The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky by Jonathan Cross

The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky by Jonathan Cross

Author:Jonathan Cross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cambridge University Press


The graphs superimpose on this the tempos of three of Stravinsky’s recordings, from 1929, 1961 and 1967,72 and should lay to rest once and for all any misconception that Stravinsky only knew how to conduct metronomically. Particularly striking is the overall similarity of the profiles (the major difference is the anticipation of the slower tempo of the coda in the two later versions), while the tempo modifications are always co-ordinated with the phrase and sectional structure. All three performances, in other words, embody similar interpretations; on the basis of Fig. 9.1, it would be hard to argue for any consistent chronological evolution in the manner in which Stravinsky performed this music.

Rather than the ‘Spring khorovod (round dance)’ of The Rite (now usually abbreviated to ‘Spring rounds’), it is the Introduction to Part Two, leading into the ‘Mystic circles’, that most clearly represents Stravinsky’s modernist updating of the changing background technique: there are again contrasted folkloristic ideas which recur against different textures, though they are more fragmentary and the patterns of repetition less regular, and the cross-cutting form is underlined by alternations between ♩ = 48 and 60. How might this interpolation of a Romantic compositional technique within a modernist (‘classic’) context be reflected in terms of performance style? In many respects, performance practice in The Rite seems to have converged by the time of the early sound recordings; in the Introduction to Part One, for instance, there is a considerable degree of consistency in conception and even sonority between the first recordings of Stravinsky, Monteux and Stokowski (and the same goes for the somewhat bowdlerised recording that Stokowski made for Disney’s Fantasia at the end of the 1930s). But the same cannot be said of the Introduction to Part Two, where Monteux starts at ♩ = 42, way below the 48 of the 1921 and subsequent published scores, whereas Stravinsky takes off at something approaching ♩ = 80. This fast tempo, though wildly inconsistent with the score, allows for a streamlined and relatively unnuanced (in this sense literal) performance.

The 1960 recording, by contrast, begins at ♩ = 50, close to the notated tempo, but anyone expecting a literal execution out of the ageing composer is in for a rude shock. Already at the end of the second bar there is a marked though unnotated Luftpause in the best Romantic tradition, and Stravinsky underlines the phrase junctions at rehearsal numbers 80, 81 and 82 in the same way. The same effect reappears on a larger scale with a ritardando down to about ♩ = 45 in the bars up to the flute and violin solo at rehearsal number 83. And while the kind of structural tempo change Fink notes in early recordings of the ‘Sacrifical dance’ is effectively composed into the Introduction to Part Two, Table 9.1 shows how Stravinsky’s performance at once contradicts his own score and further develops the tempo-change principle embodied in it: at the trumpet duet (two bars before number 85), instead of continuing at the opening



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