Product Description

One of the greatest of contemporary composers has here set down in delightfully personal fashion his general ideas about music and some accounts of his own experience as a composer. Every concert-goer and lover of music will take keen pleasure in his notes about the essential features of music, the process of musical composition, inspiration, musical types, and musical execution. Throughout the volume are to he found trenchant comments on such subjects as Wagnerism, the operas of Verdi, musical taste, musical snobbery, the influence of political ideas on Russian music under the Soviets, musical improvisation as opposed to musical construction, the nature of melody, and the function of the critic of music. Musical people of every sort will welcome this first presentation in English of an unusually interesting book.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #186371 in Books
• Published on: 1993-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Review
Some good (and some specious) phrases from one of music's finest phrase-makers; a fascinating and sporadically valuable attempt to come to grips with the metaphysics of music; and a rich assortment of historical aperçus. More than that, it is, of course, an intimate profession of faith revealing the detailed ideological context of the music; it is also the source of that unforgettable advice to the violinists: "It is ill becoming when playing, to spread one's legs too far apart." During the academic year 1939-1940, Stravinsky delivered the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard. He spoke in French. An English translation appeared in 1947, and now this bilingual edition enables the reader to study both the language in which Stravinsky conceived his "lessons" and the excellent English translation...printed on the facing pages...The six lectures that make up Poetics take the form of an "explanation of music"...[The book] remains a quintessence of Stravinsky's reactions to the phenomenon of music. Poetics of Music offers the most coherent statement of the unchanging values behind Stravinsky's many apparent shifts of manner: his insistence, for example, that music should be a revelation of a higher order to be faithfully executed by the performer, rather than a medium of self-expression to be interpreted. Above all, the composer must submit to rules, no matter how arbitrary, for "the more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit."
--G. W. Hopkins (Musical Times )

[These lessons] provide penetrating glimpses into the thought processes of Stravinsky's mind. While dealing with his chosen topics--the phenomenon of music, the composition of music, musical typology, the avatars of Russian music, and the performance of music--he reveals his reverence for tradition, order and discipline. He believes "the more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the more it is free." His opinions about Wagner, Verdi, Berlioz, Hindemith, Weber, Beethoven, Glinka, Tchaikovsky, Moussorgsky and Bach are refreshing. He also analyzes the function of the critic, the requirements of the interpreter, the state of Russian music, and musical taste and snobbery. (The American Recorder )

Language Notes
Text: English, French

Customer Reviews

Essential reading for Stravinsky devotees, but requires some background and additional reading
These six lectures were given at Harvard during the 1939-40 academic year in French. They are presented here in English translation and have been the subject of a great deal of discussion over the past sixty-plus years. In re-reading them, I have to say that my opinion of them has risen a great deal from my student days. Maybe it is because I am now about the age he was when he gave them, maybe it is because I am no more well read and have thought more about music since my youth, or maybe it is because I now see the solid philosophy and healthy insights he had and the rather unhealthy directions that academia was taking that he was resisting. Probably it is all of these.

Reading these lectures are not easy sledding for those not already familiar with Stravinsky, his life, work, and the context for these lectures. Also, the reader will need to go to the various conversation books Stravinsky did with Robert Craft to get later clarification and further insight into what he was saying. However, they are not profoundly technical in music theory. What they require from the reader is a broad understanding of music, art, and European political and religious history to have a framework for understanding what Stravinsky is saying.

The first lecture lays out what he intends to do with the lectures. The second talks about what he believes music is, what it isn't, and provides great insight into what Stravinsky believes is important in the art of music and what corrupts it. In the third lecture he talks about composition and provides wonderful insights into what it is for him. He really does undermine the common notion of the role of inspiration in composition.

The fourth lecture says it talks about musical typology (whatever that is). What it talks about is what the composer must do in choosing his own rules in composition. In Stravinsky's view the stricter the rules the more free the composer is to create. I think this is a particularly strong lecture. The Russian character in music and the Soviet corruptions of that are the topic of the fifth lecture. In 1939, taking on Stalin was a brave thing even in the West because of the way academics and the media lauded Uncle Joe.

The last lecture talks about performance issues that were of particular concern to him. This is also quite interesting because of the way performance practice became such a vital force in the last quarter of the twentieth century. His principles and desires are quite profound and interesting, and do require the clarification from the conversation books to avoid being taken out of context.

The epilogue ties things up nicely and raises the issues of ontology once again. Along the way Stravinsky over and over again talks about religion and music in the Church versus the attempts to replace religion with art (which Stravinsky considers a terrible and failed notion).

A fine and important work by one of the great composers.

much chaff and a little wheat
There are composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Pierre Boulez who are also gifted communicators and insightful students of music history and theory. Then there are composers like Igor Stravinsky, whose genius of expression lies purely in non-discursive domains.

This series of lecture transcripts gives the impression of an animated but disorganized speaker extemporaneously presenting on vague topics without preparation. His basic unit of thought seems to be about the size of a sentence, and Stravinsky never develops ideas or sustains his attention for more than a few paragraphs. Occasionally his observations have anecdotal value, and there are buried gems, but there is much chaff and little wheat in this slender book.

The best thing I got out of reading it is a mild sense of personal connection to one of the great musical minds of the twentieth century, but he gives little insight into the nature of his genius or his method.

PS - I picked up my copy second-hand for less than $3. I am surprised to see how expensive this book has become, considering its length.

Essential Stravinsky
No student or lover of Stravinsky's music should be without this book. It is a rare opportunity to see into his thought processes, and it makes one realise just how much music meant to him- that he sought to serve it by understanding it as deeply as he could.

In communicating this understanding, Stravinsky makes for an engaging, if somewhat challenging, read. The book is a transcript of six lectures given by the composer to French students, and the translators have seen fit to cast his words into a large quantity of "verbal Victoriana." If at times it seems boring, it is all due to that style of language. Apart from that, it is an excellent account on the part of a man who (for all his known self-contradictions) clearly used his heart as well as his hands and his head.

For students of Stravinsky, this book is essential. As a record of his personality and thought processes, it takes some beating.