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Big Boots Chez Petrushka: Dance and the Grotesque in Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet

Ava Pacheco

Violin Performance

Steven Bruns

Erika Eckert

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Big Boots Chez Petrushka: Dance and the Grotesque in Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for String Quartet

Ava I. Pacheco

University of Colorado Boulder College of Music

Doctor of Musical Arts Lecture Document TMUS 8319

April 24, 2020

1

With the onset of World War I in 1914, Stravinsky moved to Switzerland, and following

this move, Stravinsky took his first step into the world of chamber music with his Three Pieces

for String Quartet. With his exile to Switzerland came turbulence in Stravinsky’s identity as a

composer. Up until Three Pieces, Stravinsky had focused the bulk of his compositions on works

for ballet, orchestra, and piano. He had had success in Paris with a series of ballet masterworks,

culminating in Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. In exile from wartime France, he composed a

series of works using much smaller forces, beginning with the Three Pieces for String Quartet.

Three Pieces was “the composer’s first attempt at writing in a purified, explicitly ‘anti-

romanogermanic’ style,”1 and Stravinsky’s quartet seems deliberately oblivious to the history

and aesthetic conventions of the string quartet genre. With his home country pushing him out, his

compositions took on a uniquely Turanian style that he found in a “rejoicing discovery” of

Russian folk culture, including poetry and music.2 As concentrated as they are in duration, the

Three Pieces may be understood as influenced, whether consciously or unconsciously, by

gestural, rhythmic, and narrative aspects of ballet, including Petrushka, which had been so

crucial to Stravinsky’s previous music.

Surprising as it may seem, the Three Pieces for String Quartet demonstrates Stravinsky’s

embrace of Russian culture in his use of folk materials. Three Pieces additionally exhibits the

composer’s love of the circus, which is evident in the conscious allusions to Petrushka. Richard

Taruskin has invoked the Russian concept of nepodvizhnost’3 (immobility) in a discussion of

1 Richard Taruskin, “Stravinsky and the Subhuman” in Defining Russia Musically: Historical and Hermeneutical Essays (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1997), 412. 2 Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through Mavra, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 2:443. 3 Ibid, 2:449.

2

Stravinsky’s music from this period, and the first of the Three Pieces certainly exemplifies this

quality:

Nepodvizhnost’. The word means immobility, and it was applied by many critics to the ostinato-driven music of The Rite. Yet what are the “vamping pieces” of the Swiss decade if not nepodvizhnost’ raised to an even higher power?...Some of [these pieces] are virtually reduced to the level of wind-up toy automata by the maintenance of a single ostinato for the duration. These most immobile pieces of all include the Trois pièces, the Tsvetochnïy val’s, the Figaro waltz, and several of the Cinq pièces faciles…Robert Craft was quite right to point out that the Trois pièces are “landmarks in Stravinsky’s art…”4

Indeed, in the short first piece, each instrument has a characteristic ostinato that churns

continuously, as if oblivious to the music of the others. The second piece embodies a different

Turanian concept, that of drobnost’ (the sum of parts):

[Drobnost’]’s witting exploitation again goes back to The Rite and reached its spectacular peak in the instrumental music of the Swiss years—a peak so spectacular that recent critics have felt the need anachronistically to borrow a term from Karlheinz Stockhausen’s music and writings of the 1960s to deal with such Stravinskian products as the second of the Three Pieces for String Quartet (1914)…Here is how G.W. Hopkins summarizes Stockhausen’s concept of the “moment” in The New Grove Dictionary: “Each individually characterized passage in a work is regarded as an experiential unit, a ‘moment,’ which can potentially engage a listener’s full attention and can do so in exactly the same measure as its neighbors. No single ‘moment’ claims priority, even as a beginning or ending; hence the nature of such a work is essentially ‘unending’ (and, indeed, ‘unbeginning’).5

Drobnost’ is especially important when observing the second piece of Three Pieces: each part is

seemingly unrelated, as the piece jumps from one idea to the next, seemingly “presented in an

arbitrary, nonsignificant sequence.”6 On second glance, however, each member of the quartet

demands attention, working together to create the specific moment in time that Stravinsky

perhaps had in mind for this particular piece.

4 Ibid, 2:449. 5 Ibid, 2:451-452. 6 Ibid, 2:452

3

Three Pieces is not only Stravinsky’s first step into chamber music, but each of the pieces

is an important contribution to the genre as a whole. Paul Griffiths argues that Stravinsky

approached “the string quartet as an ensemble without a history,”7 leaving himself free to

manipulate every aspect of the genre to fit his particular vision. Of the Three Pieces, Griffiths

writes:

Stravinsky’s work, for the first time in the history of the genre, is determinedly not a “string quartet” but a set of pieces to be played by four strings. There is no acknowledgement of a tradition or a form, and the lack of any such acknowledgement only seems iconoclastic because of our own experience of the genre’s traditions: subversion is not particularly one of Stravinsky’s aims. 8

Any preconceived ideas of a traditional string quartet as a group of four string players with a

hierarchy of melody and supporting lines is abandoned in Three Pieces, as Stravinsky treats each

player and their part as an equal to any of the others. Stravinsky’s treatment of the genre is even

more radical when placed alongside contemporaries such as Bartok and Shostakovich. While

Bartok and Shostakovich’s own first quartets were written in 1909 and 1938 – relatively close in

years to the 1914 composition of Three Pieces – the two composers still approach the quartet

from a fairly traditional point of view.

The First Piece Within the first of Three Pieces, the concept of drobnost’ (the sum of parts) can easily be

observed alongside nepodvizhnost’ (immobility). As the unmoving, repetitive parts work

seemingly independently of each other, the more each motive is heard, the more the full picture

of the first piece comes together. This use of drobnost’ the first piece mirrors the first tableau of

Petrushka, though in an extremely stripped-down version of the Shrovetide Fair scene. Each

7 Griffiths, The String Quartet: A History (New York: Thames and Hudson, Inc., 1983), 170. 8 Ibid, 169-170.

4

instrument takes on its own role, or character, in the group, acting independently but collectively

creating the full scene.

Stravinsky does not explicitly designate the role played by each instrument; I assign here

characters suggested by each instrument’s distinctive musical traits. The first of these characters

to be heard is the viola, with its sul ponticello droning tone and left-hand pizzicato acting as a

parallel character to the Organ Grinder from Petrushka’s Shrovetide Fair (example 1).

Ex. 1 Violist as Organ Grinder.

After setting up the scene of the first piece, the Organ Grinder violist is quickly joined in m. 3 by

two new characters: the first violin and cellist, whose parts can be interpreted as references to the

Street Dancer and the Drunken Reveler that emerge from the crowd. The violin’s sul g motive

(example 2) repeats over and over, with a spinning & graceful quality to its repetitions.

Ex. 2 First violin as Street Dancer. (Treble clef throughout.)

The cellist, acting as a stumbling Drunken Reveler, presents the listener with the first instance of

a limping motive (another motive with a similar limping quality will be revisited in the second

5

piece). Much like Petrushka’s Drunken Reveler, the cello part frequently threatens to knock the

rest of the quartet off balance with its lopsided forte-to-piano figure, even though its primary aim

is to help keep time (example 3).

Ex. 3 Cello as Drunken Reveler. (Bass clef throughout.)

While these three characters within the first piece—the Organ-Grinder (viola), the Drunken

Reveler (cello), and the Street Dancer (violin I) – seem to have nothing in common, they

continue along their own trajectories at a steady pace, thus continuing to establish Stravinsky’s

reference to the Shrovetide Fair scene he created in Petrushka.

To round things out, Stravinsky finally introduces the second violin as the final character

in m. 7 with an explosive motive (example 4) that continues to interrupt at random the scene for

the rest of the piece. This four-note motive alternates between all up-bow and all down-bow and

is instructed to remain sul g, at the frog, and “excessively dry” throughout the piece. Here, the

second violin takes on the character of a Carnival Barker or, in the case of Petrushka, the Master

of Ceremonies, repeatedly interrupting the other characters to deliver the same message over and

over again.

6

Ex. 4 Second violin as Carnival Barker.

Paradoxically, while all four parts have active, repeated rhythms, the pitch content of their parts

is so repetitive that there is no clear sense of forward motion.

Possible links to the imagery of Petrushka were not lost on poet Amy Lowell, and she

reflects upon Three Pieces for String Quartet in her set of poems entitled “Stravinsky’s Three

Pieces ‘Grotesques’ for String Quartet.” Though Lowell is not explicitly mentioning Petrushka,

her poems clearly evoke the image of a peasant festival in the springtime, much like the scene

presented in the first tableau of the ballet (see Appendix for the complete poems). In

independently referencing the presence of characters similar to an organ-grinder (“Thin-voiced,

nasal pipes Drawing sound out and out”), a reveler (“Drunkenness steaming in colours”), and a

street dancer (“A fine, white thread Linking up the dancers. Bang! Bump! Tong!”), Lowell

weaves the thread of Petrushka into Three Pieces for String Quartet, further strengthening the

potential relationship between the two works. Stravinsky himself even admitted to Robert Craft

calling on Petrushka for inspiration in Three Pieces, remarking that the work contains an

“obvious recollection of Petroushka.”9 The composer drawing upon the idea of the circus for

inspiration in his second of Three Pieces simultaneously eads the composer back to his Russian

roots in Petrushka and into the future of the string quartet.

9 Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky, Memories and Commentaries (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1960), 89.

7

The Second Piece and the Grotesque

Stravinsky’s deconstruction and reimagining of the traditional structure of the string

quartet led to conflicting reactions from his contemporaries. While one unnamed critic wrote of a

moment in the second piece, “If this type of passage has any proper place in the art of the string

quartet, then the end is near,”10 poet Amy Lowell was inspired to pen a poem following the New

York premiere of the work that “tried to ‘reproduce the sound and movement of the music as far

as is possible in another medium.’”11 With critical reception of the work as divided as it was, it is

almost no surprise that Stravinsky left the piece unpublished until 1922, instead revising the

work: first arranging it for piano four-hands in 1914, revising the string quartet version in 1918,

and finally orchestrating the three pieces to serve as the first three of the Four Etudes for

Orchestra in 1928.12

As we have seen so far, the most shocking of the three pieces is the second piece, with its

limping opening and seemingly unrelated motifs. Where the first and third pieces of Three

Pieces have concrete melodies that—while not developed—have clear beginnings and endings,

the second piece seems to show Stravinsky deliberately experimenting with abrupt

juxtapositions, “a quicksilver darting from mood to mood.”13 While the material in the second

piece may seem random and unrelated from one measure to the next, Stravinsky remarks to

10 As quoted in James M. Keller, “Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky” in Chamber Music: A Listener’s Guide (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 453. 11 Ibid. 12 Ibid. 13 Joseph Straus, “Representing the Extraordinary Body: Musical Modernism’s Aesthetic of Disability” in The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 741.

8

Robert Craft in Memories and Commentaries that he found a clear inspiration for the piece in a

performer he saw in 1914:

R.C. Has music ever been suggested to you by, or has a musical idea ever occurred to you from, a purely visual experience of movement, line, or pattern?

I.S. Countless times, I suppose, though I remember only one instance in which I was aware of such a thing. This was during the composition of the second of my Three Pieces for string quartet. I had been fascinated by the movements of Little Tich, whom I had seen in London in 1914, and the jerky, spastic movement, the ups and downs, the rhythm—even the mood or joke of the music—which I later called Eccentric, was suggested by the art of this great clown (and “suggested” seems to me the right word, for it does not try to approfondir the relationship, whatever it is)…In spite of the obvious recollection of Petroushka in Eccentric, it seems to me these Three Pieces look ahead to the Piéces Faciles to my so aberrant “neoclassicism” (in which category, nevertheless, and without knowing it was that, I have managed to compose some not unpleasing music).14

Little Tich is as important a character to Three Pieces as Petrushka the puppet is to the ballet of

the same name. Little Tich was the stage name of comedian and performer Harry Relph, who

performed in music halls in Britain and France from 1895 to 1925. At only 4 feet 6 inches in height

and with six fingers on each hand, Little Tich’s physical attributes “profoundly inflected the critical

reception of him” 15 despite his talent as a performer and musician:

Contemporary and reminiscent accounts…reflecting his fame, refer to him as a gnome, a dwarf, a gargoyle, and a grotesque. They praise his comic genius, his rapid movements and transformations, but all of them are inescapably concerned with his nonnormative body.16

Though his musical performances and dances in these music halls were more similar to

American vaudeville than the Russian circus, Little Tich was best known for his Big Boot

14 Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky, Memories and Commentaries (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1960), 89. 15 Straus, 742. 16 Ibid.

9

Dance17: a “specialty dance in which he appeared to defy gravity, either leaning forward at a

precarious angle or balancing on the tips of 28 inch wooden boots.”18

It is again Amy Lowell’s poem that captures the connection between the second piece of

Three Pieces, Little Tich & his unhappiness as a performer, and Stravinsky’s ill-fated character

of Petrushka. Lowell’s description of a lonely Pierrot figure digging himself a grave (“Claws a

grave for himself in the fresh earth, With his finger-nails”) conjures up images of a hopeless

Petrushka thrown into his room, cursing the Magician (see Appendix). Lowell’s poem may also

be read with Little Tich in mind: an unhappy performer’s gifts as comedian and musician are

overshadowed by his physical differences, his true talents dug into a grave by the public’s

perception of him. Little Tich “resented being promoted as a grotesque,”19 but had a successful

career as a performer, appearing in films and performing in halls throughout Britain and France

during his career.

In watching Little Tich’s Big Boots Dance, it’s clear that he is graceful and comfortable

performing in comically large shoes that would render any other person clumsy or even

immobile. Stravinsky’s music is awkward, halting, and fragmented; the music “seems to depict a

disabled body, but one that has more to do with the perception of Little Tich as grotesque than

with his actual bodily capability.”20 The piece starts with a motif that limps along without getting

anywhere, and ultimately ends with the same limping and bumping; in this case, Stravinsky’s

music disables Little Tich further, pushing the man closer to the puppet. In considering Little

17 Clément Maurice & Harry Relph , “Little Tich and his Big Boot Dance,” film, Phono-Cinéma-Théâtre, 1 minute, 1900, accessed March 20, 2020, http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/little-tich-and-his-big-boot-dance-1900/#. 18 Barry Anthony, “Little Tich (Harry Relph),” Who’s Who of Victorian Cinema, accessed March 20, 2020, http://www.victorian-cinema.net/tich. 19 Ibid. 20 Straus, 744.

10

Tich’s personal background and the story of Petrushka, Stravinsky’s musical depiction of the

performer in Three Pieces may further dehumanize Little Tich while creating a humanized

version of Petrushka the puppet.

As the second piece jerks and jumps from measure to measure, it is immediately clear

that the music is headed in a direction that is anything but graceful. The second piece, when

considered alongside film footage of Little Tich’s Big Boots Dance21, seems more disjointed than

it does an accurate translation of Little Tich’s graceful maneuvering around the stage. The

second piece’s music adds a grotesque quality to Little Tich’s dancing that moves rather

seamlessly compared to the jumping, transition-less quality of the piece. This disconnect

between the music and Little Tich’s dancing highlights Stravinsky’s statement that Little Tich

was only a suggestion for the second piece. On the other hand, when viewing Petrushka in his

room, with his fitful, unhappy, almost spastic movements, and the music of the second piece of

Three Pieces seems almost as if it was written for this scene. A ‘limping’ motive captures

Petrushka’s falling on the floor and struggling to pull himself back up after being thrown into his

room by the Magician.22 The sudden jumps from motive to motive, and the subsequent episode

follow Petrushka going madly back and forth between sudden fits of anger and self-pity. A small

episode of light-hearted, waltz-like material from mm. 36-44 suddenly takes over in the first

violin, interrupting the dark material that had dominated the piece thus far (example 5).

21 “Little Tich Et Ses 'Big Boots', Paris 1902.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RkEUHawaAZ4. 22 Alexander Benois, Michel Fokine, Igor Stravinsky, “Petrouchka: Comic Ballet in Four Scenes” in Paris Dances Diaghilev, 35 minutes, accessed March 29, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puXo9wRJR2c&t=131s.

11

Ex. 5 First violin “waltz” material (Treble clef throughout)

While this material fits more into the realm of Little Tich and his Big Boots Dance than some of

the music that preceded it, it also fits into the world of Petrushka, especially the scene in which

he skips around his room to impress the Ballerina. The final scene of Petrushka’s room is

captured in the last seventeen measures of the second piece of Three Pieces:

Ballerina leaves (slamming door in Petrushka’s face). Petrushka’s despair. First Petrushka is stunned, and then he flings himself on his knees by the doors. His gloved hands glide up and down the jamb. He rises to his feet, reaches higher. He rejects the door and goes to the wall. His head and limbs twitch. He finds a weak spot and tears a hole. His head and shoulders fall through the gap. His body goes limp, curved in an inverted “v”, while his arms, dropped vertically, swing to and fro.23

The return of the stumbling motive and the abrupt ending easily follows the stage action that

ends the scene in Petrushka’s room. When added back to Little Tich’s Big Boots Dance, the

music becomes disconnected from the dance, adding a stumbling quality that Little Tich’s

smooth movements seem to lack.

Block Construction in the Second Piece

The second piece is made up of four basic thematic ideas that act as its building blocks.

Because Stravinsky juxtaposes the thematic blocks abruptly, without transitions, there is the

23 Andrew Wachtel, “The Libretto of Petrushka” in Petrushka: Sources and Contexts, (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1998), 120.

12

sense that “the second piece simply darts from one possibility to the other.”24 Though each block

appears static on the surface, it is not nearly as fixed as the first piece of the quartet. While the

first piece continuously repeats thematic material, the second piece presents contrasting musical

blocks, shifting quickly from one to the other in order to move the piece forward.

The first block—known henceforth as “block 1”—contains a three-and-a-half measure

homorhythmic “limping” motive in all instruments (example 6). Later repetitions of Block 1 are

shortened to two measures (mm. 48 and 56), and the first of them is revoiced.

Ex. 6 Block 1, the “limping” motive.

The initial limping of Block 1 is cut short by the interjection of a short natural-harmonic-based

motive at m. 4.

The second motive (example 7)—which I will refer to as “block 2” – is the only block

that is layered over other motives. The first statement of block 2 is the only moment where this

motive occurs simultaneously in all four voices.

24 Griffiths, 169-170.

13

Ex. 7 Block 2 as stated in all four voices (viola in treble clef, cello in bass clef)

A later statement of block 2 alone occurs at m. 45. In this statement, only the viola and cello

have the motive; however, this time the viola takes on the rhythm used by the second violin in

the initial statement of block 2. This final occurrence of block 2 has the viola & cello arco rather

than pizzicato, transforming their parts to resemble the original statements made by the two

violins (example 8).

Ex. 8 Final statement of block 2 by viola & cello (viola in alto clef, cello in treble clef)

It is important to note that, when it is layered over other blocks, block 2 is only ever

superimposed over block 1. Upon its return at m. 6, Block 1’s original three-measure length is

doubled to six. Here, the cello takes over the original viola part through double-stopping so that

14

the violist can superimpose the Block 2 pattern in the middle of the expanded Block 1 (example

9).

Ex. 9 Superimposition of blocks 1 and 2 (viola in treble clef)

The heavy, limping quality of block 1 impedes the sense of forward motion throughout

the piece. In contrast, block 3, which is introduced in mm. 13-14, works to create forward motion

(example 10).

Ex. 10 Block 3 is introduced by first violin (upper line, treble clef) and cello (lower line, bass clef)

15

Stravinsky gradually transforms block 3, integrating this brief motive into the entire work. After

a short interruption at m. 15, block 3 returns, this time with all voices participating in their own

way. Block 3 is later seen diminished in length and rhythmic value at mm. 33 and 43; while these

occurrences are not immediately recognizable compared to the first statement of block 3, they

are both built upon the first half of the block, beginning with the same C-E-B motive as the

original block 3 and omitting the last half of the block. The final statement of block 3 occurs at

m. 52, nearly identical to the first statement with the addition of an A to begin the motive.

Stravinsky’s fourth and final motive – referred to from here as “block 4”—first occurs at

m. 15 in the first violin (example 11), interrupting as it does the first statement of block 3. Like

block 3, block 4 makes up a substantial amount of material that pushes the piece forward while

blocks 1 and 2 attempt to hold this forward-driving motion back.

Ex. 11 Block 4 as stated by the first violin

This aggressive motive eventually makes up a more extended section of music than any of the

other three blocks, stretching from mm. 20-29, only to be interrupted by a shortened version of

block 3 (example 12). The first violin repeats the block 4 motive while the second violin’s

ostinato continues mechanically beneath.

16

Ex. 12 An interruption of Block 4

Stravinsky’s treatment of block 4 in this ten-measure segment serves as a brief development for

the piece.

Though these blocks may seem unrelated in their motivic material, each block centers

around a particular interval or set of notes. Block 1 opens by presenting chords based on perfect

fifths combined two different ways: A-E with B flat-F and A-E with A flat-E flat.25 Block 1

balances on A-E. This interval forms the harmonic basis for block 2, which is a motive based on

only A and E. Throughout the piece, blocks 1 and 2 provide a sense of harmonic stability in their

A-E basis. Because of this stability, these two blocks do not progress; instead, they remain static

25 Joseph Straus, “Representing the Extraordinary Body: Musical Modernism’s Aesthetic of Disability” in The Oxford Handbook of Music and Disability Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 736.

17

in their harmonies and motives, fully embodying the Turanian idea of nepodvizhnost’—frozen

immobility.

Where blocks 1 and 2 provide some sense of stability, blocks 3 and 4 interrupt this

balance and assert alternate fifths of B flat-F presented in block 1 against the steady A-E fifth.

Without the stability of A-E or A flat-E flat, the B flat-F interval “brusquely asserts its own

priority, its presence simultaneously intensified and dissonated by the persistent C flat” in the

second violin.26 Where this B flat-F interval felt interruptive in block 1 against A and E, the

interval is more out of place in blocks 3 and 4 with C flats and C naturals placed right next to it,

emphasizing the grotesque nature of the second piece.

The Third Piece Where the first piece of Three Pieces can be heard as a radical reinterpretation of the First

Tableau of Petrushka, and the second piece shows us another form of Petrushka himself, the

final piece of the work takes a detour from Petrushka and appropriates characteristics of sacred

music. In a conversation with Robert Craft about Four Etudes, the orchestrated and expanded

version of the Three Pieces, Stravinsky explained that “the third [piece] is called Cantique or

Canticle because the music is choral and religious in character, but Hymne would have been as

good a title.”27

Within this final piece, the four voices imitate a chorale texture, repeating and

manipulating as they do a fragment of the Dies irae figure (example 13) throughout the nearly

26 Ibid. 27 Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Themes and Episodes (NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1966): 32-33, as cited by Pieter C van den Toorn, The Music of Igor Stravinsky (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1983): 145.

18

four-minute-long movement. Stravinsky develops this passage four times, each time changing

the placement and amount of 6/4 measures. These 6/4 measures lengthen the phrase, allowing

Stravinsky to add twists and turns to the Dies irae theme.

Ex. 13 Incomplete Dies irae figure in all four voices

Each of the four iterations of this motive is interrupted by the same two-measure phrase, halting

the development of the Dies irae theme (example 14). While the majority of the piece is played

at a pianissimo dynamic over the fingerboard, these two-measure interruptions are deliberately

not marked sul tasto and are brought up to a mezzoforte dynamic for all four players. It is in these

two measures that the cellist’s G#-F-A flat-G# line takes on a taunting and teasing quality.

19

Ex. 14 Interruptive measures (treble clef for violins, alto clef for viola, bass clef for cello)

At only three measures long, the fourth and final statement of the Dies irae motive is cut short,

this time interrupted by an unusually bright theme stated in the first violin (example 15). Though

still primarily homorhythmic—with the exception of the cello’s held double-stop harmonics in

m. 30—Stravinsky holds this theme in the upper registers of the quartet’s instruments, marking a

stark contrast from the gloomy first half. Following its peak on an A flat in m. 34, the first violin

begins a descent by thirds down to a final F.

20

Ex. 15 New theme presented in first violin

Following the first violin’s descent, the interruptive sul tasto theme from the beginning tries and

fails to get started again two separate times (example 16). Each restatement of this theme is

interrupted; however, the interruption comes in the form of a triple-piano harmonic from all four

players.

21

Ex. 16 Two measure “interruptive” motive (treble clef in both violins, alto clef in viola, bass clef in cello throughout)

Amy Lowell’s poem of the same name can again be examined side by side with this final

piece of Three Pieces (see Appendix). Lowell’s imagery of “organ growls in the heavy roof-

groins of a church” echoes the sounds created by the quartet in the first few measures of the

piece (example 17).

Ex. 17 “Organ growls” in the first two measures of the third piece

22

Much like the sul tasto measures interrupting the incomplete Dies irae figures throughout

the piece, verses in Lowell’s poem are interrupted by chant verses (“Requiem aeternam dona ei,

Domine…Dies illa, dies irae…”). The imagery throughout Lowell’s poem reflect the timbres

present in Stravinsky’s writing, including the sul tasto ghostly sounds Stravinsky pulls from the

quartet members (“The swaying smoke drifts over the altar”). Throughout the three pieces, the

imagery Stravinsky aims to create with texture and timbre is not lost on Amy Lowell.

Timbral Innovations While he clearly pushes the possibilities of timbre within the string quartet with his

harmonic and constructive choices, it is in the use of extended technique that Stravinsky achieves

some of the most remarkable sounds heard in the quartet. In the first piece alone, the first violin

is instructed to play the entire piece sul G while sliding the full length of the bow across the

strings. The viola is marked sul ponticello on a D while using left hand pizzicato to pluck the

open D string every other beat. The third piece begins with the marking “Tutti sul tasto”—all

parts bowed above the fingerboard—followed by the same instruction the first violin received in

the first piece (use the full length of the bow). These techniques themselves create a thin and

ghostly sound, but Stravinsky adds to the texture with a mixture of natural and false harmonics in

every voice (example 18) at mm. 38, 41, and 44.

23

Ex. 18 False harmonics written in all four voices. Treble clef for both violins, alto clef for viola, and bass clef for cello throughout.

The extended techniques in the whole piece are clear signs of Stravinsky manipulating string

technique to create the sound he desired.

The techniques in the first and last pieces of Three Pieces appear tame when placed next

to those put to use in the second piece. Within the second piece, we can see Stravinsky pushing

the timbral possibilities of the string quartet, taking advantage of the color palette available to

each instrument in the ensemble. Almost every compositional block within the piece is

associated with a new extended technique unique to that section. Block 2 features the violins

playing very short at the frog; playing so low in the bow will choke the sound or create a gritty

texture. Indeed, when block 2 returns at m. 46, Stravinsky writes for the cello to “produce a

strangled sound.” The harmonics are to be played sul C for both viola and cello, but the cello part

is written in treble clef, forcing the cellist to play the notes so high on the fingerboard they are

nearly off of it. Block 3 instructs the players to play over the fingerboard, creating a thin and

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wispy sound. In block 4, Stravinsky instructs the cello for a glissando up during a pizzicato

beginning on A at m. 15, creating a sliding effect (the cello repeats this at m. 29, starting on a B

flat). The briefest and possibly most unusual of the instructions comes in m. 33, when the

second violin and viola are instructed to “quickly flip the instrument (hold it as a cello) in order

to perform this pizz., which is equivalent to the inverted arpeggio” (example 19).

Ex. 19 Performance instruction to second violin and viola

This chord is notated as an A with an F sharp grace note which, when the violin or viola is held

as they are meant to be, would normally be difficult to execute as pizzicato due to the angle of

the instrument and finger in playing position. This downward pizzicato can be executed while

holding the instrument normally if the player uses their thumb to strum down; however, this

method still leaves room for error. It is clear from this direction that Stravinsky had a particular

order of notes in mind and wanted to ensure the players acheived the intended effect with no

chance of missing the notes, even if it meant disrupting the traditional way of holding the

instruments.

Conclusion

As innovative and important as these short pieces are, they cannot be adequately

understood only as abstract, modernist compositions that seem to have emerged oblivious to the

historical and aesthetic conventions of the string quartet as a genre. These pieces are in fact

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connected in obvious and subtle ways to the world of Stravinsky’s earlier music. The Three

Pieces for String Quartet also serve as a launching point for Stravinsky’s productive Swiss years.

Stravinsky’s expansion of the possibilities of sounds available in the quartet served as a model

not only for his own future compositions for strings, but also for other composers’ works.

The fragmented, often unmoving, and novel sounds throughout the work come together

to create a true representation of drobnost’ (the sum of parts) alongside nepodvizhnost’

(immobility). Another aspect of drobnost’ is Stravinsky’s fusion of narrative, gestural, and

musical elements: Little Tich and Petrushka are essential to understanding the second piece.

Gestural elements in the first piece take us back to the characters of the Shrovetide Fair in

Petrushka. Each character is frozen in time (nepodvizhnost’ or immobility), while constantly

moving alongside the other characters, yet never fully interacting. Considering Stravinsky’s

lifelong involvement with music for the stage – whether ballet, oratorio, or opera – it seems

likely that analysis of other purely instrumental works may be enriched in essential ways by

considering the gestural, narrative, and other extra-musical elements. As we have seen, even

when the connections to these elements are not explicitly acknowledged in the score, their

influence can prove to be essential to our understanding of the music.

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Appendix

“Stravinsky’s Three Pieces ‘Grotesque’ for String Quartet” by Amy Lowell

First movement

Thin-voiced, nasal pipes Drawing sound out and out Until it is a screeching thread, Sharp and cutting, sharp and cutting, It hurts. Whee-e-e! Bump! Bump! Tong-ti-bump! There are drums here, Banging, And wooden shoes beating the round, grey stones Of the market-place Whee-e-e! Sabots slapping the worn, old stones, And a shaking and cracking of dancing bones, Clumsy and hard they are, And uneven, Losing half a beat Because the stones are slippery. Bump-e-ty-tong! Whee-e-e! Tong! The thin Spring leaves Shake to the banging of shoes. Shoes beat, slap, Shuffle, rap, And nasal pipes squeal with their pigs’ voices, Little pigs’ voices Weaving among the dancers, A fine, white thread Linking up the dancers. Bang! Bump! Tong! Petticoats, Stockings, Sabots, Delirium flapping its thigh-bones; Red, blue, yellow, Drunkenness steaming in colours; Red, yellow, blue, Colors and flesh weaving together, In and out, with the dance,

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Coarse stuffs and hot flesh weaving together. Pigs’ cries white and tenuous, White and painful, White and— Bump! Tong!

Second Movement

Pale violin music whiffs across the moon, A pale smoke of violin music blows over the moon, Cherry petals fall and flutter, And the white Pierrot, Wreathed in the smoke of the violins, Splashed with cherry petals falling, falling, Claws a grave for himself in the fresh earth With his finger-nails.

Third Movement

An organ growls in the heavy roof-groins of a Church, It wheezes and coughs. The nave is blue with incense, Writhing, twisting, Snaking over the heads of the chanting priests. Requiem aeternam dona ei, Domine; The priests whine their bastard Latin And the censers swing and click. The priests walk endlessly Round and round, Droning their Latin Off the key. The organ crashes out in a flaring chord And the priests hitch their chant up half a tone. Dies illa, dies irae, Calamitatis et miseriae, Dies magna et amara valde. A wind rattles the leaded windows. The little pear-shaped candle-flames leap and flutter. Dies illa, dies irae, The swaying smoke drifts over the altar. Calamitatis et miseriae, The shuffling priests sprinkle holy water.

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Dies magna et amara valde. And there is a stark stillness in the midst of them, Stretched upon a bier. His ears are stone to the organ, His eyes are flint to the candles, His body is ice to the water. Chant, priests, Whine, shuffle, genuflect. He will always be as rigid as he is now Until he crumbles away in a dust heap. Lacrymosa dies illa, Qua resurget ex favilla Judicandus homo reus. Above the grey pillars, the roof is in darkness.

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