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As Was The Interest Of The Renaissance Intellectuals, Stravinsky Turned To ...


As was the interest of the renaissance intellectuals, Stravinsky turned to neoclassicism throughout the 1920s. The tendency of the work from this period works from this period was to make use of traditional musical forms such as the concerto grosso, fugue and symphony that had been abandoned by the impressionists. Not unlike Schoenberg, Stravinsky returned to a new interpretation of the classic period due to its tendency to keep an undercurrent of intense emotion beneath the aesthetic appearance of detachment or austerity. Through this he, like Schoenberg, paid tribute to the music of the earlier masters, such as J.S. Bach, Verdi and Tchaikovsky. However, in the 1950s he adopted serial procedures, using the new techniques to write works that were briefer and of greater rhythmic, harmonic, and textural complexity than the symphonies of the classical period. The subsequent intricacy of his pieces shared the traits of rhythmical energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of the essence of structural form that comprised of merely two or three notes, and the clarity of form, instrumentation, and of utterance that led to his theoretical work. With the help of Alexis Roland-Manuel, Stravinsky wrote his critical analysis and philosophical approach entitled The Poetics of Music. In this book came the claim that music was incapable of ‘expressing anything but itself‘ (Stravinsky, 1993). This departure from cultural informants was like that of Schoenberg's notion, and put even more emphasis upon the structure of music whilst positioning it outside of cultural interpretation. This purist notion at the heart of modernist thought sought to take away cultural significance and give music a relationship in conjunction with itself and its composer.
With this structural approach to composition Stravinsky began to incorporate Schoenberg's dodecaphony, the twelve-tone system, after his death. Stravinsky's experimentation with the twelve-tone technique, which was to become the essence of mainstream popular music, was employed in his latter day smaller works apparent in such pieces as the Cantata, Three Songs from Shakespeare and In Memoriam Dylan Thomas. Canticum Sacrum (1955) was the first piece to contain a full movement based entirely upon the tone row devised by Schoenberg. He later began expanding his use of dodecaphony in works and can be heard in pieces such as Threni, a Sermon, a Narrative, and a Prayer, and The Flood. Another important transitional composition of Stravinsky's work was a return to the ballet. He again used tonality of the neo-classic period along with the incorporation of his re-interpretation of the serial method. Stravinsky‘s subsequent signature was of originality. His work contained compositions of primitivist, neo-classic, serial, rhythmic strangeness and experimentation, whilst encompassing harmonic ingenuity.

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