Readers of this blog, and listeners to my NPR shows, will recall that a South Dakota performance of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony last February unforgettably galvanized a Sioux Falls audience. A major factor was a 40-minute preamble, with live music, exploring the symphony’s relationship to the Siege of Leningrad and the depredations of Joseph Stalin. I came away from that experience convinced that this is a work that should never be performed in the US without some form of contextualization.
I had a second such experience at the Brevard Music Festival last week: a performance of Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements that ignited a standing ovation. If you know this piece, you will understand that standing ovations are not a likely consequence of any performance. There were two main reasons: a 20-minute preamble including a jazz band, and an accompanying film.
The story of the Symphony in Three Movements – which I have told before in this space – is so tangled that sharing it with an audience can either result in profound ennui or keen engagement. It includes the Woody Herman Band, a bad Hollywood film about a French peasant girl susceptible to religious visions, and newsreel images the relevance of which Stravinsky both confirmed and denied.
It all amounts to a remarkable study of the creative act – one which wholly disproves Stravinsky’s notorious insistence that he found inspiration only in his brain, never from outside resources. That this work was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic as a World War II “Victory symphony” was in fact a gift to the composer during a fallow period – years of diminished inspiration Aaron Copland, for one, blamed on a condition of rootlessness: a “psychology of exile.”
The basic text here is a confession to Robert Craft, long after the symphony’s premiere, that the third movement linked to “a concrete impression of the war, almost always cinematographic in origin.” Stephen Walsh, in his 2008 Stravinsky biography, dismisses the pertinence of this unlikely testimony.. That Walsh is plainly wrong is demonstrated by a “visual presentation” created years ago (for the Pacific Symphony) by my gifted colleague Peter Bogdanoff, deploying the newsreel imagery Stravinsky specified. His finale in fact plays very credibly as a kind of film score.
Whether that justifies showing Peter’s film is a question that was vigorously debated at Brevard during a post-concert discussion. In general, I think projecting moving images during a symphonic concert is a terrible idea. I oppose showing planets for Holst’s The Planets, showing an Appalachian spring for Copland’s Appalachian Spring, showing the siege of Leningrad for Shostakovich’s Seventh. All that is kitsch. It confines the listening experience.
As someone who has produced thematic concerts for over half a century, I have only twice deviated from this conviction: for the finale of Stravinsky Symphony in Three Movements, and for the Largo and Scherzo of Dvorak’s New World Symphony. These are both revelatory exercises in discovering what was in the composer’s head. Why is there a triangle in Dvorak’s Scherzo? Because Pau-Puk Keewis, in Longfellow’s The Song of Hiawatha, had bells on his moccasins. Why all those string tremlolos in the Largo? Because the day Minnehaha died it was bitter cold and Hiawatha, in the forest, was trembling. (Peter’s “visual presentation” for the Largo and Scherzo, used by dozens of orchestras, may be seen here. By the way, his visuals are ingeniously keyed to follow the conductor, not the other way around.)
I will find myself producing half a dozen Ives festivals for the 2024 Sesquicentenary – and anticipate working with Peter on visuals for Ives’s astonishing tribute to Colonel Robert Gould Shaw’s Black Civil War Regiment: “The St. Gaudens at Boston Commons.” Here is iconic American music that means nothing without contextualization – as I have discovered, eg, at Carnegie Hall performances led by James Levine and Christoph on Dohnanyi. (That American orchestras should awaken to this reality is the topic of my upcoming 6,000-word rant in The American Scholar.)
I should add that the Brevard concert – to be repeated in two seasons by the inimitable South Dakota Symphony — was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities. So will be all those Ives festivals, beginning at Brevard in July 2024. How I wish our orchestras would reinvent themselves as humanities institutions. Museums are already there.
If you want to know more, I append the script for the second half of the Brevard concert, which was hosted and conducted by Kazem Abdullah.
I also append, in full, Stravinsky’s scenario for the finale of the Symphony in Three Movements.
I’ll have more to say about all of this in a subsequent blog about the Brevard festival, and an NPR More than Music show coming up in September.
Here is the script (accompanied throughout by visuals):
LIVE MUSIC : Bijou, as recorded by Woody Herman
That was Bijou – a “rumba a la jazz” recorded by the Woody Herman band in 1945. Known as the “Thundering Herd,” the Herman band so impressed Igor Stravinsky in LA that he composed a piece for it – the Ebony Concerto we’re about to hear.
Born in Russia in 1882, Stravinsky was first exposed to American popular music in Paris before World War I. Some years after that, when the Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet toured the US with the Ballet russe, he brought back memories of “incredible” jazz music – and also sheet music, presumably Dixieland numbers, which he shared with Stravinsky.
Stravinsky composed a “Ragtime” of his own in 1918. Later in his long odyssey, landing in Hollywood following years in Switzerland and France, he heard recordings of the Herman band – including “Bijou” – the Cuban-influenced piece we just heard.
And so Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto was dedicated to Woody Herman and premiered by his band in 1946. The result is a compressed, seven-minute “concerto” in three movements – of which the second, as in Ravel’s Violin Sonata [heard on part one], is a “Blues.”
As it turns out, what Stravinsky admired in Herman’s swing band was not the virtuosity of the individual players, or the tunes they sang. Rather, Stravinsky is entranced by the band’s discipline, its rhythmic zest, its array of instrumental color. As with Berlin’s Neue Sachlichkeit and France’s neo-classicism [discussed in part one], it’s “cool” jazz that matters here, not the hot variety.
Think of the Ebony Concerto as Igor Stravinsky’s personal distillation of the thundering Woody Herman sound. Our clarinet soloist is David Oh.
LIVE MUSIC: Igor Stravinsky: Ebony Concerto
While composing his Ebony Concerto, Stravinsky concurrently worked on a Symphony in Three Movements – probably the best-known piece he composed during his thirty years in Los Angeles. The strange story of this piece is a study in cultural exchange between the Old World and the New.
For instance: the second of the three movements in Stravinsky’s symphony began as music for a 1943 Hollywood film: The Song of Bernadette, starring Jennifer Jones as a nineteenth century French peasant girl susceptible to miraculous visions. Stravinsky hoped to write the soundtrack – only to be replaced by Alfred Newman. But in the second movement of his symphony he inserted music he had composed for a scene in which the Virgin Mary materializes. With its meandering flute and slithery harp, this music remains spooky.
MUSIC: mvmt 2 excerpt
The story of the Symphony in Three Movements grows stranger still. It was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic in 1945 as a World War II “Victory Symphony,” celebrating the impending triumph over Germany and Japan.
This was an opportunity Stravinsky could not turn down. But he did not use the word “Victory” in the title because he had long insisted that music could mean nothing but itself. This led to complications when the Philharmonic requested a program note. Stravinsky replied:
“It is well known that no program is to be sought in my musical output. . . . Sorry if this is disappointing but no story to be told, no narration and what I would say would only make yawn the majority of your public.” (Letter projected on screen.]
Eventually, Stravinsky asked the Philharmonic to publish a program note by the composer Ingolf Dahl. Dahl’s note, duly printed in the Philharmonic program book, was certain to “make yawn the majority.” A specimen: “The thematic germs of this first movement are of ultimate condensation. They consist of the interval of the minor third (with its inversion, the major sixth) and an ascending scale fragment.” [Program note projected on screen.]
But Stravinsky did eventually oblige the Philharmonic with a brief “Word” conceding:
“During the process of creation in this our arduous time, time of despair and hope, time of continual torments — maybe all those repercussions have stamped the character of this Symphony.” [Document projected on screen]
To complete this tangled tale: decades later, Stravinsky was asked by his assistant Robert Craft, “In what ways is the Symphony in Three Movements marked by world events?” Stravinsky answered:
“Certain specific events excited my musical imagination. Each episode is linked in my mind with a concrete impression of the war, almost always cinematographic in origin. For instance, the beginning of the third movement is partly a musical reaction to newsreels I had seen of goose-stepping soldiers. The march music predominates until the fugue, the beginning of which marks the turning point when the German war machine failed at Stalingrad. The final chord is a token of my extra exuberance in the triumph of the Allies.”
Stravinsky added, inimitably: “In spite of what I have admitted, the symphony is not programmatic. Composers combine notes. That is all.”
But it’s not all. Some years ago, Joseph Horowitz, the author of tonight’s script, collaborated with Peter Bogdanoff, who created tonight’s visuals, on a “visual presentation” for the six-minute finale of the Symphony in Three Movements, culling newsreel footage faithfully following Stravinsky’s scenario. Here, for instance, are those goose-stepping soldiers.
MUSIC: March with visuals (beginning of mvmt 3)
For the performance we’re about to hear, the last of Stravinsky’s symphonic movements will be accompanied by the visual track Horowitz and Bogdanoff created.
Considered as a “war symphony,” the Symphony in Three Movements registers the “American” perspective of a self-exiled Russian in his Hollywood. As for jazz [the topic of part one of the concert]– the syncopated kick and swagger of that Woody Herman rumba, Bijou, with which we began part two of our concert – listen to Stravinsky connect to that. And check out the very beginning of Stravinsky’s symphony. It really swings.
Please join us after tonight’s concert for a post-concert discussion with me, tonight’s artists, and Joe Horowitz. And now, to close: Igor Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements.
MUSIC: Symphony in Three Movements [with visuals for movement 3]
And here, in full , is what Stravinsky said about that finale in Dialogues and a Diary (1962):
The Symphony was written under the impression of world event. I will not say that it expresses my feelings about them, but only that, without participation of what I think of as my will, they excited my musical imagination. And the impressions that activated me were not general, or ideological, but specific: each episode in the symphony is linked in my imagination with a specific cinematographic impression of the war.
The finale even contains the genesis of a war plot, though I recognized it as such only after the composition was completed. The beginning of the movement is partly and in some inexplicable way a musical reaction to the newsreels and documentaries I had seen of goose-stepping soldiers. The square march beat, the brass-band instrumentation, the grotesque crescendo in the tuba, these are all related to those abhorrent pictures.
Though what I call my impressions of world events were derived almost entirely from films, the root of my indignation was a personal experience. One day, in Munich, in 1932, I saw a squad of Brown Shirts enter the street below the balcony of my room at the Bayerisches Hof and assault a group of civilians. The latter tried to defend themselves with street benches, but they were soon crushed beneath tose clumsy shields. . . . That same night . . . as we dined, a gang in swastika armbands entered the room. One of them began to talk insultingly about Jews and to aim his remarks in our direction. . . . [The photographer] Eric Schall protested, and at that they began to kick and to hit him . . . We were rescued by a timely taxi . . . . Schall was battered and bloody . . .
But to return to the plot of the movement, in spite of contrasting episodes such as the canon for bassoons, the march music is predominant until the fugue, which is the stasis and the turning point. The immobility at the beginning of this fugue is comic, I think – and so, to me, was the overturned arrogance of the Germans when their machine failed. The exposition of the fugue and the end of the Symphony are associated in my plot with the rise of the Allies, and the final, rather too commercial, D-flat sixth chord – instead of the expected C – is a token of my extra exuberance in the Allied triumph. The figure xxxxx was developed from the timpani part in the introduction to the first movement. It is somehow, inexplicably, associated in my imagination with the movements of war machines . . .
The first movement was likewise inspired by a war film, this time a documentary of scorched-earth tactics in China. . . .
In spite of what I have said, the Symphony is not programmatic. Composers combine notes. That is all.
“I oppose showing planets for Holst’s The Planets, showing an Appalachian spring for Copland’s Appalachian Spring, showing the siege of Leningrad for Shostakovich’s Seventh. All that is kitsch. It confines the listening experience.”
Not sure I understand. Do you oppose the performance of Martha Graham’s choreography to Copland’s “Appalachian Spring,” written expressly for her with programmatic elements and originally called “Ballet for Martha”? As for Stravinsky’s Symphony in Three Movements, it is arguably well-known at this point because of Balanchine’s astonishing choreography to it from the New York City Ballet’s 1972 Stravinsky Festival (which certainly picks up elements of Stravinsky’s comments about the Finale). Do you think that these masterpieces of dance “confine the listening experience”? Indeed, these works are so closely tied to their respective choreography that it almost seems you’re teasing the reader by writing of them so studiously without reference to the staging. Are you intending to provoke a comment like mine? I’m truly interested.
Mindy — Thanks for asking. Re: Copland — some orchestras accompany Copland’s music with photos of spring in Appalachia. I find that ridiculous. Martha Graham’s ballet is another thing altogether — it works in counterpoint with the music, a dialectic. One of my favorite examples is Ken Russell’s version of Host’s “The Planets.” Not a single planetary image — rather, found footage in provocative juxtaposition with the music, really a masterpiece of its kind. As for the Stravinsky — in my book “Artists in Exile” (with a chapter on Stravinsky and Balanchine) I argue that Stravinsky’s music is in this instance strengthened by Balanchine’s choreography. To my ears, the Sym in 3 Movements is an uneven musical composition. The first movement loses its way about halfway through. The second movement doesnt really fit. On this imperfect scaffolding, Balanchine creates a fully satisfying ballet working in ingenious juxtaposition with Stravinsky’s score. Balanchine (as you say) found martial echoes in the music, by the way — quite possibly discussed this with Stravinsky. To the dancers, he referred to helicapters, searchlights, and other indicators of war. But he also alludes (it seems to me) to Hollywood, to Broadway (the chorus line), all sorts of things. Like Stravinsky, Balanchine spoke of “pure” expression, unencumbered by imagery. It’s a polemic partly based in St. Petersburg aesthetics (among other sources). It can be greatly overstated. In other blogs, I discuss Valery Gergiev’s view of the Symphony in Three Movements as a “war symphony.” Russian musicians of Gergiev’s generation read Stravinsky’s polemics with a ton of salt. My forthcoming book on the cultural Cold War — “The Propaganda of Freedom” — discusses in some detail the creative act as experienced by Stravinsky and Shostakovich — a study in contrasts.