Steve Schwartz writes:

>I admit to being a Stravinsky head-banger.  There are probably five or
>fewer works of his I don't really like.  It's come to the point where I
>don't automatically think of Petrushka or the Rite of Spring when someone
>mentions his name.

In fact I find it really quite bizarre that the reputation of any composer
be built upon their very early works.  It always strikes me a being
ridiculous that the catalogues are overflowing with unnecessary recordings
of the Firebird and yet I have never managed to get my hands on a recording
of Threni.  I know of the existence of a performance by the composer but
last thing I heard it was available only as part of some complete boxed
set.  I once managed to hear excerpts of this performance on the radio
years ago and it certainly sounded fascinating.  However I have a recording
of Agon and I would prefer it any day to overvalued immature works such as
Petrushka and Le Sacre.  Tilson-Thomas makes a good case for Agon but I
have heard excerpts quoted from his radio series on 20th century music by
Rattle which sounded even more alluring.  I wish the wretched recording
companies would let Rattle record the work coupled perhaps with Threni.

That said I generally do not really like this composer's music much.
I have become particularly tired with the early ballets which strike me
as being a structural mess despite all the carry-on about rhythmic cells
etc.  Although the charge of sounding cold and mechanical are leveled at
the Second Viennese School I think the epithet fits Stravinsky much better.
All too often Stravinsky merely sounds dazzlingly kaleidoscopic without
really moving me one bit.  Then again Stravinsky, the prophet of Objective
Music, once said "if music evokes emotion it is merely an illusion".  I
agree only in so far as the statement applies to Stravinsky's own works.
When I read Adorno's scathing attacks on Stravinsky I must say, although
they go way too far, I generally sympathized with them.

>From the Fifties on, I'm especially partial to Agon, Threni, Anthem
>("The Dove Descending"), Babel (God help me), Monumentum pro Gesualdo,
>and the Requiem Canticles.

I am sure a Stravinskian would point to the Requiem as the best argument
against my charges.  I agree it is one of this composer's more memorable
works in that it does more than dazzle.  It almost manages to move me but
then I realize it is merely an illusion.

Although I approve greatly of Stravinsky's acceptance of the 12 tone
technique and I even think that his finest works were written as a
result, I strongly disagree with his view of Webern as a model for a new
puritanically abstract-objectivist style of composition.  That is an
appalling misrepresentation of Webern which has fatally tarnished this
composer's image before the musical public.  Webern viewed composition more
like Mahler, and went so far as to say that his mature compositions were
all but a reaction to the horror over the death of his mother.  The more
Webern becomes familiar the more you realize just how intimate and deeply
introspective this composer really was.  I recently was brought to realize
just how much how profound Debussy's - another deeply introspective
composer - influence on Webern is, only in Webern his miniaturism and
hushed introspection is taken to the nth degree.

At the risk of provoking the wrath of list members I must say I am afraid
Stravinsky is one 20th century composer I can ultimately live without.

Satoshi Akima
Sydney, Australia
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