In his lifetime
Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) was often referred to as “a man of a thousand faces”. Indeed, there were unexpected and paradoxical turns and zigzags in the composer’s work, but his music is invariably bright and convincing. To commemorate the 135th anniversary of the composer’s birth the Novaya Opera gives a concert presenting his versatile genius.
The first part of the concert is Babel; it is the title of one of Stravinsky’s cantatas, composed in 1944 and in a sense anticipating his later work. Babel to the words from the First Book of Moses (Genesis 11: 1–9) is Stravinsky’s first composition to a Biblical text. The cantata is based on the famous story about the building of the Babel city, the erection of the Tower of Babel and the Justice of Heaven. God chastened people with multilingualism and scattered them all over the Earth. Stravinsky interpreted the famous Biblical parable as a theatrical dramatist, giving the main narration to a storyteller, God’s voice to a male choir; the descriptive passages of the text are translated to the language of orchestral sounds.
Threni: id est Lamentationes Jeremiae Prophetae to the Latin text from the Old Testament (1958) is the largest score of Stravinsky’s late work. There the composer investigates the possibilities of the twelve-tone technique typical of the composers of the Second Viennese School led by Arnold Schoenberg, who had been Stravinsky’s antagonists for many years. Threni is the key to Stravinsky’s eschatology, which seems to dominate in his creative thinking from this moment to his death (Stephen Walsh). Stravinsky’s austere composition with archaic sounding reconstructs the Prophet Jeremiah’s response to one of the most tragic events in the history of the Hebrew nation – the capture of Jerusalem and the Babylonian Exile of the Jews. Threni is an emotional experience and theosophical comprehension of the fait accompli. The sublimity of the musical statement makes it possible to compare Threni with Handel’s oratorio Messiah.
From the formal and practical points of view, Requiem Canticles to the Latin canonical texts (1966) is Stravinsky’s final composition. This work, written by the composer at the age of 84, was followed only by the song The Owl and the Pussy Cat and the instrumentation of Two Sacred Songs by Hugo Wolf. Requiem Canticles is a clear, laconic but at the same time deeply private composition; it combines the maestro’s former experience. “My pocket requiem,” said Stravinsky about this composition. He compared his work with Mozart’s Requiem, which, too, was Mozart’s final composition. Requiem Canticles is an individual interpretation of the genre of Requiem where Stravinsky addresses the everlasting theme of life and death.