03 - Stravinsky _ Periodo Russo1

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Stravinsky	
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ex. 3-8 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Kashchey the Deathless, scene 2, mm. 171–75
ex. 3-9 Igor Stravinsky, Firebird, “ladder of thirds”
Stravinsky’s “explanation” actually explains little. Indeed, it rather obfuscates matters by exchanging the
positions of the two voices in the second illustrated third. That is one way in which modernists made their
reputations: by issuing challenges to analysts, some of which went unmet for decades. But now that
Stravinsky’s code, as it were, has been broken, some further demonstrations of the ways in which he derived
his “magical” harmonies (and melodies) from the ladder of thirds can only enhance our appreciation of the
extraordinary ingenuity with which the score of Firebird was constructed, even if we now also see how
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ex. 3-10 Igor Stravinsky, Firebird, “Dawn”
ex. 3-11 Igor Stravinsky’s analytical example from piano roll notes
ex. 3-12a Igor Stravinsky, Firebird, Kashchey music, opening theme
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ex. 3-12b Igor Stravinsky, Firebird, Kashchey music, “In the Darkness, Kashchey Watches for Victim s”
ex. 3-12c Igor Stravinsky, Firebird, Kashchey music, “Arrival of Kashchey the Deathless”
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ex. 3-12d Igor Stravinsky, Firebird, Kashchey music, “Dialogue of Kashchey and Ivan Tsarevich”
ex. 3-12e Igor Stravinsky, Firebird, Kashchey music, “Death of Kashchey”
Ex. 3-12a also reveals the source of the ballet’s main leitmotif, namely the Firebird’s. The first four notes of
the ostinato melody, consisting of the A♭-F♭ third (the second rung of Stravinsky’s ladder), the D (the
ladder’s bottom, seemingly its generating pitch), and a passing tone to connect the two ladder components,
are extracted and subjected to a wealth of separate manipulation to accompany the Firebird’s appearances.
These manipulations are of an age-old academic sort that every counterpoint student learns: as illustrated in
Ex. 3-13 (from a section titled “Apparition de l’Oiseau de feu”), the four-note motif is inverted (I), reversed
(R), and reversed in its inverted form (RI).
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Petrushka	
  -­‐ O	
  acorde	
  “Petrushka”	
  
	
  Sagração	
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  Primavera	
  -­‐ Diatonicismo	
  -­‐ Ritmo	
  	
  
	
  	
  
	
  	
  	
  
	
  	
  
	
  	
  
	
  	
  
which “octatonicism”—reference to a governing scale of alternating tones and semitones—became not just a
color or an exotic accessory to more conventional tonal harmony, but a tonality in its own right.
In “Chez Pétrouchka,” the concert piece for piano and orchestra that became the second tableau of
Stravinsky’s second ballet, an octatonic collection is maintained as a stable point of reference governing the
whole span of the composition, whatever the tonal vagaries or digressions along the way. The collection is
thus raised structurally to the level of what we ordinarily mean by a “key,” governing a hierarchy of pitches
and providing a tonal center. It establishes not only a vocabulary of pitches, but also a set of stable structural
functions. Hence departures from it and returns to it—on various levels, from that of local “chromaticism” to
that of “modulation”—are possible without compromising its role as stable point of reference. The octatonic
collection-of-reference is a far more stable referent within “Chez Pétrouchka” than any of the transient
diatonic tonalities with which it interacts as the piece unfolds. The composition is thus not only a significant
one within its composer’s stylistic evolution, but also an important benchmark of early twentieth-century
maximalism.
The collection of reference in “Chez Pétrouchka” is the whole-step/half-step scale that includes the C-major
and F♯-major triads, which, when superimposed, produce what has become universally known among
musicians as the Petrushka-chord (see Ex. 3-16). Now just as Wagner’s Tristan-chord was not the first
half-diminished seventh chord in history, neither was the Petrushka-chord unprecedented. Ravel had
anticipated it in both Jeux d’eau and Rapsodie espagnole (see Exx. 2-26 and 2-32); Richard Strauss had
anticipated it in Elektra (1-17b), and even Maximilian Steinberg, a less famous pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov,
had used it in a memorial prelude for orchestra in honor of their teacher (and the passage including it had
been borrowed from an unpublished sketch by Rimsky-Korsakov himself, shown in Ex. 2-30). There is even
a fleeting occurrence of the Petrushka-chord near the beginning of Firebird.
It is clear, moreover, that Stravinsky conceptualized the chord just as Ravel and Steinberg had done, as a
subset of the octatonic collection; for when the chord reappears, along with Petrushka himself, at the end of
the third tableau (see Ex. 3-16), it is transposed so that it now mixes the triads of E♭ and A, exhausting the
collection of reference by featuring its remaining (complementary) pair of /0 3 6 9/symmetrical “nodes.”
Thus the C and F♯ triads are not an arbitrarily selected “bitonalism,” but rather one of many expressions of
an octatonic tonality that pervades the whole composition on many levels. In this sense it was for Stravinsky
nothing new.
ex. 3-16 Octatonic derivation of the Petrushka-chord
And yet again there was a significant “maximalizing” difference. In Ravel, Strauss, and Steinberg, the two
chords are made to blend into a generalized sonority. Stravinsky makes them stand boldly out from one
another. The F♯ is deliberately made to sound like a foreign element jostling the key (or at least the chord) of
C major. This conflict is implied in many ways. In the first place, C major has been cadentially established as
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-­‐ Ritual	
  de	
  abdução	
  (1-­‐6)	
  
o Octatonicismo	
  e	
  diatonicismo	
  	
  
	
  
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