Three Stravinsky Analyses: Petrushka, Scene 1 (to Rehearsal No. 8); The Rake’s Progress, Act III, Scene 3 (“In a foolish dream”); Requiem Canticles, “Exaudi.”

[1] Within the field of music theory, in its postwar, North American incarnation, music analysis has always played a central role. In his classic description of the relationship between theory and analysis, David Lewin states that theory describes the way that musical sounds are “conceptually structured categorically prior to any one specific piece,” whereas analysis turns our attention to “the individuality of the specific piece of music under study,” with a goal “simply to hear the piece better, both in detail and in the large” (Lewin 1968-69, 61-63, italics in original). In practice, we create theories in order to engender and empower analysis and we use analysis as a proving ground for our theories. In the field of music theory as currently constituted, theory-based analysis and analysis-oriented theory are the core activities and the statistically predominant activities.

[2] But in the relationship between theory and analysis, theory has long been the dominant partner. In the conference papers, journal articles, and scholarly monographs that are our principal means of communicating with each other, analysis is almost always presented in the service of theory, as demonstration or exemplification. At least in the professional literature, analysis is rarely pursued for its own sake. There are many reasons for this inequality in the relationship between theory and analysis, including some of the intrinsic features of analysis. As Kofi Agawu has argued, analysis has strong affinities with performance: “Four claims flowing from this proposition are as follows: firstly, analytical knowledge is not necessarily cumulative; secondly, analytical knowledge resists or escapes verbal summary; thirdly, analysis is a hands-on activity; and fourthly, analysis may be if not primarily then at least equally an oral rather than a written genre” (Agawu 2004, 274). As a result, analysis has seemed more naturally at home in the classroom than the professional press.

[3] Online publishing, however, with its ability to recreate the spontaneity and interactivity of the classroom, offers a way of making analysis a central scholarly activity, pursued not in exemplification of a theory but for its own pleasures and rewards. In what follows, I offer a small bouquet of Stravinsky analyses, without any particular theoretical axe to grind. My goal is simply to hear these pieces better. For the most part, the works are discussed under certain recurring rubrics:

• Score. I have provided my own short-score reductions of these three orchestral compositions (in general, the published two-piano or piano-vocal versions concede too much to pianistic limitations). In the “Exaudi” analysis, the score reductions are combined with serial derivations from Stravinsky’s row charts. Further discussion of this aspect may be found in Straus 2001, which includes additional relevant bibliography). The scores are presented in brief excerpts, corresponding to the discrete textural blocks of the music. On this persistent aspect of Stravinskian form, see van den Toorn 1983, Taruskin 1996, and Horlacher 2011.
• Melody and harmony. Stravinsky’s melodies often span a perfect fourth, and fill it in with passing notes. The harmonies generally stabilize a perfect fifth which are filled in either conventionally (with a major or minor third, to create a consonant triad) or unconventionally (usually with seconds and fourths, to create sc(0257)). Within the textural blocks, the melody and harmony are generally not mutually reinforcing, as they would be in a traditional tonal environment, that is, some interval of displacement separates the harmonic fifth from the melodic fourth. Between the textural blocks, the structural fourths and fifths are transposed to create new alignments. My analytical method for discussing melody and harmony is generally prolongational-reductive.
• Recomposition. Stravinsky’s music often feels as though it is written in opposition to an implicit, syntactically normal tonal prototype, which the actual music appears to distort in various ways. It can be revealing, if necessarily speculative, to attempt to recapture that implicit underlying norm, as a foil for Stravinsky’s actual composition. This analytical method has its ultimate roots in Schenker (1996), which purports to show “what Stravinsky may have had in mind” (p. 17) as well as more recent efforts at analytical recomposition by William Benjamin (1976-77). In the case of Petrushka, where the tonal prototypes may include preexistent folk materials, I have relied on Sternfeld 1967.
• Collection. Stravinsky’s music often makes reference to traditional scales, including diatonic and octatonic scales. This aspect has been widely discussed in the literature—see especially van den Toorn 1983, Taruskin 1996, and Taruskin 2011.
• Rhythm and meter. Stravinsky’s music frequently involves the persistent realignment of rhythmic figures with respect to the underlying meter, creating pervasive metrical ambiguity. To trace this feature, my analytical method often involves speculative re-barring, following the approach taken in van den Toorn 1988.
• Meaning and expression. Despite Stravinsky’s oft-cited injunction that music is powerless to express anything at all (Stravinsky 1962, 53), his music, including the three works discussed here, is often richly expressive, drawing its meanings not only from ballet scenarios, opera libretti, and musical texts, but also from a complex network of references to other music, by himself and other composers. Virtually all of my analytical observations are supported by musical illustrations, often in the form of graphic reductions in music notation. In this, I follow a long line of Stravinsky scholarship, extending from Cone 1962 to Horlacher 2011.

Continue on to the analyses

Joseph Straus

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