Notes on Igor Stravinsky – Poetics of Music (1942) Ross George – April 27th 2024

NB Something of a fascist sympathiser

Pages

Bringing order out of chaos through a principle 5/6

I approve of daring; I set no linits to it. But likewise

there are no limits to the mischief wrought by arbitrary acts 15

Principle of contrast and similarity 16

Natural sounds suggest music to us, but are not yet music 23

Art in the true sense is a way of fashioning works according to certain

methods acquired either by apprenticeship or by inventiveness 24

sound and time. Music is inconceivable apart from those two elements 27

(fast tempo, not fast rhythm) 29

(ontological time - the study of what is quantifiable vs psychological time ??) 30

Dissonance is no more a agent of disorder than consonance is a

guarantee of security 35

All music is nothing but a succession of impulses that converge towards

a definite point of repose 35

Composing for me is putting into an order a certain number of these sounds

according to a certain interval-relationship. This activity leads to a search for
the centre upon which the series of sounds involved in my undertaking
should converge. Thus, if a centre is given, I shall have to find a combination
that converges upon it. If on the other hand, an as yet unoriented
combination has been found, I shall have to determine the centre towards
which it should lead. 37

Wagner….fifty years after his death we are still staggering under the
rubbish and racket of the music drama! 43

Wagner….endless melody….the perpetual becoming of a music that never

had any reason for starting, any more than it has reason for ending 62