Customer Reviews

Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

These six lectures were given at Harvard during the 1939-40 academic year in French. They are presented here in English translation and have been the subject of a great deal of discussion over the past sixty-plus years. In re-reading them, I have to say that my opinion of them has risen a great deal from my student days. Maybe it is because I am now about the age he was when he gave them, maybe it is because I am now more well read and have thought more about music since my youth, or maybe it is because I now see the solid philosophy and healthy insights he had and the rather unhealthy directions that academia was taking that he was resisting. Probably it is all of these.

Reading these lectures are not easy sledding for those not already familiar with Stravinsky, his life, work, and the context for these lectures. Also, the reader will need to go to the various conversation books Stravinsky did with Robert Craft to get later clarification and further insight into what he was saying. However, they are not profoundly technical in music theory. What they require from the reader is a broad understanding of music, art, and European political and religious history to have a framework for understanding what Stravinsky is saying.

The first lecture lays out what he intends to do with the lectures. The second talks about what he believes music is, what it isn't, and provides great insight into what Stravinsky believes is important in the art of music and what corrupts it. In the third lecture he talks about composition and provides wonderful insights into what it is for him. He really does undermine the common notion of the role of inspiration in composition.

The fourth lecture says it talks about musical typology (whatever that is). What it talks about is what the composer must do in choosing his own rules in composition. In Stravinsky's view the stricter the rules the more free the composer is to create. I think this is a particularly strong lecture. The Russian character in music and the Soviet corruptions of that are the topic of the fifth lecture. In 1939, taking on Stalin was a brave thing even in the West because of the way academics and the media lauded Uncle Joe.

The last lecture talks about performance issues that were of particular concern to him. This is also quite interesting because of the way performance practice became such a vital force in the last quarter of the twentieth century. His principles and desires are quite profound and interesting, and do require the clarification from the conversation books to avoid being taken out of context.

The epilogue ties things up nicely and raises the issues of ontology once again. Along the way Stravinsky over and over again talks about religion and music in the Church versus the attempts to replace religion with art (which Stravinsky considers a terrible and failed notion).

A fine and important work by one of the great composers.

No student or lover of Stravinsky's music should be without this book. It is a rare opportunity to see into his thought processes, and it makes one realise just how much music meant to him- that he sought to serve it by understanding it as deeply as he could.

In communicating this understanding, Stravinsky makes for an engaging, if somewhat challenging, read. The book is a transcript of six lectures given by the composer to French students, and the translators have seen fit to cast his words into a large quantity of "verbal Victoriana." If at times it seems boring, it is all due to that style of language. Apart from that, it is an excellent account on the part of a man who (for all his known self-contradictions) clearly used his heart as well as his hands and his head.

For students of Stravinsky, this book is essential. As a record of his personality and thought processes, it takes some beating.

One of the things this offers is real insight into the creative process. If you're having writer's block, I recommend these lectures for you. Igor's ideas may well help in clearing up some of the problems we create for ourselves.

it is always interesting to me to read a book by an artist talking about his art. why read on the subject of some art by a critic rather than artist, who can reveal the thought process and energy that goes into the actual creation? here, the art is music, but the whole book (especially chapter three) should be read by artists in all fields. here he discusses inspiration, and the role that it plays and how it functions in making art (less than one might suppose). the crux of stravinsky's claim is that artists should always make art, as a function of their being, and not wait for inspiration (which should, in any case, be found everywhere).

being a fan of other russian composers, especially those of communist ussr, the chapter on russian composers was interesting. he discussses the role that politics played and how it stiffled music and art there.

there is also an interesting discussion on the role of the artist in contemporary times. he abhors the notions of 'modern' and 'academic,' and considers himself (and the 'rite of spring') as conservative music, and not revolutionary, while demeaning the critics and listeners whom he describes as 'snobs.' (in fact it is this conservativism that allows him to attack wagner and deride his music.) the arguments that he presents in such discussions are very enlightening for any artist, as well as a musician.

As a composer of over 250 classical and jazz works, I can't stress enough how important "Poetics of Music" was to me in my musical development. I read this book from a composer's perspective with hopes that I could get into the mind of this great composer. From "Poetics of Music" I learned that inspiration is never contrived and always accidental. Stravinsky said that a composer "improvises aimlessly" the way an animal grubs for food. Both seek personal satisfaction. He said this in the context of the "rules of music", making it clear that there really are no rules in musical composition. All that drives us in our art is that need to find our musical satisfaction.

This is an interesting book, especially during his discussions of his music and compositional aesthetic. I also found enlightening his opinions of Wagner and Berlioz (not good), and his chapter on the typology of music.

There are composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Pierre Boulez who are also gifted communicators and insightful students of music history and theory. Then there are composers like Igor Stravinsky, whose genius of expression lies purely in non-discursive domains.

This series of lecture transcripts gives the impression of an animated but disorganized speaker extemporaneously presenting on vague topics without preparation. His basic unit of thought seems to be about the size of a sentence, and Stravinsky never develops ideas or sustains his attention for more than a few paragraphs. Occasionally his observations have anecdotal value, and there are buried gems, but there is much chaff and little wheat in this slender book.

The best thing I got out of reading it is a mild sense of personal connection to one of the great musical minds of the twentieth century, but he gives little insight into the nature of his genius or his method.

PS - I picked up my copy second-hand for less than $3. I am surprised to see how expensive this book has become, considering its length.

There's opinion that Stravinsky was the most overrated composer of the 20th Century; this is no doubt controversial. What this book proves beyond controversy is that he was absolutely inept as a writer/thinker/communicator: these six lectures have no focus and no observable objective(s), no identifiable theme, no cogency: this is simply an ocean of completely disjointed and illogical, really incoherent verbiage whose surface is now and then breached by a random outcropping of observation and personal opinion, intelligible but unargued and not particularly interesting, fragmented and unconnected with anything else before or after. Horribly hard reading if you really try to make sense of it (you'll fail, but you'll probably try first). Absolute waste of time, gibberish; avoid, escape, save your brain. Inviting Strav. to give these lectures was probably a tactful way of tossing some dough his way -- and there's nothing wrong with that per se, except he would have done everyone a great favour if he had simply taken the money and skipped the town. Btw, a comical detail: Strav did not speak English, so he delivered these rants in a broken French. Imagine this. Maybe it was good 'cause the audience -- who I don't think was Francophone to any noticeable degree and thus probably understood nothing -- took it for granted that the Maestro was saying something intelligent...

Finally, by way of comparison -- in '49-'50 (if memory serves), another European escapee, composer Paul Hindemith, was invited to give the same lectures, an intelligent, quiet, erudite book, _The Composer's World_, being the result of this endeavour. So it _was_ possible to take the task seriously rather than as a pretext for a sympathetic payout requiring but a perfunctory let's-get-it-over-with response. Imo, Hindemith's book is a must -- in the same degree as Strav's _Poetics_ is a must-not.

Added later: just read Copland's _Music and Imagination_ -- which, too, started as a Charles Eliot Norton Lecture presentation, as it turns out. A great book, highly recommended. So here's one more proof of that it was possible to offer something meaningful, and that it was by no means an accepted procedure to gibber from that podium.

Stravinsky was an engaging writer and thinker as well as a great composer. Here he discusses aesthetics and defends his music. (I also recommend PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.)