Download Igor Stravinsky “Petrushka,” Burlesque in four scenes (1911 version

Igor Stravinsky
“Petrushka,” Burlesque in four scenes (1911 version)
IGOR FEDOROVICH STRAVINSKY was born at Oranienbaum, Russia, on June 17, 1882, and died in New York
on April 6, 1971. He composed “Petrushka” at Lausanne and Clarens, Switzerland, at Beaulieu in the south of
France, and in Rome, between August 1910 and May 26, 1911. The first performance was given by Diaghilev’s
Ballets Russes at the Théâtre du Châtelet, Paris, on June 13, 1911. Scenario, scenery, and costumes were by
Alexandre Benois, to whom the music is dedicated, and whose name appears on the title page as co-author of these
“scènes burlesques.” The choreography was by Michel Fokine. Pierre Monteux conducted, the principal roles being
taken by Vaslav Nijinsky as Petrushka, Tamara Karsavina as the Ballerina, Alexander Orlov as the Moor, and
Enrico Cecchetti as the Magician. It was also Monteux who conducted the first concert performance, on March 1,
1914, at the Casino di Paris, with Alfredo Casella playing the piano solo. Stravinsky reorchestrated “Petrushka”—
reducing the original instrumentation somewhat, particularly in the woodwinds and brass—in 1946, the new edition
being generally identified by the date of its publication as the “1947 version.” It is the original 1911 version that is
being played in these concerts.
THE SCORE OF STRAVINSKY’S “PETRUSHKA” in its original 1911 version calls for four flutes, two piccolos,
four oboes, English horn, four clarinets and bass clarinet, four bassoons and contrabassoon, four horns, two
trumpets, two cornets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, triangle, tambourine, bells, cymbals, snare drum, military
drum, bass drum, xylophone, celesta, two harps, piano, and strings. The pianist at these performances is Vytas
Baksys.
In 1910 Stravinsky became the darling of Paris with a brilliant ballet, The Firebird, produced by
Diaghilev’s Russian Ballet. The impresario had risked failure with a young and relatively unknown
composer (Stravinsky turned twenty-eight a week before the premiere) and had enjoyed a resounding
triumph. Naturally he wanted a new Stravinsky ballet for the following season, and he was overjoyed with
the proposed scenario: an exotic picture of life in prehistoric Russia featuring the sacrifice of a maiden, who
is chosen for the honor of dancing herself to death for the fertility of the earth. The work promised
wonderful richness of orchestral color and rhythmic energy, two features that Stravinsky had already
demonstrated in abundance.
After the Paris season ended, the young composer went off with his family for a vacation in Switzerland,
first to Vevey, then to Lausanne, with every intention of composing his planned ballet. But his musical
fantasy took him in an utterly unexpected direction. Before starting the ballet (which he eventually did
finish as Le Sacre du printemps), he wanted to compose something quite different by way, almost, of
recreation. He had in mind a little concerto-like piece for piano and orchestra; his first image was of a
romantic poet rolling two objects over the black and white keys, respectively, of the piano (this image was to
give rise to the complex bichord consisting of C major and F-sharp major simultaneously arpeggiated). Later
his image became more detailed, with the piano representing a puppet suddenly come to life and cavorting
up and down the keyboard, metaphorically thumbing his nose at the orchestra, which would finally explode
in exasperation with overwhelming trumpet blasts. “The outcome,” Stravinsky wrote, “is a terrific noise
which reaches its climax and ends in the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet.”
Having finished this little piece, Stravinsky hunted for a suitable title and was delighted when it occurred to
him to call it Petrushka, after a puppet character (roughly the Russian equivalent of Punch) popular in
Russian fairs. Soon after, Diaghilev came to visit, expecting to hear some of the new ballet. As Stravinsky
recalled,
He was much astonished when, instead of sketches of the Sacre, I played him the piece which I had just
composed and which later became the second scene of Petrushka. He was so much pleased with it that he
would not leave it alone and began persuading me to develop the theme of the puppet’s sufferings and
make it into a whole ballet. While he remained in Switzerland we worked out together the general lines of
the subject and plot in accordance with ideas which I suggested. . . . I began at once to compose the first
scene of the ballet.
The work was put on the stage with the collaboration of designer Alexandre Benois, who entered
enthusiastically into Stravinsky’s vision, eager as he was to “immortalize” the character of Petrushka, “my
friend since my earliest childhood.” The choreography was created by Michel Fokine, who described the
rehearsals, on the stage of the Paris Opera, as often degenerating to lessons in mathematics, since the dancers
had so much difficulty with Stravinsky’s irregular fast rhythms. Once orchestral rehearsals started with
Pierre Monteux, some of the players were offended at the curious sounds they were asked to make with their
instruments. The scene changes were hampered by the fact that they had to be made in total darkness, and it
was a noisy darkness, since Stravinsky had placed four drums in the prompt corner to play a continuous
racket of sixteenth-notes to link scenes. Yet all the problems vanished in that most magical of balms, a
successful opening night. One critic hailed the work as “a masterpiece, one of the most unexpected, most
impulsive, most buoyant and lively that I know.” Though the success was credited to the effectiveness of all
the elements—not least Nijinsky’s brilliant performance as the mechanical puppet with searing emotions—
the music came in for lavish praise.
Petrushka became a banner work for the Russian Ballet, enjoying enormous success all over Europe and
even in America, where in most cities it was the first work of Stravinsky’s to be performed. Of course no
one at the time could predict that Stravinsky would go on very soon to an even more astonishing and
seminal work, Le Sacre du printemps, one that proved disconcerting, even to many of Stravinsky’s warmest
admirers. Still, even though Le Sacre is universally regarded as the more important work, Petrushka remains
as fascinating and delightful as these early appreciative critics found it. From the opening measure it
positively dazzles the listener with its color and energy, and it moves with easy assurance between the
“public” world of the fairground and the “private” world of Petrushka and his fellow puppets. The music is
often so gestural that even in a concert performance, the images of the dancers are likely to perform in the
listener’s mind’s eye.
The scenario is divided into four scenes, of which the first and last take place on the Admiralty Square in St.
Petersburg during the 1830s during the Shrovetide fair (just before the beginning of Lent). These scenes are
filled with incident and with elaborate overlays of musical figures representing the surge of characters
coming and going at the fair. The second and third scenes of the ballet are interiors, devoted to the private
emotional life of the puppet Petrushka, who is in love with the ballerina, while she in turn is enchanted by the
Moor. Only at the very end of the work do the “public” and “private” worlds—or should one say “reality”
and “fantasy”?—become entangled with one another.
The “plot” as such can be briefly told: the crowds at the fair are drawn to a small theater, where a showman
opens the curtains to reveal three lifeless puppets, Petrushka (a sad clown), the pretty but vacuous ballerina,
and the exotic but dangerous Moor. He charms them into life with his flute and they execute a dance, first
jiggling on their hooks on the stage, then—to the astonishment of the spectators—coming down from the
theater and dancing among the crowd.
The second scene begins as Petrushka is kicked or thrown into his little cell. He picks himself up and
dances sadly, conscious of his grotesque appearance. He wants to win over the ballerina, but when she
enters, his ecstatic dance of joy is so uncouth that she flees. The third scene takes place in the Moor’s cell.
The ballerina captivates him, but their tryst is interrupted by the entrance of the jealous Petrushka. They
quarrel, and the powerful Moor throws him out.
The final scene reverts to the main square, where the revelry has reached a new height. Crowds surge
forward as all seek to celebrate the final evening before the start of Lent. Suddenly a commotion is heard in
the little theater; Petrushka races out, closely pursued by the Moor, who strikes him down with a scimitar.
The crowd is stunned by this apparent murder, and the showman is summoned. He, the supreme rationalist,
demonstrates that the “body” is nothing more than a wooden puppet stuffed with sawdust. The crowd
disperses. As the showman starts to drag the puppet offstage, he is startled to see Petrushka’s ghost on the
roof of the little theater, thumbing his nose at the showman and at all who have been taken in by his tricks.
The first and last tableaux, which take place in the “real” world of the fair, have little in the way of
storytelling; instead they rely on multiplicity of incident to suggest the throngs and the surge of life. The
orchestra is full and busy, enlivened by various layers of frenzied activity. The inner tableaux differ
strikingly in musical character. The orchestra often plays in smaller units, the music is more disjunct, and
there is a marked avoidance of the folk material that fills the “public” sections of the score. Even the scale
on which Stravinsky builds his melodies and harmonies is different. Here he exploits what theorists call the
“octatonic” scale, a pattern especially favored by Stravinsky; it is a series of eight pitches alternating halfsteps and whole-steps within the octave. Even without the visual element, the shape and character of the
story are projected in Stravinsky’s score.
We know that Petrushka was first conceived as a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra, and the music that
Stravinsky wrote first corresponds to the Russian Dance at the end of the first tableau and the bulk of the
second tableau, in which the piano plays a central role. But once he had embarked on the full-scale ballet,
Stravinsky rather surprisingly forgot his musical protagonist, and the piano scarcely appears again, even
when Petrushka is supposed to be onstage. When he rescored the work in 1946-47, Stravinsky corrected this
oversight to some extent and gave the piano considerably more to play. It is usually claimed that
Stravinsky’s sole motivation for the revised orchestration was to enable him to copyright the work again, so
that he could collect performance royalties. Though the financial consideration certainly played a role in
Stravinsky’s thinking, Robert Craft notes (in an appendix to the first volume of Stravinsky correspondence
that he edited) that many of the changes had been marked by Stravinsky years earlier as improvements that
he desired after the experience of hearing Petrushka frequently in performance. In addition to increasing the
piano part, the revision was also designed to correct many mistakes that had not been caught in the original
edition and incorporate second thoughts to improve the projection of musical lines. Generating income from
performance fees was a happy by-product.
Steven Ledbetter
STEVEN LEDBETTER
was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998.
“ PETRUSHKA” CAME TO THE UNITED STATES with the Russian Ballet and Ernest Ansermet conducting, with Leonid
Miassine (later Massine) as Petrushka, Lydia Lopokova as the ballerina, and Adolf Bolm as the Moor. The same
cast gave the work at the Boston Opera House on Febru-ary 4, 1916.
T H E F I R S T B O S T O N S Y M P H O N Y P E R F O R M A N C E S of any music from “Petrushka” were on
November 26 and 27, 1920, when Pierre Monteux conducted a suite consisting of the Russian Dance from the first
scene and the whole of the second and fourth scenes. Later, Serge Koussevitzky, Richard Burgin, Stravinsky himself,
Ernest Ansermet, Leopold Stokowski, and Erich Leinsdorf all conducted suites assembled in various ways from the
full score. Leonard Bernstein was the first to conduct the complete 1911 score with the Boston Symphony Orchestra,
in January 1948. Since then, Monteux, Leinsdorf, Sarah Caldwell, Charles Dutoit, Bernard Haitink, and Dennis
Russell Davies have also led BSO performances of the 1911 version, the most recent subscription performances
being Dutoit’s in March 2009, the most recent Tanglewood performance being Dutoit’s on August 7, 2015 (Dutoit
having previously led the BSO in the 1911 score at Symphony Hall in April 1985 and at Tanglewood in 1987, 1998,
and 2004). In February 1946 the composer conducted a hybrid suite in a pair of BSO concerts, playing the first
tableau in the revised version, just finished, and the fourth tableau in the 1911 version. Since then, the revised score
has been played by the BSO under Eleazar de Carvalho, Jorge Mester, Seiji Ozawa, Alain Lombard, Michael Tilson
Thomas, Sergiu Comissiona, Klaus Tennstedt, Simon Rattle, Kent Nagano (the most recent Tanglewood
performance, on August 15, 1997), David Zinman, and Fabio Luisi (the most recent subscription performances, in
November 2009).
To Read and Hear More...
Edward Lockspeiser’s Debussy: His Life and Mind, in two volumes, is the standard study of the composer
(Macmillan). Roger Nichols’s The life of Debussy is in the useful series “Musical lives” (Cambridge paperback).
Nichols wrote the Debussy article for the 1980 edition of The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and
more recently came out with Debussy Remembered, a 2003 anthology drawing upon recollections from various
friends, colleagues, and acquaintances of the composer (Amadeus Press). More recent than that is Victor Lederer’s
Debussy: the Quiet Revolutionary, a close look at the composer’s musical style and output, accompanied by a CD that
is specifically referenced in Lederer’s discussion of the music (also Amadeus Press). The entry in the revised Grove
(2001) is by François Lesure and Roy Howat. Still interesting and useful for its wealth of contemporary
documentation is Léon Vallas’s Claude Debussy: His Life and Works, translated from the French by Maire and
Grace O’Brien and published originally in 1933 (Dover paperback). Also useful are David Cox’s Debussy
Orchestral Music in the series of BBC Music Guides (University of Washington paperback), Marcel Dietschy’s La
Passion de Claude Debussy, edited and translated—as A Portrait of Claude Debussy—by William Ashbrook and
Margaret G. Cobb (Oxford), and two collections of essays: Debussy and his World, edited by Jane F. Fulcher
(Princeton University paperback), and The Cambridge Companion to Debussy, edited by Simon Trezise and Jonathan
Cross (Cambridge University Press).
Listed alphabetically by conductor, noteworthy recordings of Jeux include Pierre Boulez’s with either the New
Philharmonia Orchestra (Sony) or Cleveland Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon), André Cluytens’s with the
Orchestre de la Société du Conservatoire Paris (EMI), Stéphane Denève’s with the Royal Scottish National
Orchestra (Chandos), Charles Dutoit’s with the Montreal Symphony Orchestra (London/Decca), Bernard Haitink’s
with the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam (Philips), Jean Martinon’s with the ORTF National Orchestra
(EMI), and Michael Tilson Thomas’s with the London Symphony Orchestra (Sony)
Caroline Potter’s 1997 Henri Dutilleux: His Life and Works provides an excellent introduction to the composer and
his music (Ashgate). Henri Dutilleux: Mystère et mémoire des sons: Entrétiens avec Claude Glayman (“Mystery
and Memory of Sounds: Conversations with Claude Glayman”), published originally in 1994 and expanded in 1997,
includes several useful appendices, among them a list of works, discography, bibliography, and filmography. This
appeared in English translation as Henri Dutilleux: Music—Mystery and Memory (also Ashgate). Gernot Gruber’s
article as it appears in the 2001 New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is more than twice as long as
Gruber’s earlier entry in the 1980 Grove. A newer article by Caroline Potter, updated recently enough to include the
composer’s final works, appears in the online version of the New Grove (www.oxfordmusiconline.com, by
subscription only; try your university library for access). English composer Jeremy Thurlow’s Dutilleux...La
musique des songes, although written in English, has been published only in French translation (Millénaire III,
2006).
Renée Fleming’s recording of the five-movement final version of Le Temps l’Horloge with the Orchestre National
de France under Seiji Ozawa was released on her CD “Poèmes,” along with works by Ravel and Messiaen (Decca;
recipient of the 2013 Grammy Award for Best Classical Vocal Solo). That recording of Le Temps l’Horloge was
first released on CD in 2009 by the Théatre des Champs-Élysées, Paris, and can also be found in two fairly
comprehensive box sets: a seven-disc “Dutilleux Centennial Edition” released in 2015 (Erato), and a six-disc “Henri
Dutilleux Edition” from 2014 (Deutsche Grammophon). All of the composer’s orchestral works and most of the
chamber music, performed by various ensembles, conductors, and soloists, are included in both sets (most in the
same performances), including the BSO-commissioned Symphony No. 2, Le Double, and The shadows of time.
Virtually all of the recordings can be found in single-disc releases, as well. The BSO’s release of The shadows of
time was issued on an Erato CD “single” in a recording drawn from performances given here by Seiji Ozawa and
the BSO in March 1998. The Boston Symphony Chamber Players recorded the composer’s Les Citations for their
Grammy-nominated disc of 20th-century French chamber music, “Profanes et Sacrées” (BSO Classics).
There’s little to read about Joseph Canteloube in English beyond Richard Langham Smith’s essay in The New Grove
Dictionary of Music, and whatever can be gleaned online from such sources as Wikipedia. Renée Fleming has
recorded Canteloube’s “Baïlèro” with Jeffrey Tate and the English Chamber Orchestra on her album “The Beautiful
Voice” and “Malurous qu’o uno fenno” with Sebastian Lang-Lessing and the Philharmonia Orchestra on her album
“Guilty Pleasures” (both Decca). Complete recordings of the Songs of the Auvergne include those by Véronique
Gens with Serge Baudo and the Lille National Orchestra (Naxos), Dawn Upshaw with Kent Nagano and the Lyon
Opera Orchestra (Erato), Kiri Te Kanawa with Jeffrey Tate and the English Chamber Orchestra (London/Decca),
Frederica von Stade with Antonio de Almeida and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (Sony), and, highly regarded
from the mid-1960s, Netanya Devrath with the conductor Pierre De la Roche (Vanguard). Individual selections can
also be found in albums by a number of other singers, Victoria de los Angeles among them.
Stephen Walsh, who wrote the Stravinsky article in the 2001 Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, is also
author of a two-volume Stravinsky biography: Stravinsky–A Creative Spring: Russia and France, 1882-1934 and
Stravinsky–The Second Exile: France and America, 1934-1971 (Norton). The 1980 Grove entry was by Eric Walter
White, author of the crucial reference volume Stravinsky: The Composer and his Works (University of California).
Other useful books include Stravinsky and his World, a collection of essays and documents edited by Tamara Levitz
(Princeton University Press); The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky, edited by Jonathan Cross, which includes a
variety of essays on the composer’s life and works (Cambridge University Press); and Michael Oliver’s Igor
Stravinsky in the wonderfully illustrated series “20th-Century Composers” (Phaidon paperback). If you can find a
used copy, Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents by Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft offers a fascinating
overview of the composer’s life (Simon and Schuster). Craft, who worked closely with Stravinsky for many years,
has also written and compiled numerous other books on the composer. Noteworthy among the many specialist
publications are Confronting Stravinsky: Man, Musician, and Modernist, edited by Jann Pasler (California) and
Richard Taruskin’s two-volume, 1700-page Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works
through “Mavra,” which treats Stravinsky’s career through the early 1920s (University of California).
François-Xavier Roth has recorded Petrushka with Les Siècles, his ensemble that employs instruments appropriate
to the period of the music being played (Musicales Actes Sud, with Le Sacre du printemps in its original 1913
edition). The Boston Symphony Orchestra famously recorded the original 1911 version of Petrushka in 1959, with
Pierre Monteux conducting (RCA); a Monteux/BSO telecast from shortly before the RCA sessions is available on
DVD (VAI). Seiji Ozawa recorded the 1947 version with the BSO in 1969, with Michael Tilson Thomas as pianist
(RCA). Serge Koussevitzky recorded a suite from Petrushka with the BSO in 1928 (originally Victor; reissued on
BSO Classics). Stravinsky himself recorded the 1947 version of Petrushka with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra
(Sony); his earlier recording, of the 1911 version with the New York Philharmonic, has also been reissued (at one
time on Pearl). Recordings of the 1911 version also include Claudio Abbado’s with the London Symphony Orchestra
(Deutsche Grammophon), Pierre Boulez’s with the Cleveland Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon), and Charles
Dutoit’s first with the London Symphony Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon), later with the Montreal Symphony
(Decca).
Marc Mandel