{"id":492,"date":"2013-06-11T23:02:35","date_gmt":"2013-06-12T03:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=492"},"modified":"2013-06-11T23:02:35","modified_gmt":"2013-06-12T03:02:35","slug":"humanizing-stravinsky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2013\/06\/humanizing-stravinsky.html","title":{"rendered":"Humanizing Stravinsky"},"content":{"rendered":"

To my ears, the most sublime music Igor Stravinsky ever composed is \u201cThe Land of Eternal Dwelling\u201d — the Epilogue to The Fairy\u2019s Kiss<\/em>. <\/p>\n

The 1928 ballet itself, possibly Stravinsky\u2019s most emotionally naked music, is a confessional love letter to the homeland he excoriated in his Norton lectures and elsewhere as \u201canarchic\u201d and inimical to artistic fulfillment. That he protested too much is self-evident; as I argue in my book Artists in Exile<\/a><\/em>, Stravinsky\u2019s ostensible estrangement from Mother Russia manifested a \u201cpsychology of exile.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Fairy\u2019s Kiss<\/em> is a loving homage to Tchaikovsky, whose songs and piano pieces furnish the exquisite musical materials. The two Tchaikovsky works most tellingly cited say it all: \u201cLullaby in a Storm\u201d and \u201cNone but the Lonely Heart.\u201d The Fairy\u2019s Kiss<\/em> is Stravinsky revisiting his own childhood, confiding his emotional roots. And the six-minute Epilogue \u2013 in which the first of these plaintive songs is distilled to a timeless echo, frozen in time — is a remembrance of Stravinsky\u2019s own childhood innocence. <\/p>\n

The Pacific Symphony, an orchestra that does things differently, celebrated the centenary of The Rite of<\/em> Spring<\/em> last week by exploring two Russias: the rural Russia of primal ceremony, where Stravinsky and Nicolas Roerich observed the ritual sacrifice of a straw effigy; and the St. Petersburg of the elegant Mariinsky Theatre, where Stravinsky\u2019s father sang in the operas of Tchaikovsky. <\/p>\n

The concert included two film clips: an excerpt from Tony Palmer\u2019s classic 1982 Stravinsky documentary, in which Stravinsky recalled introducing The Rite of Spring<\/em> to Diaghilev, and a film I created with Jeff Sells, of the Pacific Symphony staff, that combined \u201cThe Land of Eternal Dwelling\u201d with a biographical sequence (clips culled from Palmer\u2019s film) reviewing in retrograde the events of Stravinsky\u2019s long life \u2013 so that music and film ended in tandem with the bliss of infancy. It looked like this. <\/a><\/p>\n

As the concert had begun with danced excerpts from The Nutcracker<\/em> and Swan Lake<\/em>, the Fairy\u2019s Kiss<\/em> Epilogue (prefaced by \u201cLullaby in a Storm<\/a>\u201d) was the linchpin of the evening, setting the stage for a terrific Rite of Spring<\/em> performance conducted by Carl St. Clair. The program as a whole aspired to humanize Stravinsky in surprising and extraordinary ways. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To my ears, the most sublime music Igor Stravinsky ever composed is \u201cThe Land of Eternal Dwelling\u201d — the Epilogue to The Fairy\u2019s Kiss. The 1928 ballet itself, possibly Stravinsky\u2019s most emotionally naked music, is a confessional love letter to the homeland he excoriated in his Norton lectures and elsewhere as \u201canarchic\u201d and inimical to […]<\/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":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-492","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-7W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492","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=492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}