Review

Reviewed Work(s):
Trois pièces pour quatuor à cordes: Skizzen, Fassungen, Dokumente, Essays.
Festgabe für Albi Rosenthal zum 80
by Igor Stravinsky, Hermann Danuser, Felix Meyer, Ulrich Mosch, Paul Sacher
Stiftung, Ernst Lichtenhahn, Richard Taruskin, Tom Gordon,
Niklaus Röthlin
and Robert Piencikowski
Review by: Stephen Walsh
Source: Notes, Second Series, Vol. 52, No. 4 (Jun., 1996), pp. 1315-1319
Published by: Music Library Association
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/898424
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Music Reviews 1315

Ives did much better work when he es- on Inuit Themes: Toward a Modernist
chewed such a style that placed so many Style"), her analysis of the music, and the
demands on craft and emotion for mod- score editing set a very high standard. At
ernism where imagination and novelty once, the music in score is available in a
were more highly prized. most readable format, together with large
Beach, on the other hand, wrote her fin- and complete separate parts and with con-
est compositions at the beginning of her sistent marks of expression properly iden-
career. With a critical ear, unerring control tified. Mrs. Beach never received better
of chromatic voice-leading, and melodic treatment during her own lifetime from
gifts galore, she effortlessly crafted music Arthur P. Schmidt, her Boston publisher.
of extraordinary expressivity. The death of The new publication is completed with a
her husband seems to have had more than critical apparatus detailing sources and edi-
the usual impact. Perhaps the main artistic torial method, and an appendix, providing
effect was a result of the abrupt removal the interested reader with a photographic
of a most influential and trusted friend. It facsimile of the manuscript draft score.
might also have been the case that her earlyA truly critical appreciation of the Quar-
music had been so intertwined with her tet must await the experience of an actual
love that she subsequently began to look performance
for or perhaps many perfor-
new modes and subjects of inspirationmances. to From the admittedly unrepresen-
avoid trading in memories so precious andand monochromatic sonorities of the
tative
personal. In any case, she shifted her piano, mu- though, it is obvious that Beach was
sical focus from introspection to theattempting then to blend the unblendable. On
fashionable interest in folklore and exoti- the one hand, she was experimenting with
cism. Like a mature traveler learning new"symmetrical inversion," a feature of her
languages and new ways, toying with thechromatic harmony. On the other, she was
methods of the younger modernists mustfascinated with and sympathetic to the idea
have been an uncomfortable process for among folklorists that the songs of cul-
the down-east Yankee dowager to lose her tures most distant from the techniques and
native accent or to overcome purely mus- aesthetics of the West were nevertheless
cular reflexes. equally valid and that this thesis could be
The Quartet for Strings (In One Movement) proved best by integrating such exotic ma-
[On Alaskan Inuit Themes], op. 89, is an terial into Western compositions. Never-
illustration of Beach's post-Romantic style theless, in the present case, the contradic-
that Adrienne Fried Block, editor of the tions between essentially monotonal chants
present edition and Beach's biographer, of the Inuit and the perpetual instrumental
places within the "American nationalist chromaticism of Beach's personal musical
movement." In truth, what we know about speech make each melos stick out like a sore
the music, the occasion for its composition,thumb when presented in the atmosphere
and its analysis, both critical and biblio- of the other. And if we accept the sug-
graphical, is entirely due to Block's diligent gestion that often the medium is the mes-
application of the most meticulous schol- sage, then Beach's timid employment of
arly treatment to the music and its sources. conventional string resources (in compar-
As one of the first volumes produced under ison with Bela Bart6k's innovative, contem-
the aegis of MUSA (Music in the United poraneous quartets!) does little convincing
States of America), under the general edi- to convey the pristine vocal gestures of ice-
torship of Richard Crawford and published age Eskimos.
for the American Musicological Society,
Block's belle-lettristic essay on Beach's life VICTOR FELL YELLIN
and musical style ("Amy Beach's Quartet New York University

FACSIMILES

Igor Stravinsky. Trois pieces pour von

von Hermann
HermannDanuser
DanuserininVerbindung
Verbindung
quatuor a cordes: Skizzen, Fassungen, mit Felix Meyer und Ulrich Mosch.
Dokumente, Essays. Festgabe fur Albi Eine Veroffentlichung der Paul Sa-
Rosenthal zum 80. Geburtstag. Hrsg. cher Stiftung. Winterthur: Amadeus

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1316 NOTES, June 1996

(Foreign Music Dist.), c1994 by Paul (heaven help us!) Moscow, or simply scat-
Sacher Stiftung, Basel. [174 p. ISBN 3- tered to the four winds.
Rosenthal, whose father Erwin was
905049-61-9/BP 2144 cloth, $224.00.]
Contains: Paul Sacher: Grusswort an Stravinsky's own dealer and adviser in the
sale of manuscripts, was born in the year
Albi Rosenthal, pp. 7-8; Essays und that the Three Pieces were written, which
Dokumente von Ernst Lichtenhahn,
explains what might otherwise at first seem
Richard Taruskin, Tom Gordon, Ul- an eccentric choice from the large number
rich Mosch, Felix Meyer, Hermann of manuscript scores owned by Sacher
Danuser, Niklaus Rothlin, Robert (himself ninety last April, by the way). But
Piencikowski, pp. 9-102; Kurztitelver-the choice can be justified on documentary
grounds as well. The quartet pieces are a
zeichnis, p. 103; Musikalische Quellen:
Skizzen (in facsim.), pp. 107-35; die textual dream for students of the compo-
sitional process, because they embody in a
Werkfassungen von 1914 und 1918/
compact and not yet fully absorbed form
1922, pp. 137-72; Quellenverzeichnis,
many of Stravinsky's compositional pre-
pp. 173-74; supplement inside back occupations just after The Rite of Spring.
cover: Trois pieces pour quatuor a These are neatly summed up by Richard
cordes; Fassung fur Klavier zu vier Taruskin, in his contribution to the volu-
Handen (c1994 Boosey & Hawkes, minous festschrift that prefaces the ac-
London und Paul Sacher Stiftung, tual facsimile, under the Russian headings
Basel), 21 p.; Editorische Notiz, inside of drobnost (fragmentedness), nepodvizhnost
back cover. (staticness), and uproshcheniye (simplifica-
tion). With the present volume to hand, the
In recent years, the Paul Sacher Stiftung
reader is able to compare Stravinsky's orig-
in Basel has established itself as a master inal autograph fair copy of the quartet
producer of musical and other documen- pieces with the substantially revised first
tary facsimiles. The Stiftung's first major printed edition, which is usefully set out in
(co-)publication, the catalogue of the Basel parallel, page by page, below the facsimile
exhibition in the Kunstmuseum in 1984 of score. He also has at his disposal clear,
the Igor Stravinsky bequest, contained lifelike
a reproductions of all the surviving
series of superb color photographs of sketches of the quartet version, plus a
Stravinsky manuscripts in what was by monochrome photograph (because the
then the Sacher Collection (Stravinsky, sein document itself is lost) of an early four-
Nachlass, sein Bild [Basel: Kunstmuseum, hand piano version of the first piece, two
1984]); later came the magnificent repro- pages of the revised fair copy of No. 2;
duction of the full score and Particell of two pages of random sketches that sup-
the Symphonies of Wind Instruments (Andre plied material for this same piece; two
Baltensperger and Felix Meyer, eds., Igor pages from the composer's autograph of
Strawinsky: Symphonies d'instruments athe four-hand version of No. 3; a single
vent:
sketch of the later orchestral version of
Faksimileausgabe des Particells und der Partitur
der Erstfassung (1920) [Winterthur: Ama- No. 3 (in the Four Orchestral Studies of
deus, 1991]; the two volumes of Quellen- 1928); and finally, slipped into the volume's
studien, again including fine Stravinsky back pocket, a printed edition of the entire
material (Hans Oesch, ed., Quellenstudien four-hand score, published for the first
I [Winterthur: Amadeus, 1991]; Felix time.
Meyer, ed., Quellenstudien II [Winterthur: The early composition history of these
Amadeus, 1993]), and now we have this pieces is worth rehearsing here, if only be-
remarkable facsimile of the Three Pieces forcause a summary account is hard to extract
String Quartet, produced to mark the eight- from the often informative but editorially
ieth birthday (in 1994) of Albi Rosenthal, somewhat diffuse articles in the festschrift.
the charming eminence grise of the Sacher By the time he completed his opera The
Stiftung, who was largely responsible for Nightingale at the end of March 1914,
ensuring that the collection actually ended Stravinsky was more or less involved in a
up in Basel-rather than, as might well project for a dance work called "David"
have happened, New York, or even with a scenario by Jean Cocteau, who had

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Music Reviews 1317

spent most of March with Stravinsky at What seems clear is that the first quartet
Leysin in the Bernese Oberland, where the piece was written in April 1914, the date
composer's wife was recovering from her on the initial (much shorter) four-hand ver-
first serious adult bout of tuberculosis. How sion. There is a general assumption that the
far Stravinsky himself ever felt committed duet version is the original, but without
to "David" has always been a matter of sound evidence that I can see. What about
doubt. The drift of the present volume isthe Esquisse-Scherzo for string quartet whose
to accept that some music was written, thatrumored existence prompted Alfred Po-
it was partly composed during Cocteau's chon, the second violinist of the Flonzaley
stay in March, and that it found its way into Quartet, to write to Stravinsky in June ask-
the first two quartet pieces. Among the fin- ing for a work for the quartet's forthcom-
est of these autograph documents is a two- ing world tour? Such a rumor would have
page sketch of what became the second to date from April at latest, when Stravin-
piece, with scoring indications for a band sky was in Paris for the last time before the
including bassoon, cornet, violin, cello, and war (for Pierre Monteux's second concert
piano, which might suggest the mixed en- Rite on the 26th). By June, we can also be
semble for which "David" was supposed sure, the ensemble sketch for No. 2 existed,
to be written. Tom Gordon, the main au- though probably of more recent origin
thority on the Stravinsky manuscripts ofthan Gordon's mid-March, a dating which,
this period, takes Cocteau's report to his as we saw, clashes with The Nightingale. The
mother that "[today] Stravinsky played actual quartet sketches follow it immedi-
something from the future David" (p. 32;ately in the Stiftung's Sketchbook II, and
translation mine) at its face value, thoughnobody believes these to precede the Po-
it is clear from this whole run of letters chon "commission" (it was not quite that),
that Cocteau was fantasizing about the de- which Stravinsky will have received in the
gree of Stravinsky's commitment because fourth week of June. Immediately after
the idea of the "David" project, designed completing the second piece (on 2 July),
chiefly to impress and entice Serge Diaghi-Stravinsky went to Kiev and Ustilug for the
lev, meant too much to him for the failure last time ever. Then, back in Switzerland
that was already staring him in the face to in mid-month, he tinkered with various
be openly admitted. His letters paint a vividRussian projects and wrote the hieratic
and enthusiastic picture of activities that third quartet piece, with its echoes (per-
we may well feel were not taking place. haps) of Orthodox chant. This is the only
Stravinsky's contemporary correspondence one of the three pieces for which there is
with Alexander Benois, who was designing no evidence of a pre-Pochon, nonquartet
Nightingale for Diaghilev, shows that he was version, and no hint of a Cocteau connec-
in difficulties over the third act of the op-tion. Stravinsky next began sorting texts for
era, whose Paris premiere was looming Les noces and composing the Pribaoutki.
dangerously. It seems inconceivable that he As speculative chronology, this all makes
would have been giving creative thought to dusty reading, no doubt. But when we turn
another, quite different sort of piece until to the facsimiles, the live creative process,
the opera was finished. No doubt "David" such as we can observe it, supersedes ques-
was discussed; and Cocteau may be telling tions of dating. The sketches for the first
the truth when he attributes to Stravinsky piece are on separate sheets, and amount
an increasing compression and abstraction to no more than an experimental layout of
in the intended treatment, as well as (in a the possible entry points for the descending
letter to Misia Edwards that he got the com- viola figure-the one mobile element in the
poser to countersign) an element of music piece-together with a sample of the (ba-
hall and the fairground. But this raises an- sically unchanging) instrumental texture.
other niggling difficulty of dating, since the The process is clearly and comprehensively
one quartet piece that admittedly came analyzed by Ulrich Mosch in his own survey
from music hall (No. 2) is said by Stravinsky of the sketches. The drafts for the other
to have been inspired by a performance by two pieces fill the first twenty-one pages
the clown Little Tich in London in June of Sketchbook II. The ensemble sketches of
1914, which is too late for the Cocteau No. 2, which share the drobnost quality of
scheme. the quartet piece but not its arrangement

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1318 NOTES, June 1996

of material, are followed by a quartet draft festschrift element of the volume itself, to
that soon begins to assume the shape we say nothing of its price. The Symphonies of
know. It starts tentatively, with an inchoate Wind Instruments facsimiles were accompa-
version of the music at measures 13 ff., nied only by an introductory exegesis and
leading unexpectedly to the discovery of some documentation (reviews, letters, and
the opening theme (not yet found in the so forth). Now, because of the celebratory
ensemble sketches). Then something excit- intention, we have seven substantial accom-
ing happens. Working in pencil, and (to panying papers, and a much fuller docu-
judge from the increasing agitation of the mentation than for the bigger and more
scrawl) at speed, Stravinsky suddenly sees significant Symphonies. Ernst Lichtenhahn
the "continuity" of the piece, and-so to discourses on the relation of the Three Pieces
speak -rushes not to lose it. This pencil to the main stem of the quartet tradition,
draft starts at our m. 26 but then proceedsquoting Paul Collaer's observation that in
to the end, in full outline and with only their "aim of covering the maximum of
details needing refinement. Stravinsky is sosubstance with the minimum of means" the
exuberant at this wonderful crystallization pieces "mark ... a date in the history of
of such a novel concept that he signs and modern music" (p. 12; translation mine)-
dates the "end" ("konyets"), even though though Collaer was probably not as in-
he knows perfectly well that the opening formed about the previous work of Anton
still has to be "composed." This he does the Webern, Arnold Schoenberg, or even Bela
very next day, still in pencil but a little more Bartok, as Lichtenhahn and most of his
calmly, completing the movement then and readers should by now be. Lichtenhahn
there, as the date on the fair-copy score also looks-perhaps too hard-for prece-
indicates. dents for Stravinsky's format in the quartet
I believe that the whole manner of this writing of his Russian forebears. Really
draft proves it to have been done at a sit- there are none, as far as I and Lichtenhahn
ting (or to be exact two sittings), and in cana tell, though Taruskin, who knows more
state of creative enthusiasm such as Stravin- nineteenth-century Russian music than
sky had not known since composing The Stravinsky himself probably did, might be
Rite of Spring two or three years earlier. able to contradict if goaded. His own con-
The sketches for the third piece are less tribution here, about the Russian cultural
dramatic, though they also betray an in- and stylistic background, no more than
tensity of involvement, a quality of con-hints at issues that will be treated at ex-
centrated work that one observes in these haustive length in his Stravinsky and the
marvelous facsimiles in a state of awe at the Russian Traditions (Berkeley: University of
way in which music of such startling novelty California Press, 1996), while appending
is being created before our eyes, by a la- suggestive sketch material that emphati-
borious process of testing and refinement cally links the second quartet piece to a
and with a constant and conscious sense circus (rather than music hall, though
of the relationship between detail and Taruskin
the misses the distinction) origin.
whole. No musician could possibly study Next, Gordon outlines the compositional
these pages without emotion. And when we history, particularly as regards the pre-
remember the difficulties under which sumed links with "David," covering a lot of
Stravinsky was living and working with a
ground and making a good deal of some
sick wife, four small children including a
tolerably circumstantial evidence. But the
new baby, no settled housing, his income main circumstance (which applies also to
from and contact with his own countryTaruskin) and seems to be the physical one-
property threatened by war, we can only well
beknown to North American Sacher
amazed at the detachment of the greatstudents-of
art- sheer distance, of being too
ist faced simply, as Jacques Maritain later far away from the manuscript material to
put it in Art et scolastique (3rd ed. [Paris: be able to check and update controversial
Rouart, 1935]), with "the task to be done." points. Otherwise he surely would have ti-
If the above remarks seem overloaded in died up factual errors like the remark that
relation to pieces that are, when all is said Stravinsky was in London in June 1912 and
and done, experimental miniatures, then made his debut conducting appearance in
the same will also appear true of the Geneva in April 1914 (it was in Montreux,

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Music Reviews 1319

at the other end of the lake), and would (Swiss) rooms, which
which was
was exactly
exactly Stravin-
Stravin-
have reconsidered loose speculations such sky's problem in in 1914.
1914. In
In any
any case,
case, one
one is
is
as "Cocteau tried increasingly to link up aware of a disparity.
disparity. These
These exegeses
exegeses are
are aa
with Stravinsky in the months following heavy load for such such pieces
pieces to
to bear,
bear, and
and they
they
the Sacre premiere" (p. 31, n. 10; trans- make an eminently
eminently worthy
worthy festschrift
festschrift into
into
lation mine). But such vagaries scarcely a questionable investment,
investment, especially
especially for
for
spoil what remains one of the two or three English-speaking
English-speaking music
music departments
departments that that
essential pieces among these seven; they may reflect that
that few
few Stravinsky
Stravinsky students
students are
are
only slightly compromise its balance and going to plow through
through the
the book's
book's entirely
entirely
precision. German-language essays, almost half of
The remaining texts are analytical and/or which have had to be translated out of lan-
speculative in (with one exception) what guages such students would have been able
Anglophone readers are likely to regard as to read. In the end the question will be:
the Germano-Swiss manner. Mosch's de- How far do these incomparable facsimiles
scription of the sketches is meticulous,and well informative essays compensate for a
supported by diagrams that clarify the only level of inaccessibility and a degree of un-
occasionally self-evident, and often illumi-derediting (which lets through a glaring
nating, as when he contrasts the sketching wrong chord in the four-hand prints-m.
process in the second piece, "which, in19, itsbeats 4 and 5-and fails to refer textual
working out of material sketched for other quotations to the documentation in the
purposes, documents a transition from an book itself)? I should say it does compen-
almost over-lucid formal design to a com- sate. But then I, like the authors of these
pact sequential form full of breaks and papers, have spent a measurable part of my
abrupt changes" with that in the third life in the archive that Sacher made pos-
piece, "which shows a thought process sible, and I know the bottomless pit of pro-
working against the [natural] flow of the visional factuality and decisive speculation
movement" (p. 44; translation mine). Felix into which it lures one at every turn. The
Meyer follows with a thoroughgoing, well- danger is that readers who have not so mis-
presented musical analysis that would not spent their days will regard such a book as
have belittled pieces five times the size. definitive. It is not, of course; it is merely
Hermann Danuser, the editor of the whole an irresistible invitation to speculate for
volume, makes a somewhat tendentious oneself.
case for what he calls "composition as the STEPHEN WALSH
limitation of musical fields" (p. 71; trans-
University of Wales, Cardiff
lation mine) a theory that may remind
readers that Pierre Boulez is another com-
poser whose past is locked up in the vaults II codice T.III.2; Torino, Biblioteca
of Basel Miinsterplatz 4. And this leads Nazionale Universitaria. Studio in-
naturally enough to Robert Piencikowski's troduttivo ed edizione in facsimile a
neat portrait of the changing attitudes to
cura di Agostino Ziino. (Ars nova, 3.)
Stravinsky's pieces in the program books of
Lucca: Libreria Musicale Italiana
the Paris Domaine Musical, a cleverly lo-
calized Rezeptionsgeschichte that shows how (1-55100 Lucca-via di Arsina, 296 F),
we, in our constantly mobile fashions and 1994. [Intro. material in Ital., Eng.,
theories, just as constantly modify the pp. 9-119; texts of unica, pp. 121-25;
past-and for good, despite what these es- index and biblio., pp. 126-34; color
says, and the facsimiles that are their pre- facsim., pp. 137-88. ISBN 88-7096-
text, may be trying to tell us in the sense 034-X; ISSN 1121-046X. $135.00.]
of a scientific description and evaluation of
the musical "texts" in se. The publication of a new source is always
"Trois pieces pour un domaine" is a significant event in musicology. In the
Piencikowski's punning title. A concert se-of the paper reinforcements extracted
case
ries gets three quartet pieces, and a large from an old binding owned by Dr. Alfredo
estate (Boulez's? Sacher's? Bluebeard's?) Boverio of Alessandria (Italy), and housed,
gets three rooms. Or perhaps one merely since 1991, at the Biblioteca Nazionale Uni-
swaps the (Russian) domain for the three versitaria in Turin under the call number

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