Stravinsky: "Variations: Aldous Huxley in Memoriam"

Igor Stravinsky: "Variations: Aldous Huxley in Memoriam" (1963-64) An example of Stravinsky's late period serial work.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• serial
• twelve
• tone
• atonal
• modern
• new
• music
• 20th
• century

[japanesesweet]

IS`s brand of 12 tone music is very special- the gestures and pitches are more immediately memorable than many works by Schonberg or Webern.

[NewMusicXX]

A very good observation. Shostakovich criticized 12-tone music because, as he put it, 'it all sounds alike'. Certainly not the case with Stravinsky. His 12-tone music is immediately recognizable as Stravinsky.

[TassiloDavid]

The idea that Stravinsky started writing “serial” music because a bunch of kids nobody had ever heard of booed at a single concert in Paris that Stravinsky didn’t attend and only heard about after he wrote Threni is preposterous. “As if you could lead that horse to water, let alone make him drink,” as Robert Craft once put it.

[GreggaryPeccary]

Probably. But I think he was also spurred into writing like this by seeing the juvenile Boulez and his comrades act like brats at his concerts

[tuberobotto]

One of the best qualifying music of Stravinsky as a tone technician was "Oedipus Rex" and I was just awed by the amazing logic he applied to his orchestration. That was probably the period of Stravinsky I would listen to. I have to admit that though I have no trouble listening to 'gebrochen muzik' I am not really a fan. Aleatoric music is another field of adventure but the interest lasts only for a moment while Pointilism is tolerable only to an extent.

Isn't the diversity in music fascinating?

[peppersax]

@japanesesweet  That's right. You are referring to the original I take it???"The Hunt" by Jerry Goldsmith is pure Stravinsky.

[japanesesweet]

@peppersax well spotted-that wonderfully athletic line is just the kind of music which is ripped off in Planet of the Apes.

[FenderRhodesService]

@GreggaryPeccary What do you think of Orpheus Greggary ? Dont you make an eception for that one ?

[peppersax]

Igor Stravinsky's style and compositional techniques are still employed today (especially in film music). He was way ahead of his time. The music he was composing in the 20's could have just been written in the year 2010. Listen carefully at around 0:09 - 0:35, one can hear where Jerry Goldsmith, Bernard Herrman, Marco Beltrami and a host of other composers were influenced. THIS MAN WAS A 'REAL' GENIUS in the truest sense of the word. BRAVO! I have nearly all his works and never tire of them.

[petezilla]

Stravisnky, IMO, "graced" 12-tone/serial composition with his presence. Agon is really awesome, and so is The Flood.

Boulez was a highly opinionated man but none of his music was nearly as interesting as Stravinsky's from ANY period. Although Stravisnky raved about his Le Marteau sans Maitre

Many of my favorite works by Stravinsky are in his neo-classical period: particularly Apollo, Concerto for Piano and Winds, and Orpheus, and even the Pulcinella suite.

[TassiloDavid]

The theory that Stravinsky only wrote "serial" music because some young unknown kids booed at a concert in Paris that he didn't attend and didn't know about until after he had composed Threni is ridiculous. "As if you could lead that horse to water, let alone make him drink," as Robert Craft put it.

[ggauche]

@NewMusicXX Got to agree and disagree with everybody on this. Stravinsky was a master in any style. Yes, few of his Neo-Classical works hold much appeal to me, but that's just about my personal taste.

His highlights are Movements and Variations, but if I was stranded on a desert island with a solar powered iPod, Le Sacre would have to be on there!