{"id":1749,"date":"2020-05-10T12:19:20","date_gmt":"2020-05-10T16:19:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=1749"},"modified":"2020-05-10T12:19:24","modified_gmt":"2020-05-10T16:19:24","slug":"music-in-wartime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2020\/05\/music-in-wartime.html","title":{"rendered":"Music in Wartime"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-youtube wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Shostakovich In Time Of WarThe Piano Trio No. 2\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/9RYNQQSCuxM?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Between 1942 and 1945, the three pre-eminent Russian composers wrote music responding to World War II. These responses differ in fascinating and revealing ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both Dmitri Shostakovich and Serge Prokofiev were eyewitnesses to the war; Shostakovich in fact endured the beginning of the siege of Leningrad before being evacuated east along with Prokofiev and other eminent Soviet artists. Prokofiev\u2019s explosive&nbsp;Seventh Piano Sonata&nbsp;(1942), the best-known of his three \u201cWar Sonatas,\u201d evokes the actual sounds of war. Shostakovich\u2019s&nbsp;Second Piano Trio&nbsp;(1944) exquisitely discloses an interior view of suffering and fortitude.&nbsp;That his wartime voice is interior makes it \u2013 however Russian \u2013 the more universal.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Igor Stravinsky, in Los Angeles, composed his&nbsp;Symphony in Three Movements&nbsp;(1942-45) as a \u201cVictory Symphony\u201d on commission from the New York Philharmonic. The finale was inspired by World War II newsreel images \u2013 vividly translated into sound, beginning with goose-stepping Nazi soldiers.&nbsp; But this remains an \u201carmchair\u201d view, activated by a financial incentive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today\u2019s <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.postclassical.com\">PostClassical Ensembl<\/a><\/strong>e \u201cMore than Music\u201d video <strong>(posted above<\/strong>) \u2013 the third in an ongoing series co-presented by <strong>The American Interest <\/strong>\u2013 is the premiere screening of \u201cShostakovich in Time of War,\u201d an ingenious 45-minute film by &nbsp;Behrouz Jamali in which I take part as commentator. It revealingly juxtaposes Shostakovich, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky \u2013 and the performances, including a reading of the Prokofiev sonata by the inimitable Alexander Toradze, are amazing. The video artist Peter Bogdanoff contributes a singular visual rendering of Stravinsky\u2019s finale, applying the pertinent newsreel clips.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The historian&nbsp;Richard Aldous&nbsp;will be hosting a related Zoom chat with&nbsp;Solomon Volkov&nbsp;(who collaborated with Shostakovich on his memoirs),&nbsp;Angel&nbsp;Gil-Ord\u00f3\u00f1ez, and myself.&nbsp;<\/strong>It will take place&nbsp;Friday, May 15, at 6 pm. If you would like to participate, click&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/postclassical.com\/registration-form\/\">here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Regarding Stravinsky\u2019s \u201cwar symphony\u201d \u2013 the Philharmonic requested \u201ca new symphony called \u2018La Victoire\u2019\u201d to celebrate the impending victory over Germany and Japan. What next transpired is documented in tangled detail by correspondence in the New York Philharmonic Archives. The&nbsp;Philharmonic requested a program note. Stravinsky replied: \u201cIt is well known that no program is to be sought in my musical output. . . . Sorry if this is desapointing [sic] but no story to be told, no narration and what I would say would only make yawn the majority of your public which undoubtedly expects exciting descriptions. This, indeed would be so much easier but alas . . . . . \u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stravinsky then asked the Philharmonic to publish a program note by the composer Ingolf Dahl. Dahl\u2019s note, duly printed in the Philharmonic program book, was itself of the species to \u201cmake yawn the majority.\u201d A specimen: \u201cThe thematic germs of this [first] movement are of ultimate condensation. They consist of the interval of the minor third (with its inversion, the major sixth) and an ascending scale fragment which forms the background to the piano solo of the middle part.\u201d But Stravinsky obliged the Philharmonic with a brief \u201cWord\u201d conceding: \u201cDuring the process of creation in this our arduous time of sharp shifting events, time of despear [sic] and hope, time of continual torments, of tention [sic] and at last cessation, relief, my [sic] be all those repercussions have left traces, stamped the character of this Symphony.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The work thus described \u2013 the Symphony Three Movements \u2013 is in fact different in tone from the Apollonian exercises Stravinsky had long pursued. Parts are indisputably militant, march-like, propelled by harshly thrusting energies. Many writers, Dahl included, have likened it to a latter-day&nbsp;<em>Rite of Spring<\/em>. Another unmistakable influence is the swagger and muscle of big band jazz. (Mere months later, Stravinsky completed an&nbsp;<em>Ebony<\/em>&nbsp;Concerto composed on commission for Woody Herman.) In Stravinsky\u2019s world premiere recording of the Symphony in Three Movements with the New York Philharmonic, the flying syncopations of the opening measures really swing.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Stravinsky later acknowledged Broadway, boogie-woogie, and \u201cthe neon glitter of Los Angeles\u2019 boulevards\u201d as influences on his American output. But this was nothing compared to a revelation recorded by Robert Craft in response to the question:&nbsp;\u201cIn what ways is the [Symphony in Three Movements] marked by world events?\u201d Stravinsky answered:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cCertain specific events excited my musical imagination. Each episode is linked in my mind with a concrete impression of the war, almost always cinematographic in origin. For instance, the beginning of the third movement is partly a musical reaction to newsreels I had seen of goose-stepping soldiers. The square march beat, the brass-band instrumentation, the grotesque crescendo in the tuba \u2013 all these are related to those repellent pictures. In spite of contrasting musical episodes, such as the canon for bassoons, the march music predominates until the fugue, the beginning of which marks the stasis and the turning point. The immobility here seems to me comic, and so, to me, was the overturned arrogance of the Germans when their machine failed at Stalingrad. The fugal exposition and the end of the Symphony are associated with the rise of the Allies, and the final, albeit too commercial, D-flat chord \u2013 instead of the expected C \u2013 is a token of my extra exuberance in the triumph. The rumba in the finale, developed from the timpani part in the introduction to the first movement, was also associated in my imagination with the movements of war machines . . .\u00a0\u201d<br><br>Although not everything Stravinsky said about himself bears scrutiny, and although not everything Craft said Stravinsky said can be taken at face value, and although Stravinsky\u2019s testimony about applying wartime \u201cnewsreels\u201d has been discounted by his biographer Steven Walsh, the proof is in the music: as Peter Bogdanoff\u2019s video confirms, Stravinsky\u2019s movement three narrative is a fit. Accompanied by the specified clips, this explosive finale, with its strutting marches and detonating chords, functions altogether admirably as a film score. In fact, the point of \u201cstasis\u201d midway through makes no apparent musical sense \u2013 it is, rather, a programmatic pivot upon which the tide of battle is reversed. George Balanchine\u2019s famous setting of the Symphony in Three Movements winks at Hollywood and Broadway. But he also told his dancers to think of helicopter searches and other signatures of wartime. More recently, the conductor Valery Gergiev has called the symphony\u2019s opening flourish \u201can alarm\u201d which should sound \u201cvery brutal.\u201d In the dialogue of bassoons near the opening of the finale he hears music of \u201cfear.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his conversation with Craft, Stravinsky added, inimitably: \u201cEnough of this. In spite of what I have admitted, the symphony is not programmatic. Composers combine notes. That is all.\u201d But even accepting this hairpin distinction, the compositional process at hand is hardly autonomous. Its programmatic inspiration \u2013 the war and its imagery \u2013 is fundamental.Or is the Symphony in Three Movements a case of&nbsp;<em>waning<\/em>&nbsp;inspiration? Aaron Copland sensed in the American Stravinsky a composer who \u201ccopies himself.\u201d An anomaly of the Symphony is the prominence of a solo piano in movement one, and of solo harp in movement two. In fact, the first movement originated as an abandoned sketch for piano and orchestra. And movement two appropriates eerie strains created to underscore an apparition of the Virgin Mary in&nbsp;<em>The Song of Bernadette<\/em>&nbsp;\u2013 film music Darryl Zanuck declined to use. Stravinsky rescued these fragments \u2013 and therefore composed some passages highlighting the solo piano and solo harp in his finale. But in fact, the pattern of scoring that results is a curious patchwork. And whether the mood and texture of movement two actually fit this \u201csymphony\u201d \u2013 for which Stravinsky considered the alternative title \u201cThree Symphonic Movements\u201d \u2013 is a good question.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A final frame of reference: Arnold Schoenberg, in Los Angeles, spurned the frequent autonomy of exile, befriending George Gershwin, teaching his UCLA students, mentoring Hollywood\u2019s leading film composers; his&nbsp;<em>A Survivor from Warsaw<\/em>&nbsp;(1947) and&nbsp;<em>Ode to<\/em>&nbsp;<em>Napoleon<\/em>&nbsp;(1942) confront Hitler and the Holocaust with furious words set as&nbsp;<em>Sprechstimme<\/em>&nbsp;\u2013 a kind of heightened speech. Stravinsky, by comparison, was a poised bystander.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Between 1942 and 1945, the three pre-eminent Russian composers wrote music responding to World War II. These responses differ in fascinating and revealing ways. Both Dmitri Shostakovich and Serge Prokofiev were eyewitnesses to the war; Shostakovich in fact endured the beginning of the siege of Leningrad before being evacuated east along with Prokofiev and other [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1749","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-sd","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1749"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1755,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1749\/revisions\/1755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1749"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1749"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1749"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}