WEEK 4: IGOR STRAVINSKY HIS SERIAL COMPOSITIONS FROM THE 1960S

IAN SHANAHAN (2002)

Stravinskys praxis during the 1960s makes an interesting contrast to the contemporaneous
development of minimalism! (e.g. Stravinskys Variations and Terry Rileys In C were both
composed in 1964 ... [so much for the so-called hegemony of serialism...].)

A sketchy background to Igor Stravinsky (18821971) in his serial phase. (Stravinsky is

indubitably a colossus of 20th-century music; consult the Eric Walter White book for detailed
biographical data etc.) Now certain of Igor Stravinskys works after his opera The Rakes
Progress (19481951) are proto-serial such as the Cantata (1952), the Septet (1953), Three
Songs from William Shakespeare (1953) and In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954) in that
they make use of the usual serial transformations, but not acting upon a full-blown 12-tone
series. e.g. In Memoriam Dylan Thomas uses only a 5-note series [E\, E, C\, C#, D\] that
fills a M3rd chromatic cell. Only a respectable time after Schoenbergs death in 1951 did
Stravinsky adopt fully dodecaphonic serial procedures but then only in a highly
idiosyncratic way, and probably being more inspired by Webern (whose works Stravinsky
described as perfect jewels) than Schoenberg. Threni (1958) is Stravinskys first truly serial
composition.

By the 1960s, Stravinsky evolved the serial technique known as hexachord rotation.

Explain hexachord rotation. NB: it uses IR, not RI ... another Stravinskian idiosyncrasy!
NB: tetrachord rotation charts, constructed according to the same principles, may also be
required for the analysis of Introitus (i.e. the assignment).

Despite Stravinskys adoption of such serial techniques (which were all quite new to him), a
variety of his distinctive stylistic fingerprints still survive: chord- or pitch-oscillations;
certain favourite intervals and harmonies; the primacy of melos (or melodic line), as in the
Lacrimosa from his Requiem Canticles. Stravinskys attitude to serialism was that a high
degree of systematization (or rational organization) invoked freedom rather than
imprisonment. e.g. his hexachord-rotation charts were regarded simply as reservoirs of
pitch-material from which he could draw freely, while composing at his piano. For instance,
the pitch-classes of the bell-tones from the Postlude of Requiem Canticles seem to be
intuitively-chosen adjacents from his hexachord-rotation charts.

Play the Postlude from Requiem Canticles and then go through the handout.

Requiem Canticles uses two 12-tone rows that are closely if not obviously related.
However, the Libera me and Postlude are by no means straightforwardly 12-countable,
whereas the other sections also use hexachord rotation and other exotica (such as the 90
rotation of hexachordal quadrants), but always in Stravinskys highly personal manner. The
analyst Claudio Spies writes:

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 If it is remembered, however, that Stravinskys [chords], [his] independent hexachordal rotation
schemes, and frequent eschewal of the total chromatic (at least in its ordinarily inevitable
association with 12-tone practice) represent his personally worked-out components of serial
technique then the correct naming of serial idiosyncrasies becomes, merely, the ability to look at
the series as he did, at a given moment. It is an ancillary consideration that by being looked at in
different ways, the series may thus yield either patterned components or arbitrary, unrelatable
fragments.

Claudio Spies also proposes that throughout Requiem Canticles, there is some sort of global
tonal hierarchy stemming from the two 12-tone rows and their serial treatment. e.g. the
horns sustained G# from the Postlude recalls the bass note of the Interludes refrain-chord
(AM7#11 play it on the piano).

AN ASSIGNMENT HINT. In Introitus, look also for 2-, 3- and 4-note serial fragments usually
adjacencies from the regular matrix ... just like in those word puzzles from womens
magazines where one cartouches whole words from within a square array of letters.

Now discuss combinatoriality. (Why use it? Whats the point? Explain!) Go through the A4
handout, stressing that it needs to be addressed as part of the assignment.

NB: Stravinskys series for his Variations exhibits this property, which inherently leads to
analytical ambiguity in labelling certain pitch-sets: but there may well be a good reason to
label a pitch-set one way as opposed to another.

Play the Variations and then go through the remaining handouts.

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