Le 28 juin 2017
de 14h30 à 15h00
Le Patio (université de Strasbourg)
22 rue René Descartes, 67000 Strasbourg
salle 3206
Séance - Bridging the Twentieth Century: Stravinsky, Varèse, and Boulez
Pré-acte / Acte
Auteur : Maureen Carr
Igor Stravinsky began writing his Concerto for Two Pianos in 1932 while living in Voreppe, France, and completed it in Paris in 1935. There are 7 freestanding sketches for this work, which provide insight into Stravinsky’s compositional process for Concerto. Preliminary study of the sketches show how he systematically displaced notes at the octave as if to dramatize the zig-zag effect existing in other works such as Persêphone, and also how he used interrelated motives in a repetitive texture that alternated with contrasting material both juxtaposed and superimposed. This is reflective of his earlier compositional process. At times he also reordered intervals within these melodic and rhythmic cells and reduced and expanded intervals that participate in a motoric style. In 1931, Stravinsky used a similar metaphor when he described his Concerto for Piano and Winds (1923–24) as tractor music. Further discussion about Stravinsky’s approach to interval patterns in other passages of the Concerto for Two Pianos, Virgil Thompson’s concept of Style as Subject in his review of a performance of the Concerto for Two Pianos, the balance between the two solo piano parts, and analysis comparing the Fugue of Beethoven’s Sonata (Op. 110) with the Fugue in the last movement of Stravinsky’s Concerto for Two Pianos. Presentation will include diplomatic transcriptions of original sketches (housed at the Paul Sacher Stiftung) that illustrate this approach of Stravinsky to use interval patterns that appear as far back as Firebird (1910) and continue forward to Variations in Honor of Aldous Huxley (1965).
