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Bulgakov's Master and Margarita and The Music of Igor Stravinski - K. Blank (1999)
Bulgakov's Master and Margarita and The Music of Igor Stravinski - K. Blank (1999)
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streams. Bells are ringing, its nice, quietHe was looking into the
distance with delight, listening to thunderous spring streams and bells,
hearing singing and poetry)
The sound of bells, mentioned twice, makes one recall that chime
music, prominent in many of Igor Stravinskiis early opuses, represents
an idiosyncrasy of his style.6 Moreover, the spring images and
thunderous sounds that appear in Ivans imagination bring to mind
Stravinskiis ballet The Rite of Spring (1910).
At first sight it seems amazing that in The Master and Margarita
Bulgakov assigns Igor Stravinskiis name to the house of grief, for the
music of this composer immediately provokes associations with vigor,
dynamism, and vitality. The paradox is meaningful, however. The quiet
atmosphere of this place, never haunted by the Devils cohort, is
opposed to the pandemonium reigning in central Moscow. The clinic
becomes a refuge for the master, into which, broken and desperate, he
deliberately flees. Almost everyone who consorts with the devils later
ends up in itIvan Bezdomnyi, Nikanor Bosoi, the artist Bengalskii,
and the employees of the Theatrical Commission. Boris Gasparov
notes: ,
-,
. 7
(Stravinskiis clinic serves as a finale to every act of the half-theatre
show, half-scandal that unfolds in the course of the novel.) Speaking
musically, the silence in this clinic represents a point of rest and
equilibrium where all noise ceases to vibrate.
As will be shown below, the peculiarities of Igor Stravinskiis
reputation in the late twenties and thirties, the closeness of his and
Bulgakovs artistic interests, and the similarities of their compositional
techniques suggest that Bulgakov had many reasons to allude to this
composer. A large part of the following discussion will be devoted to
the juxtaposition of Stravinskiis suite LHistoire du Soldat (1917-18)
with the musical material in The Master and Margarita.
Stravinskiis name appears neither in Bulgakovs biographies nor in
the memoirs and diaries of his wives. However, it is hard to imagine
that Bulgakov, a great connoisseur of music, never listened to
Stravinskiis early masterpiecesThe Nightingale (1908), The Firebird
(1910), Petrushka (1911), Les Noces (1914), Renard (1916), Pulcinella
(1920), and Oedipus-Rex (1927). During the twenties these works
received international acclaim and were hailed in Russia. By 1928,
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The very blend of the sacred, the diabolic, and the profane, as reflected
in these titles, brings to mind Bulgakovs novel, in which the devilish
imagery and grotesque scenes of the Moscow chapters alternate with
the Biblical events of the Jerusalem story. The unusual proximity of
jazz and church music recalls the fox-trot Alleluia which reappears
thrice in The Master and Margarita. One may also notice the fact that
danse macabre scenes are featured in both works (Satans ball in The
Master and Margarita and The Devils Dance in LHistoire du
Soldat).
According to Mikhail Druskin, LHistoire du Soldat is
quintessentially representative of major features of Stravinskiis art: it
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does not last long. Because the Soldier has broken his promise not to
cross frontiers, the couple falls into the Devils power. The Devil thus
not only threatens the heros artistic freedom, but also leads him to total
destruction.
In other words, just like Bulgakovs novel, Stravinskiis suite
elaborates the Faustian theme. The sets of characters are also
comparable: each work contains a Devil, a poor artist (the Soldier and
the master), and a woman of royal blood (the Princess and Margarita).24
In The Master and Margarita the Devil acts like God, punishing
scoundrels and uniting lovers. The Devil in LHistoire du Soldat has an
analogous mission. As the Stravinskii scholar Richard Taruskin notes,
he assumes the role of some sort of avenging angel.25
Like The Master and Margarita, LHistoire du Soldat builds links
between the distant past and contemporary reality. In Bulgakovs novel
the action takes place in ancient Jerusalem and contemporary Moscow.
Although the narrative part of LHistoire du Soldat is rooted in a folk
tale, its action occurs in the present of its creation (1917-18), which
leads Taruskin to conclude that LHistoire du Soldat may be read as a
parable of the Russian Revolution as viewed from afar.26 Stravinskii
and Ramuz modernized and politicized the tale: it suffices to mention
that the Soldier wears the Swiss Army uniform of World War I and the
Devil rides in an automobile.
However, the most vivid allusion to twentieth-century reality in
LHistoire du Soldat is expressed by means of music. Its rhythmic,
modal, and harmonic design stood out as highly innovative not only
when it was created, but also two decades later, as the fact that its
performance was prohibited in Nazi Germany clearly demonstrates.27
When the trio version of the suite was first performed in Leningrad in
1926, some critics did not hide their irritation with its avant-garde
technique:
,
, .
C ,
, C.
(), A. K () . B ().28
(The original version of this work aimed to strike its listeners dumb in
earnestAs arranged by the composer for a trio, it may provoke first a
smile, then bewilderment and disappointment. The self-sacrificing
heroes of labor who managed to successfully overcome the
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innumerable tricks of this sound-montage were S. Ivanov (violin), A.
Kaminskii (piano), and P. Vantroba (clarinet)).
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Processional accompaniment
European ballroom dances
American broken rhythms
Sacred music
Folk music
LHistoire du Soldat
marches
waltz, polonaise
fox-trot
chant Alleluia
Slavnoe more
marches
waltz
ragtime, tango
chorale
Russian and Gypsy
tunes
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to mixed forms.37
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granted Light, he and his mistress enter the kingdom of eternal rest. On
the final pages of the novel we first hear the narrators voice:
How sad, ye gods, how sad the world is at evening, how mysterious the
mists over the swamps. You will know it when you have wandered
astray in those mists, when you have suffered greatly before dying, when
you have walked through the world carrying an unbearable burden. You
know it too when you are weary and ready to leave this earth without
regret; its mists, its swamps and its rivers; ready to give yourself into the
arms of death with a light heart, knowing that death alone can comfort
you.43
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with, did Stravinskii choose a bassoon? The composer tried to get around
this point in Expositions and Developments by saying that the bassoon
was his substitute for the saxophone. But the saxophone was no jazz
legitimate at this time; its first jazz use came in the Chicago bands of the
1920s.46
41
leitmotivy (Moscow: Nauka, 1994), p. 42. Nadine Natov discussed the image of
Doctor Stravinskii as an encoded Mephistophelean musical theme (Paper
Metaphysical and Musical Symbolism in The Master and Margarita presented at
1996 AATSEEL Bulgakov panel). Soon after I had finished my paper, I came
across Nadine Natovs article The Meaning of Music and Musical Images in the
Works of Mikhail Bulgakov (In Lesley Milne (ed.), Bulgakov: The NovelistPlaywright, (Luxemburg: Harwood, 1995), pp. 171-184), several pages of which
are dedicated to Igor Stravinskii, specifically to his LHistoire du Soldat. Natov
discusses different aspects of Stravinskiis suite than I do, and comes to a different
conclusion: This symbolic talehalf-opera and half-balletmight be perceived as
encoded in the situation in which the nave poet Ivan Bezdomnyi find himself
(p. 181).
3. Ia. Platek, Master i muzyka, in Muzykalnaia zhizn, no. 15, 1984, p. 18.
4. Mikhail Bulgakov, Sobranie sochinenii. 10 vols. (Moscow: Golos, 1997),
vol. 6, pp. 592-602.
5. ibid. vol. 5, pp. 515.
6. Mikhail Druskin, Igor Stravinskii: His Life, Works and Views, (transl.
Martin Cooper), (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 62-63.
7. op. cit. Boris Gasparov, p. 47.
8. The doctor is presented in The Master and Margarita as a man of about
forty-five, with a clean-shaven actorish face, kind but extremely piercing eyes and a
courteous manner. Mikhail Bulgakov The Master and Margarita, (transl. Michael
Glenny), (New York: Harper and Row, 1967), p. 96.
9. Malcolm Hamrick Brown (ed.), Boris Asafiev, A Book about Stravinskii
(trans. Richard F. French), Russian Music Studies Series, No. 5, (Ann Arbor:
Brown. UMI Research Press, 1982). This is a translation of Igor Glebov [pseud. of
Boris Asafiev], Kniga o Stravinskom. (Leningrad: Triton, 1929).
10. He was a member of numerous khudozhestvennye sovety (artistic councils)
and repertkomy (repertoire committees) of Leningrad theatres and orchestras. He
worked at various musical institutions, directing educational programs and
scientific research.
11. Unlike the composers Dmitrii Shostakovich and Gavriil Popov, and the
young pianists Maria Iudina and Aleksandr Kamenskii, who admired Stravinskiis
talent, some musicians responded to his success with reservations and sometimes
frustration. A graduate of the law department of St. Petersburg University,
Stravinskii received no formal education in music, but was instructed in
composition privately by N.A. Rimskii-Korsakov. The sudden fame of a composer
who had never studied at the Conservatory made other pupils of Rimskii-Korsakov
envious.
12. Nikolai Malkov [pseud. Islamei], Revoliutsioner ili korol?, in Zhizn
iskusstva, no. 14, April 6, 1926, p. 7.
13. This situation lasted until Khrushchevs rise to power. For details see
Stanley Sadie (ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 20 vols.
(London: MacMillan, 1980), vol. 19, p. 385.
14. In a letter from January 9, 1937 Bulgakov writes: Things are hard for me,
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and I feel terrible. Obsessive thoughts about my ruined literary life and about my
hopeless future give rise to other black thoughts (J.A.E. Curtis, Manuscripts Dont
Burn: Mikhail Bulgakov. A Life in Letters and Diaries (London: Bloomsbury
Publishing, 1991), p. 246). In a letter dated October 2, 1937 he maintains: Over the
last seven years I have created sixteen works in different genres, and they have all
perished (ibid. p. 260). The tone of these letters suggests that their frankness was
mutual. Elena Bulgakova writes in her diary that Asafiev valued her husbands
moral qualities highly, which in the historical context of the thirties also signifies
that their relationship was close. (Elena Bulgakova, Dnevnik. (Moscow: Knizhnaia
palata, 1990), p. 158).
15. op. cit. Mikhail Druskin, p. 12.
16. op. cit. Mikhail Druskin, p. 48.
17. See V. Ivings review of the performance of LHistoire Du Soldat in
Sovremennyi teatr, no. 3. January 17, 1928, p. 45.
18. L.E. BelozerskaiaBulgakova, O, med vospominanii (Ann Arbor: Ardis,
1979), p. 131.
19. It was performed by the LASM (Leningrad Association for Contemporary
Music) on April 9, 1926 in the Malyi zal (then the foyer of the Bolshoi zal) of the
Leningrad Philharmonic. For the announcement see Zhizn iskusstva, no. 14, April
6, 1926, p. 23.
20. Andr Boucourechliev, Stravinskii, (transl. Martin Cooper) (New York:
Holmes & Meier Publishers, 1987), p. 103.
21. Robert Craft (ed.), Igor and Vera Stravinskii (London: Thames and Hudson,
1982), pp. 14-15.
22. For the tale Begloi soldat i chort see M.K. Azadovskii, N.P. Andreev, Iu.
M. Sokolova (eds.), A.N. Afanasev, Narodnye russkie skazki, 3 vols. (Moscow:
Academia, 1936), vol. 1, pp. 38083. For a synopsis of the suites scenes see Eric
Walter White, Stravinskii: The Composer and His Works (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1969), pp. 228229.
23. Igor Stravinskii and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments (New
York: Doubleday and Co., 1962), p. 104.
24. Margarita is chosen to be the queen of the Ball because, as a descendent of
French kings, she has royal blood.
25. Richard Taruskin, Stravinskii and the Russian Traditions: a Biography of
the Works through Mavra. 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996),
vol. 2, p. 1300.
26. ibid. p. 1298.
27. Robert Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinskii. (New York: Doubleday
and Co., 1959), p. 128.
28. V. Muzalevskii [pseud. of V.I. Bunimovich], Bloknot muzykanta, in
Zhizn iskusstva, no. 16, April 20, 1926, p.17.
29. V. Sakharov, Simfoniia Mikhaila Bulgakova in Muzykalnaia zhizn , no.
12, 1990, pp. 2425.
30. A similar technique characterizes some works by Mahler, the French group
Les Six, and Shostakovich.
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