The complete idiot's guide to classical music (43 page)

It was a short, jubilant piece called “Fireworks,” written in celebration of the wedding of Rimsky’s daughter, that gave Stravinsky his big chance. In the audience at its 1909 premiere was Serge Diaghilev, father figure of the new Ballet Russe, who felt that the music was “new and original, with a tonal quality that should surprise the public.” First testing Stravinsky with a minor commission, the orchestration of a Chopin waltz and nocturne for use in the ballet
Les Sylphides,
Diaghilev cabled him to start work on an original dancework based on several Russian legends about “The Firebird.”

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Diaghilev had originally assigned the score to Anton Liadov, but when that notoriously procrastinating Russian composer diddled around too long for Diaghilev’s volatile temperament, Stravinsky got the job.

The premiere of
The Firebird
ballet on June 25, 1910, a week and a day after Stravinsky’s 28th birthday, catapulted the unknown composer to international fame; next came another highly acclaimed folklore-inspired ballet,
Petrouchka,
and then the roof fell in with the third Diaghilev-Stravinsky collaboration,
Le Sacre du Printemps
(The Rite of Spring). “It will be jolting and emotional experience for the viewer,” predicted the dancer Nijinsky, in what proved to be the understatement of the decade.

The Paris premiere literally caused a riot heard around the world. Legends have emerged about the duels that were fought between pro- and anti-Stravinsky proponents in the crowd, and how swooning women had to be carted out of the hall in droves, but distinguished literary personalities left us objective eyewitness accounts that are hardly less astonishing. According to the American novelist and critic Carl Van Vechten, “a certain part of the audience began, very soon after the rise of the curtain, to make cat-calls, and to offer audible suggestions as to how the performance should proceed. The young man seated behind me stood up, and the intense excitement under which he was laboring betrayed itself when he began to beat rhythmically on top of my head with his fists. . . .”

Even the musicians were a house divided. Saint-Saens bellowed that Stravinsky was a faker, Ravel yelled back that he was a genius, and in between them stood Debussy, pathetically trying to shush everybody up so the music could be heard at all. Stravinsky, meanwhile, slammed out of the hall in a fury and rushed backstage. “For the rest of the performance,” he recalled, “I stood in the wings behind Nijinsky, holding the tails of his jacket while he stood on a chair shouting numbers to the dancers like a coxswain.”

The scandal may have ruined the premiere, but its reportage, and several highly successful subsequent concert performances, cemented Stravinsky’s reputation. The music itself, meanwhile, sent shock waves through the entire musical community. As Harold Schonberg wrote, “ ‘Le Sacre’, with its metrical shiftings and shattering force, its near-total dissonance and breakaway from established canons of harmony and melody, was a genuine explosion. For decades there were repercussions, as composers all over the world imitated the new Stravinsky rhythms and sonorities. . . .”

With the onset of World War I, Stravinsky moved to Switzerland, where his musical path took a neoclassic turn. War, even in a neutral country, means shortages, and that includes the pool of available performers. Having turned the musical world upside down with his large-scale ballets, Stravinsky pulled in his dissonant horns and produced such smaller-scale and far more accessible works as the witty
L’Histoire du Soldat
(The Soldier’s Tale) for narrator and seven players, and the jaunty “Ragtime for Eleven Instruments.”

Returning to Paris after the war, Stravinsky paid homage to earlier masters, wrapping music of Pergolesi and other Italian composers in the spiky harmonies of his “Pulcinella,” and swiping Tchaikovsky themes for us in the ballet
Le Baiser de la Fee
(The Fairy’s Kiss). He explored other aspects of his Russian heritage in “Les Noces” (the title translates as “Little Wedding”), a portrait of a peasant marriage ceremony, and
Mavra,
a short opera based on a Pushkin story. He explored baroque forms in his Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra and the Brandenburg-like
Dumbarton Oaks
Concerto (named for the Washington, D.C. estate of the couple who had commissioned it); he daringly combined vocal and instrumental concepts in the
Symphony of Psalms.

After 29 years in France, the gathering war clouds again forced Stravinsky to move, and in 1939 he found his way to America, his adopted homeland giving impetus to his
Ebony Concerto
for clarinet and swing band (written for jazz great Artie Shaw), the
Circus Polka
(which brightened performances at the Ringling Brothers Circus), and even some ballet music for the Broadway musical
The Seven Lively Arts
(a show that also boasted an overture by William Schuman and an intermission display of Salvadore Dali paintings).

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
You never know where inspiration will strike. After a visit to the men’s room at Harvard, Stravinsky wrote a piece for unaccompanied treble voice called “Do Not Throw Paper Towels in Toilet.”

Stravinsky’s long-time association with choreographer George Balanchine at the New York City Ballet yielded three masterpieces based on Greek legend,
Orpheus, Apollo
, and
Agon;
he contributed a score for a CBS-TV special
Noah and the Flood
, and among his final works was an “Elegy for J.F.K.”

All through his long life, Stravinsky allowed his music to evolve in unexpected stylistic directions. Sticking to any one pattern, he felt, was not only failing to progress, but actually going backward. “I live neither in the past nor in the future,” he said. “I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth; I can only know what the truth is or me today.” As a result, you never knew what Stravinsky would come up with next; all you did know is that it would be well worth waiting for.

Stravinsky’s place in the pantheon of immortal composers is secure, and for a change, the composer lived long enough to reap a full measure of critical and audience acclamation.
Le Sacre du Printemps
, which once caused such hysteria, has long since been a staple of our concert repertory, and while some of his more prickly pieces have yet to find full public favor, Stravinsky evenings at the ballet are predictable sellouts. No riots, now, just bountiful applause.

Start with the mighty ballet trilogy,
Firebird, Petrouchka
, and
Le Sacre du Printemps. Agon
is pretty tough going, so better move along to Stravinsky’s more gracious musical depictions of
Apollo
and
Orpheus,
and perhaps sit in on the zesty
Jeu de Cartes
(Card Game), which Stravinsky described as “a Ballet in Three Deals.” The old Italian flavorings of “Pulcinella” and the Tchaikovskian spirit of “The Fairy’s Kiss” are both thoroughgoing delights, as is
L’Histoire du Soldat,
which you can enjoy as a chamber trio, ensemble suite, or full-fledged drama with spoken narration.

The
Ebony Concerto,
“Ragtime for Eleven Instruments,” and “Circus Polka” are hardly works of high import, but Stravinsky’s use of popular idioms gives them a quirky wit. And for those with short attention spans, sample such other easy-to-take miniatures as the “Scherzo a la Russe,” the two Suites for Small Orchestra, and the early wedding piece that ignited Stravinsky’s long ride to musical glory, “Fireworks.”

In this chapter, we’ve moved from Mahler, whose heart and soul throbbed with all the fabled fervor of the romantics, to Stravinsky, who revolutionized the creative spirit in our own century. Along the way, we visited with composers in France, Germany, and the U.S. who, each in his own way, contributed to the ongoing evolution of classical music as we know it today.

We urge you to explore many more of the creative geniuses who are also part of this link from past to future. Start with Maurice Ravel, Debussy’s partner in bringing Impressionism to world attention and enticement; then, to further pursue the French connection, consider such upholders of the Gallic spirit as Camille Saint-Saens, Erik Satie and Francis Poulenc. If you like Vaughan Williams, help yourself to some of the lovely musical landscapes of his fellow Englishman, Frederick Delius. For pianophiles, sample the work of Russia’s Alexander Scriabin or America’s own Edward MacDowell, who wrote some of the most beautiful piano music this side of Chopin. And if Schoenberg is your cup of atonal tea, follow the 12-tone trail to the music of his disciples, Alban Berg and Anton Webern.

The main thing is to enlarge the scope of your musical enjoyment as much as possible, without getting too hooked on any particular style or era. As the famous poet and playwright Oliver Goldsmith so wisely observed more than 200 years ago: “women and music should never be dated.”

 

• The turn of the century brought many new influences to classical music.
  
 

• Twelve-tone music is atonal.
  
 

• Mahler wrote nine symphonies.
  
 

• Richard Strauss wrote many tone poems.
  
 

• Debussy’s music is made up of colors and rhythms.
  
 

• Schoenberg was a master of atonal music.
  

Chapter 18
 
The 20th Century Mainstream and Beyond

 

• Those Russian composers
  
 

• America the beautiful
  
 

• Synthesizers and electronic orchestras
  
 

• Music from the movies
  

History is rarely cooperative enough to have its dates work out in round numbers, but more or less, the 17th century was Baroque, the 18th Classical, the 19th Romantic. That brings us to the 20th century, which has been conservative, radical, absurdist, neoClassical, neo-Romantic, neo-Baroque, experimental, minimalist, and sundry other labels that will no doubt give pause (if not merriment) to future historians. Which of these many trends will be considered dominant in the 22nd century? Call us in a 100 years or so, and we’ll let you know.

Music chroniclers sometimes date the dawn of the modern age to that historic, not to mention hysterical, 1913 premiere of
The Rite of Spring
. The world would thereafter be in incredible flux, what with two horrific wars, the atomic age, the space age, and the information superhighway, so who would expect music to stay the same?

Hot on the heels of Stravinsky’s musical time bomb came the political and social explosions of the Russian Revolution. Some composers, including Stravinsky, sought their fortunes outside the Soviet Union. Others tried, then rejected, the expatriate life; some never left. But home or abroad, they proved that the Russian soul could not be quenched by Communism.

Born in Ukraine (1891–1953), Sergei Prokofiev started his musical climb to fame as a daring firebrand, a brilliant pianist whose brash, percussive, highly dissonant (or so it seemed at the time) pieces caused great consternation among his conservative professors at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. Like Stravinsky, Prokofiev studied with Rimsky-Korsakov, soaking up the older master’s flair for colorful orchestration; thereafter (like Stravinsky as well), he struck out in totally new musical directions. He wrote one piano piece where the right and left hands played in different keys, and withheld several other pieces from Anatol Liadov, another of his teachers, because “he would probably expel me from the class.” Finally, instead of dutifully playing a classical concerto as his graduation piece, Prokofiev stormed through his own First Piano Concerto, sending the head of the conservatory rushing from the hall in anguish.

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Such was Prokofiev’s reputation as a modernist that Leonid Sabaneyev, a famous Moscow critic, decided not to attend the premiere of the “Scythian Suite,” but wrote a review anyway, kvetching that the music “offered no pleasure or artistic satisfaction even though the composer conducted it with barbaric abandon.” Was Sabaneyev’s face red (and this before the Revolution, mind you) when he found out the next day that the performance had been cancelled!

When the Revolution came, Prokofiev set out for more peaceful climes, touring as pianist and conductor to such distant ports of musical call as Japan, and unveiling his satiric comic opera
The Love for Three Oranges,
in Chicago. Not that things were any more peaceful on the critical front. The
New York Herald
called Prokofiev “a Bolshevist musical agitator,” while the man at the
Times
grimly sat through the First Concerto, cheering up only when the composer-pianist refused to grant an encore. “The Russian heart may be a dark place,” he wrote, “but its capacity for mercy is infinite.”

In 1927 and again in 1929, Prokofiev gave concerts in Russia, and eventually made the fateful decision to return to his homeland. It had less to do with politics than homesickness. “I’ve got to see real winters again,” he wrote, “and springs that burst into being from one moment to the next. I’ve got to hear the Russian language echoing in my ears, I’ve got to talk to people who are of my own flesh and blood, so that they can give me back something I lack—their songs, my songs.”

The Soviets, never too happy about artists escaping their clutches (for years, Stravinsky was considered a turncoat and his music was taboo in the USSR), welcomed Prokofiev back as a musical hero. He fell in step with the ruling cliques, composing all sorts of governmentally approved works, like “Hail to Stalin” and “Hymn to the Soviet Union,” and scored several patriotic film scores, most notably
Alexander Nevsky
. He also produced such delectable apolitical works as the ballet
Romeo and Juliet
and the children’s tale of
Peter and the Wolf
. During World War II, Prokofiev’s
Leningrad
Sonata and the Fifth Symphony expressed the nation’s turmoil, a sense of tragedy and suffering tied to faith and hope in a better future.

Prokofiev’s own future, meanwhile, along with that of Shostakovich, Khatchaturian, and several other of the most significant Russian composers, became seriously clouded in 1948, when the Central Committee of the Soviet Union issued its infamous public denunciation of music that didn’t toe the Communist line (that is, the music wasn’t simple-minded enough for the commissars to figure out what it was all about). The decree, among other things, accused the composers of “decadence” and rejected “as useless and harmful garbage all the relics of bourgeois formalism in musical art.” Nobody quite knew what bourgeois formalism was, but Stalin didn’t like it, so composers had better stop writing it, if they wanted to stay healthy. Fortunately, Prokofiev was 57 years old at the time, and had already created enough harmful garbage to please the dissolute senses of the rest of the world; his place amongst the great composers of the 20th century was secure.

“In my view,” wrote Prokofiev four years later, “the composer must beautify human life and defend it. He must be a citizen first and foremost, so that his art may consciously extol human life and lead man to a radiant future.” Ironically, his death preceded Stalin’s by only a few hours.

If you haven’t actually grown up with
Peter and the Wolf,
this delicious piece offers children (and anybody who was a child) a breezy introduction to the instruments of the orchestra and even the Wagnerian concept of the leitmotif (since each of the characters in the story has its own tune). You can also (mentally) follow the story line in Prokofiev’s incomparable ballet scores to
Cinderella
and
Romeo and Juliet,
and sample his satiric wit in the Suites from
Lt. Kije
and
Love for Three Oranges.

The
Classical
Symphony is a charming work in olden style (though early critics inexplicably still found it to be “an orgy of discordant sounds”), and pianophiles have much to explore, perhaps starting with the Third Concerto and the Seventh Sonata. Finally, don’t miss
Alexander Nevsky
, converted by Prokofiev himself from the background score for the classic film into a powerfully dramatic cantata.

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906–1975) spent his teenage years during the most difficult days of the Russian Revolution. Political goals had far outshouted social needs, and famine had wreaked havoc among the population of St. Petersburg (now called Petrograd, though it would soon enough be renamed Leningrad). When Dmitri entered the conservatory, the director actually had to apply to the Commissar of Education to get an increased food ration for the undernourished child.

Shostakovich’s creative originality won him high praise at first, but as the commissars began getting their repressive act together, and Soviet society became more and more prudish, satiric works like his opera
The Nose,
and sensational ones, such as
Lady MacBeth of Mtsensk
became the subject of ridicule in the government press, with organs like
Pravda
scorning the “bourgeois decadence” of the former and dismissing the latter as “a bedlam of noise.”

 
Bet You Didn’t Know
Even when Shostakovich tried to produce a politically acceptable piece, such as
The Limpid Brook,
a pastoral ballet about life on a collective farm,
Pravda
panned it for not treating Soviet workers with sufficient dignity.

It was not until his Fifth Symphony that Shostakovich managed to reconcile his own artistic integrity with the demands of political necessity. He subtitled the work “A Soviet Artist’s Reply to Fair Criticism,” just to make sure the commissars got the point, and the apology worked wonders with
Pravda
. “The powerful sounds stirred the audience,” wrote their now enthusiastic critic at the premiere; “joy and happiness streamed from the orchestra like a spring breeze.”

Joy and happiness, alas, were not to be Shostakovich’s lot. Fearful of ruination (or worse) at government hands, he treaded very carefully, burying many of his creative instincts behind a facade of acceptance, squirreling away works likely to cause controversy—such as a cycle of songs on Jewish texts—against the day when a less repressive regime would make their publication less life-threatening. With the arts getting comparatively low priority during World War II, Shostakovich could continue his work relatively undisturbed, winning Stalin Prizes for his 1940 Piano Quintet and his stunning “Leningrad” Symphony (no. 7), the latter dedicated by the composer “to our struggle against Fascism, to our future victory, and to my native city.”

In 1948, though, as earlier mentioned, the cultural roof fell in, and Shostakovich was in the political doghouse again. In public, he proclaimed his contrite allegiance to Soviet ideals (“I shall try again to create symphony works close to the spirit of the people from the standpoint of ideological subject matter, musical language and form”); in private, he poured out his tormented soul in instrumental pieces—sonatas, string quartets, symphonies—the true meaning of which he revealed only to family and trusted friends. Under the guise of political correctness, Shostakovich continued to display deep personal heroism, writing poignant and heartfelt music that would long outlive the attempts of petty functionaries to control his creative spirit.

In order both to appease his critics and make a living, Shostakovich turned out barrels of charming, lighthearted music for films and the ballet. “The Age of Gold,” “The Gadfly,” and several other suites offer an easy entree to at least one side of his musical personality. The bright and bouncy Piano Concerto no. 1, the
Festival
Overture, and the playful little Ninth Symphony are in similarly easy-to-take style. Like Beethoven’s, the Fifth Symphony is the best-known of the Shostakovich Symphonies, but the Seventh Symphony and Eighth String Quartet, both inspired by the horrific war years, are unforgettable. The Symphony no. 13, subtitled “Baba Yar” after the place where Jews were massacred by the Nazis during their occupation of Kiev is also well-known. The 13th also uses a bass soloist and chorus, and has a text by the famous Russian poet Evgeny Yevtushenko.