![]() At the same time, he becomes interested in classical procedures and updates them for an expanded harmonic language. In all these scores, he introduces a pared-down aesthetic and what at first seems like an element of parody but which turns out to be an element of "objectification," like a Cubist collage with everyday objects. The end of World War I moved Stravinsky's music even further in this direction with L'Histoire du Soldat, Tango, and Ragtime. Works in this transitional period include Symphonies for Wind Instruments and part of the opera Le Rossignol. ![]() Stravinsky felt uncomfortable with the direction and almost immediately turned again, searching for a sparer music. 2 and 3, Scythian Suite, and They Are Seven), Béla Bartók ( Allegro barbaro, The Miraculous Mandarin, the piano sonata, and Cantata profana), Darius Milhaud ( Les Choephores), Arthur Honegger ( Mouvements symphoniques), and the young Aaron Copland ( Grohg). The score became an icon of musical modernism and influenced many other modern giants, including Serge Prokofieff ( Symphony Nos. The Russian element becomes less Romantic and more "objectified." By Le Sacre, the "infernal" element of Firebird had erupted into a previously-unheard, epic "barbarism," so much so that some of the audience rioted at the Paris premiere. A new musical element entered the mix – clean orchestral textures, "bright" instrumentation, and an emphasis on stamping, irregular rhythms – heard especially in the Firebird's "Infernal Dance of the King Katschei."įirebird's success led to two more ballets for Diaghilev's Ballets russes: Pétrouchka and Le Sacre du Printemps, both landmarks of twentieth-century music. It was not a simple matter of combining, however. This resulted in such pieces as Fireworks, The Faun and the Shepherdess, and the major ballet Firebird. Almost immediately, however, he began to incline toward the music of the French impressionists Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, while retaining his nationalist outlook. 1 in E Flat, show the influence of that master. He studied with Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and his early works, like the Symphony No. Both very far from Stravinsky, and even farther from ragtime.Russian/international composer who began two of the major strains of contemporary music. 2, played by Erzsébet Gódo, on YouTube here. Hungarian gypsy street musicians performing in Copenhagen on YouTube here. The cimbalom is (typically) played by striking two beaters against the strings. It is a musical instrument commonly found in Hungary and throughout the group of Central-Eastern European nations and cultures which composed Austria-Hungary (1867–1918), namely contemporary Hungary, Croatia, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The cimbalom is a concert hammered dulcimer: a type of chordophone composed of a large, trapezoidal box with metal strings stretched across its top. The cimbalom is a type of zither, played by striking the strings with two beaters: You can listen to the work, played by Noel Lee, on YouTube here.Īs for Ragtime, which you can see a performance of (conducted by Kevin Field) on YouTube here, it’s a work for 11 instruments: cimbalom (here a specially prepared piano instead), 9 solo instruments, and percussion. ![]() Stravinsky wrote the piece for Arthur Rubinstein, but it was instead premiered by José Iturbi, on Novemin Lausanne. ![]() The irregular meters give the piece an improvisatory character. Stravinsky incorporates elements from his Russian period (ostinati, shifting accents, bitonality) with rhythmic and harmonic fragments from ragtime. ![]() However, he had managed to hear live jazz bands by the time he finished Piano-Rag Music.Ĭompositionally, Stravinsky interprets the ragtime in a cubist way rather than imitate the style. Stravinsky’s knowledge of stylistic jazz properties was at first limited to scores brought to him from the United States by his colleague Ernest Ansermet. Stravinsky, who had, by that time, emigrated to France after his studies with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia, was confronted with American jazz combos actively influential in Europe. Piano-Rag-Music is a composition for piano solo by Igor Stravinsky, written in 1919. If you were hoping for a rag (in the style of Scott Joplin, say), then you’ll be disappointed - but of course Stravinsky never proposed to produce something in the ragtime tradition, instead taking some features from that tradition to weave a work of his own. Two versions of a short work by Igor Stravinsky, heard Monday night on WQXR (classical music in NYC): a solo piano arrangement Piano-Rag-Music and an arrangement for 11 instruments ( Ragtime, the version WQXR played). Stravinsky started writing it when he had never heard actual ragtime, or in fact any kind of jazz at all, but had only scores to go on! ![]()
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