La danza de la tierra: el material musical, rito y sacrificio en La consagración de la primavera de Igor Stravinsky

En este artículo, se examina la concepción adorniana del material musical en la obra de Stravinsky y el análisis del mito que hace el filósofo René Girard en La Consagración de la Primavera. La aproximación teórica desde la concepción girardiana del sacrificio permite reexaminar la obra de Stravinsky y el significado del impacto de escenificar el asesinato fundacional, a inicios del siglo XX. La estructura de la violencia sacrificial que expone Girard expande el análisis de la obra del compositor ruso ofreciendo una lectura antropológica del hecho artístico. De este modo, el horizonte crítico que abre el pensamiento girardiano apuntala una contextualización de la obra que va más allá de una postura respecto a la sedimentación del material musical.

The Choreomusical Page-to-Stage Approach: Visual Representations of Musical Modernism Through the Works of Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine

<p>The musical developments of the Modernist period provided a new understanding and approach to composition. These developments are also seen in ballet, branching into several styles, with many choreographers providing their unique take to staging musical works. In this study, the modernist choreomusical relationship is examined with respect to the possibility of a page-to-stage approach in dance. This thesis examines how this approach is manifested in the complex relationships between the composer, and the choreographer. Drawing on nine examples of modernist era ballets categorised in to three styles (classical, neoclassical, and contemporary ballets), discussion of historical context, analysis of the musical and choreographic relationship, and other ideas surrounding adapting music for a visual medium are explored. This thesis also examines changing attitudes to music/dance relationships. Two lines of enquiry are followed, the first assesses, through the example of Stravinsky, Balanchine, and several other contemporaries, whether a page-to-stage approach exists for ballet. A supplementary enquiry explores how such an approach is manifested within different methods of choreography. This study finds that there are difficulties in applying the choreomusical page-to-stage approach to analysing changing attitudes to music/dance relationships. At another level, this study points to the benefit of incorporating the concept of diegesis in analysing the changing attitudes to music/dance relationships.</p>

The Choreomusical Page-to-Stage Approach: Visual Representations of Musical Modernism Through the Works of Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine

<p>The musical developments of the Modernist period provided a new understanding and approach to composition. These developments are also seen in ballet, branching into several styles, with many choreographers providing their unique take to staging musical works. In this study, the modernist choreomusical relationship is examined with respect to the possibility of a page-to-stage approach in dance. This thesis examines how this approach is manifested in the complex relationships between the composer, and the choreographer. Drawing on nine examples of modernist era ballets categorised in to three styles (classical, neoclassical, and contemporary ballets), discussion of historical context, analysis of the musical and choreographic relationship, and other ideas surrounding adapting music for a visual medium are explored. This thesis also examines changing attitudes to music/dance relationships. Two lines of enquiry are followed, the first assesses, through the example of Stravinsky, Balanchine, and several other contemporaries, whether a page-to-stage approach exists for ballet. A supplementary enquiry explores how such an approach is manifested within different methods of choreography. This study finds that there are difficulties in applying the choreomusical page-to-stage approach to analysing changing attitudes to music/dance relationships. At another level, this study points to the benefit of incorporating the concept of diegesis in analysing the changing attitudes to music/dance relationships.</p>

Jacques Samuel Handschin - Igor' Stravinskij

Der bislang bekannte Briefwechsel zwischen Igor Stravinsky und Jacques Handschin besteht aus neun Briefen Handschins an Stravinsky aus den Jahren 1931-33. Ein weiterer Brief Stravinskys an Handschin vom Juli 1920 konnte nun entdeckt werden. Das Hauptthema dieses Briefes ist Stravinskys Mutter Anna: Stravinsky bittet Handschin, ihm zu helfen, Kontakt mit ihr aufzunehmen. Im Postskriptum schreibt der Komponist über seine Ablehnung von Orgel und Orgelmusik. Der Brief erlaubt es, den Prozess des künstlerischen Schaffens Stravinskys besser zu verstehen und wirft ein neues Licht auf die Kontakte Handschins zur russischen Kultur nach seiner Emigration.

The Cambridge Stravinsky Encyclopedia

Igor Stravinsky is one of a small number of early modernist composers whose music epitomises the stylistic crisis of twentieth-century music, from the Russian nationalist heritage of the early works, the neo-classical works which anticipate the stylistic diversity of the contemporary musical scene in the early twenty-first century and the integration of serial techniques during his final period. With entries written by more than fifty international contributors from Russian, European and American traditions, The Cambridge Stravinsky Encyclopedia presents multiple perspectives on the life, works, writings and aesthetic relationships of this multi-faceted creative artist. This important resource explores Stravinsky's relationships with virtually all the major artistic figures of his time, painters, dramatists, choreographers and producers as well musicians and brings together fresh insights into to the life and work of one of the twentieth century's greatest composers.

THE FORM OF THE SUITE IN BALLET AND ITS METRORHYTHMIC ORGANIZATION

The article reveals the peculiarities of metrorhythmic organization of the classical dance cycle (suite), typical for Russian ballet of the XIXth century and its evolution in the early XXth century under the influence of innovations in the field of rhythm in the ballets by Igor Stravinsky. The purpose of this article is to find mechanisms of interaction between dance and music based on coordination of their temporal parameters. The material of analysis is the classical dance cycle that performs both compositional and dramaturgical functions in the ballet. Apart from the metrorhythmic and compositional system of organizing time in ballet music, other types of time can be distinguished: real, psychological (subjective) and conceptual, artistic time organizing the processes of the characters' life cycle and the development of action in the virtual time of the artwork. In a classical dance cycle in each number, real time predominates, but when the numbers alternate, subject to the principle of contrast, the conceptual time has a corrective effect. The alternation of musical and choreographic numbers in a ballet determines the rhythm of the form or "compositional rhythm" (according to V. P. Bobrovsky). The correlation of temporal proportions of numbers is considered on the example of ballets "Swan Lake" by P. Tchaikovsky and "Petrushka" by I. Stravinsky. The compositional unit is the duration of the stage segment of the musical form, the change of which creates the rhythm of the form.

The Musical Oeuvres of Rodion Shchedrin

The previous issues of the journal featured publications of lectures about such outstanding 20th century Russian composers as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofi ev, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Aram Khachaturian and Georgy Sviridov. This series is continued with a lecture about the music of Rodion Shchedrin. Following the portions of the lecture which deal with the early and middle periods of the composer’s music, the drama and even the tragic quality of his world perception and their overcoming. the present situation acquired maximal tension upon Shchedrin’s turning to the most acute problem for the romantic consciousness — the problem of interactions of personality and its surroundings, especially in the event of their confrontation. During the lecture’s exposition fragments of musical compositions are offered with their recommended performances, in their sum providing a perception of the most substantial sides of Shchedrin’s musical legacy.

Post Scriptum. A Few More Composers’ Names

In the previous lectures, which made up the cycle “Classics of Russian Music of the 20th Century”, the works of Sergei Rachmaninov, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Prokofiev, Nikolai Myaskovsky, Dmitry Shostakovich, Aram Khachaturian, Georgy Sviridov, Rodion Shchedrin and Alfred Schnittke were examined. Let us supplement this panorama with two final lectures: the first is intended to extend the range of composers’ names, the second will be devoted to an overview of 20th century music with an outlet into the universal space. As it is well-known, since the time of Peter the Great, who established St. Petersburg, two capitals coexisted in Russia, each of which possessed its own face and style, among other things, in the creation of music. By the end of the 19th century, two compositional schools had developed: the St. Petersburg school, the core of which was the “Mighty Handful”, and the Moscow school, headed by Piotr Tchaikovsky. During the 20th century, these schools continued their fruitful interaction. Among the names presented in the main sections of my lectures, Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Myaskovsky, Shostakovich, Sviridov began their activities in St. Petersburg- Petrograd-Leningrad, and later they became Muscovites (except for Stravinsky, who lived abroad from the early 1910s). In the second half of the 20th century, the leaders of the musical process in Russia were the Moscow composers Rodion Shchedrin and Alfred Schnittke, along with whom many other names can be mentioned, including Edison Denisov, Sofia Gubaidulina and Vladimir Martynov. Representatives of the Leningrad school continued to make a significant contribution to the treasury of Russian music. The following short overviews of the works of Sergei Slonimsky and Valery Gavrilin will testify to this. In addition to the two capitals, composers from a number of other cities in Russia, primarily, those with conservatories, have worked tirelessly in the field of the art of music, which has significantly expanded the scale of the panorama of the musical art in our country — the creative heritage of Elena Gokhman is cited as a characteristic example.