AN ANALYSIS OF IGOR STRAVINSKY’S “LES NOCES” (2024)

A Catalogue of Tunes and the Employment of Trichordal Substructures in Stravinsky's "Les Noces": A Pitch Centered Set Analysis

Journal of Musicartology, 2013

Rethinking Igor Stravinsky historically and theoretically — III

Naukovij vìsnik Nacìonalʹnoï muzičnoï akademìï Ukraïni ìmenì P.Ì. Čajkovsʹkogo, 2022

Stravinsky's Discontinuities, Harmonic Practice, and the Guidonian Space in the "Hymne" from the Serenade in A

AN ANALYTICAL OVERVIEW OF STRAVINSKY'S SYMPHONY OF PSALMS

This paper aims to provide an analytical overview of Igor Stravisnky's Symphony of Psalms. The analyses are mainly based upon the pitch collections of the layers regarding different systems, including a partial application of the axis tonality. Moreover, the relationships between the text and the musical content are also to be discussed. The general content of this paper consists of four main parts. The first part is the introduction that includes the historical overview of the composition. The second part is about the aim and scope of the research, including the axis tonality as an analytical model. The third part is the analytical study focusing on the issues such as general characteristics in relation to the text and the instrumentation of all movements. In this part, a detailed analysis of the motives, pitch content, chordal summation and layers of the first movement is also to be discussed. The fourth and the final section are about the conclusion and recommendations based on the findings, which are derived from the analysis and historical content.

The Roles of Invariance and Analogy in the Linear Design of Stravinsky's "Musick to heare"

Gamut, 2008

“Musick to heare,” the first of Stravinsky’s Three Songs from William Shakespeare (1953), has been described as “proto-serial” and “a further step along the road to [his] full serial technique.” Such views are negative in that they depict the song as having not yet arrived at some a priori level of compositional “maturity.” In contrast, the results are more rewarding if we interpret the song in its own terms. Doing so reveals it to be no mere practice piece, but instead a work with highly systemized serial designs. To demonstrate this, the author focuses on linear pitch-class organization, with special attention paid to the principles of invariance and analogy. Pitch-class invariance is a specific idea with a variety of manifestations. For example, it is the basis of the primary relation classes into which row successions are allotted; and it also produces segments with symmetrically disposed subsets. The idea of structural analogies is a broader one; the term subsumes a variety of relations that are evoked in different contexts. For example, analogies suggest a way in which a recurring type of row combination encodes formal attributes of Shakespeare’s text; and they reinforce the relationship between the beginning and ending sections of the song, revealing them to be modeled on one another in ways that transcend their obvious use of the same pitch-class materials. More broadly, by focusing on segments that are structurally analogous but not precise parallels, the song’s linear design is shown to embody certain “canon-like” attributes. In this view, the contrapuntal lines imitate one another not through segments that are literally identical, but through segments that correspond in terms of their internal networks of pitch classes and intervals. Two appendices complete the essay. The first, titled “The Reception History of a Series,” canvasses the diversity of early opinions over the song’s serial basis (i.e., the cardinality of its row). These various views stemmed from the multiple possible segmentations of the opening flute (and subsequent vocal) melody, as outlined in the main text. The author summarizes the commentary issued in the decade following the song’s composition, leading to the time in which recognition of the four-note series became the norm. The second appendix, titled “Some Further Analogies: Metaphoric Mappings of Text and Tone,” considers the rare deviations Stravinsky makes from the serial procedures he otherwise follows in the song. These uncharacteristic and thus conspicuous events are considered in terms of their implications for text painting.

Rethinking Igor Stravinsky historically and theoretically — III [Переосмысливая Игоря Стравинского исторически и теоретически – III]

Paper [Рукопись], 2022

The article is a continuation of the author’s reflections on the phenomenon of musical polymorphism (the beginning is in Vol. 124, 2019; the continuation is in Vol. 128, 2020). Stravinsky’s use of the environment, space, motion, dissonance, and Janus morphemes is considered as his inheritance from a tradition dating back to the work of his great predecessors. The musical tableau Sadko by Rimsky-Korsakov, the introduction Dawn on the Moscow River to Mussorgsky’s Khovanshchina, and Borodin’s symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia are a clear confirmation of this. In Sadko Rimsky-Korsakov reveals himself as the founder of musical polymorphism. The multi-element polymorphism of Mussorgsky’s Dawn on the Moscow River forms the basis of the first tableau in Stravinsky’s Petrushka. In the Steppes of Central Asia is an example of a multi-elemental, polymorphic structure, recreated outside an existing object: a native caravan crossing the desert, guarded by a Russian military detachment. Its stereophonic nature appears in the displacement of the textural elements to the rear and the foreground, their spatial compression or expansion, changes to the acoustic volume, sound coloration. Introductory violins octave unison in In the Steppes of Central Asia displays its hidden timbre-polyphonic nature. In the historical perspective, this compositional discovery by Borodin foreshadows a similar approach in Stravinsky’s musical language. The timbrical layering of the unison can be traced in Dances of the Young Girls from The Rite of Spring, The Lullaby in the Storm from The Fairy’s Kiss. The rhythmic ostinato features of Rimsky-Korsakov’s and Borodin’s scores are developed by Stravinsky to the elaborated part of his musical language. The structures with more or less constant, exact repetitions are used in The Rite of Spring, Three Tales for Children, Three Pieces for String Quartet, The Soldier’s Tale, The Wedding, Symphony of Psalms. Key words: oeuvre of Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Stravinsky, Sadko, Dawn on the Moscow River, In the Steppes of Central Asia, Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, Three Tales for Children, Three Pieces for String Quartet, The Soldier’s Tale, The Wedding, The Fairy’s Kiss, Symphony of Psalms, polymorphism.

Reverse Engineering Tonal Structure in Neo-Classical Stravinsky: Poly-Contrapuntalism and Macro-Tonal Process in Stravinsky’s Grand Chorale

Analytical material concerning the music of Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) is simultaneously rife and sparse. Compared to his towering contemporaries writing modern music in the West such as Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, and Paul Hindemith, Stravinsky’s music is, at times, much more difficult to fit into neat and tidy analytical boxes. His music spans so many genres and influences, often mixing and juxtaposing them, that it becomes challenging to understand his music though only one or even two analytical methods. At times, his music defies meaningful quantitative analysis at all. The brief study here only hopes to add one tool to the multifaceted tool box available to analyze Stravinsky’s music, offering a new perspective through which to view his more Neo-Classical works. This process stems from the earlier music which Stravinsky is referencing in Neo-Classicism, and hopes to offer reasonable justification to recognize tonal structures in the background of tonally ambiguous music in Stravinsky’s repertoire. I give this analytical and compositional process the name “Poly-Contrapuntalism” and use it to explain four-part voice leading in Stravinsky’s “Grand Chorale” from The Soldier’s Tale and use it to reverse engineer easily recognizable tonal structures in this piece to better understand the macro-tonal process that is happening throughout the work.

Irina Makalovskaia An analysis of Les Cinq Doigts by Igor Stravinsky The Analysis of Modernism

The Listener and the Work as the Dualistic Basis for the Morphological Analysis of Music [Слухач i Твiр як Дуалiстична Основа Морфологiчного Аналiзу Музики]

2022

In morphological analysis, the musical work and the listener are seen as elements of one communicative duality. Each element of this duality may play the role of either subject or object. Morphological analysis takes sound construction as its main target. This makes possible a more flexible approach to analyzing a musical text. The morpheme, one of the cornerstones of morpho-logical analysis, can be defined as a sound construction with a typical set of characteristic features. The other cornerstone, the morph, transforms a morpheme into a genеriс, stylistic “flesh and blood” of a specific musical text, on the basis of polymorphism. From the point of view of morphological analysis, the musical development in the “Introduction” to Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring is based on a step-by-step approach to an externally existing object, permitting us to perceive (see or hear) its details. The object itself is polymorphic, i.e., like an embryo, it contains within itself, from the start, every element it needs for further development. The starting point of the “Introduction,” the high-register bassoon melody accompanied by the supporting French horn voice, can be defined as a forest seen in a distance, from where the sound of a shepherd’s horn can be heard. The ten intonational elements of the initial three measures of the ballet are the base from which the form of the “Introduction” is developed. Keywords: oeuvre of Stravinsky, morphological analysis, The Rite of Spring, object-descriptive polymorphism.

An Explanation of Anomalous Hexachords in Four Serial Works by Igor Stravinsky

2011