has rubbed off on you, then you must
have skin of leather and a heart of stone. It is a book that actually makes you want to lis-
ten to its subject’s music. And how often do we say thatabout a book?
Jonathan Cross
University of Oxford
February 2006
authors’ note
Since this book is an exact copy of the original edition,corrections could not be carried
out. Some errors, such as ‘gr.drum’ instead of ‘bass drum’ (p. 225, Ex. 2) and ‘Zvezdolik’
instead of ‘Zvezdoliki’ (p. 294), are of minor consequence. The typographical error in the
name of one of the 20th century’s main composers in the very Preface, ‘Schoneberg’
instead of ‘Schoenberg’, is, however, regretful.
For that matter, what is there to exaggerate: temperament, sensitivity, wit,
humour, spontaneity, gentleness, strength, or~in the final analysi" the two
characteristics of genius~nalvetc and irony; all of this he already possesses.
Goethe on Haydn
Acknowledgements
Grateful acknowledgements arc due to the following for permission to usc
copyright materiaL
Musical Examples
Boosey and Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd., London
Petrushka, Deux poesies de Balmonl, Le Sacre du prinlemps, Le Rossignol,
Symphonies of Wind Instruments, Mavra, Octet, Concerto for Piano and
Wind, Oedipus Rex, Apollon musagete, I.e Baiser de fa fee, Symphony oj
P~'afms, Duo concertalll, Persephone, Three Pieces for string quartet,
Orpheus, Cantata, Greeting Prelude, The Rake's Progress, Etude for pianola,
Madrid, Agan, Canticum Sacrum, Threni, Variations (Aldous Huxley in
memoriam), Concerto in D for strings, Requiem Canticles, Tres .mcrae
cantiones, La Marseillaise.
Publishers B. Schott's Sohne, Mainz
The Firebird, Concerto for Violin in D, leu de cartes, Concerto in E flat
(Dumbarton Oaks), Symphony in C, Danses Concerlantes, Ode, Sonata for
two pianos, Symphony in Three Movements.
J. and W. Chester/Edition Wilhelm Hansen London Ltd.
Three Easy Pieces, Five Easy Pieces for piano duct, Les Noces (1919 and 1923
versions), L'Histoire du soldat, Song of the Volga Boatmen, Concertina for
string quartet, Les cinq doigts.
Rob. Forberg-P. Jurgenson Musikvcrlag
Le Roi des aoiles.
Mercury Music
The Star-Spangled Ranner (© 1941).
Charling Music Corp.
Ebony Concerto (© 1946).
Quotations
Faber and Faber, London
I. Stmvinsky and R. Craft: Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (1959);