Download IGOR STRAVINSKY Symphony in C Moderato

IGOR STRAVINSKY Symphony in C Moderato alla breve Larghetto concertante Allegretto Largo—Tempo giusto Born: June 17, 1882, in Oranienbaum, Russia Died: April 6, 1971, in New York W ork composed: 1938–40 W orld premiere: November 7, 1940, in Chicago. The composer conducted the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Stravinsky’s Symphony in C was born of a long creative process undertaken in difficult circumstances. The composer wrote its first movement in the autumn of 1938, in Paris, which had been the center of his activities for nearly three decades. But early the following year he was forced to enter a sanitarium in the alpine village of Sancellmoz for treatment of tuberculosis, an illness that recently had claimed the lives of his wife and daughter. There he completed the second movement. In September 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II, he sailed for the United States. Initially, Stravinsky went to Boston, where he delivered a series of lectures at Harvard University and wrote the third movement of his symphony. Upon completing his obligation to Harvard, he moved to Los Angeles. Once settled into his new surroundings, Stravinsky completed the symphony’s fourth and final movement. Paris, the sanitarium at Sancellmoz, Boston, California — the four movements of the Symphony in C trace the path of Stravinsky’s flight across six thousand miles during the course of two years. And yet the music reveals no sign of its fitful genesis. Quite the contrary, it is distinguished by a high degree of conceptual unity. This is more than a matter of stylistic consistency among the different portions of the work. Stravinsky binds the symphony’s various sections together with shared themes and motifs, the cross references being particularly strong between the first and final movements. Moreover, nothing about the symphony reflects the personal losses its author had recently suffered, nor the turbulent world situation at the time. Stravinsky is not the first symphonist to refrain from autobiographical revelation or topical reference in his music. Mozart composed his “Jupiter” Symphony at a time of deepening personal crisis, as we will see, and Beethoven’s joyous Second Symphony is contemporary with his Heiligenstadt Testament, the anguished letter despairing at his growing deafness. One could cite other examples. Stravinsky studied select Haydn and Beethoven symphonies, as well as Tchaikovsky’s First, while composing his own. His rather precise observance of the four-­‐movement format and many other conventions of these classic symphonies leaves no doubt that he sought deliberately to reinterpret their genre in his own language. W hat to Listen For Stravinsky prefaces the first movement with an introduction in moderate tempo. Here he establishes a three-­‐note motif that proves to be a “motto” figure, one that recurs in varied form throughout the composition. It plays a particularly important role during the development passage that lies at the heart of the first movement. The finale also begins with an introduction in slow tempo — in this case, a striking duet for bassoons in their low register against statements of an unchanging chord in the horns. The main body of the movement includes much retrospection: a variation of the principal melody of the first movement, a return to the bassoon-­‐and-­‐horn colloquy heard earlier, and a recollection of the three-­‐note “motto” in slow motion. Scored for piccolo, 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets and 2 bassoons; 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones and tuba; timpani and strings.