Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex (Cambridge Music Handbooks) [Paperback]

Stephen Walsh (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 30, 1993 | ISBN-10: 0521407788 | ISBN-13: 978-0521407786 | Edition: First Edition

Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex is widely acknowledged as one of the most original musical theater works of the twentieth century. This clear and concise guide, the first ever written on the work, describes the plot, the music and the staging in close detail and provides a fully documented discussion of the origins of Oedipus Rex in Stravinsky's own work and thinking. By placing the work in its social context, the author paints a vivid picture of Parisian artistic politics in the twenties, from which emerged one of the richest and most suggestive works of modern times. The full libretto is provided, with a parallel translation.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"There is much in this book that is considerable, and the author opens up areas that almost demand further research. In preparing Oedipus Rex for performance, one should use this book, with score in hand, as a starting point or reference source. The extensive notes and bibliography make the handbook a valuable tool." Choral Journal

Book Description

Widely acknowledged as one of the most original music theater works of the twentieth century, this guide describes the opera's plot, music and staging and provides a fully documented discussion of its origins in Stravinsky's work and thought.

Product Details

• Paperback: 132 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; First Edition edition (July 30, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521407788
• ISBN-13: 978-0521407786
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,201,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book--with a few problems, October 9, 2010

By 

Warren Criswell (Benton, AR USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex (Cambridge Music Handbooks) (Paperback)

This book is indispensable for anyone interested in the history Stravinsky's greatest neoclassical creation. It includes its genesis , the confrontation and struggle between opera and oratorio, the collaboration with Jean Cocteau--which was also a struggle at times,--an exhaustive exegesis of the musical construction, a complete English translation of the French and Latin text, and the history of the productions of Oedipus from its premier in 1927 to 1993 when this book was published.

But there are some curious inconsistencies. In a section called "Cocteau's Cocktail" Walsh writes, "so the accusation against Teresias had to go, and the order of events be changed to keep `le roi est un roi' (`the king is a king') as the overlapping cue for the chorus entry. Yet after all this, Cocteau actually leaves out the `dispute of the princes', which the Speaker gives as the reason for Jocasta's intervention.'" None of that is true. (And it's "L'assassin du roi est un roi", "The murderer of a king is a king," not the nonsensical "the king is a king" as Walsh writes it.)

At the beginning of this scene, as given in this very same book, the Speaker begins with Oedipus' questioning of the seer Tiresias, who avoids answering: "This silence angers Oedipus. He accuses Creon of coveting the throne and Tiresias of being his accomplice." In the Latin libretto Oedipus sings:

Envy hates the fortunate.

You made me king....

Now there is one who wants my place.

Creon wants the king's place.

You have been bribed, Tiresias!

I shall lay bare this plot!

Creon would be king...

So there's the accusation against Tiresias and the "dispute of the princes", rendered succinctly and clearly by Cocteau in a few lines, both in the French narration and in the libretto. What's the problem?

At this point in Walsh's book I was beginning to think he neither liked nor understood Oedipus rex. "Why should Cocteau muddle things in these ways?" he asks. Cocteau muddled nothing, but Walsh certainly tries to. "So the poor audience," he goes on, "remains blissfully ignorant of Oedipus's wild accusations against his brother-in-law ..." Well, somebody is blissfully ignorant of it, but I don't think it's the audience.

But aside from these unexplainable curiosities, Walsh does a good job of examining the clash of opposites that make Oedipus rex great. The detachment of the Speaker, who is supposed to deliver his lines like a news reporter, and the masked, almost motionless singers, combined with puppets or mimes providing flashbacks in the background, are the unlikely vehicles Stravinsky and Cocteau chose to bring us this emotion-charged tragedy. "There is movement, and yet there is not movement," writes Walsh. They wanted a stone façade delivered by singers facing the audience, who have nowhere to hide, as in a Handel oratorio--and yet the music often approaches the intimacy of a Verdi opera. Walsh digs up notes and letters from Stravinsky which reveal that he never quite knew how to reconcile this dialectic between the up-frontness of oratorio and the voyeurism of opera. And then there was the struggle between the conception and the technical means with which to achieve it. He quotes from Stravinsky's third Harvard lecture:

"We grub about in expectation of our pleasure, guided by our scent, and suddenly we stumble against an unknown obstacle. It gives us a jolt, a shock, and this shock fecundates our creative power."

This book will be especially informative for musicians as Walsh gives a blow-by-blow analysis of the score, but you don't have to be a musician to read it. It's full of good stuff for any opera lover, and a must for anybody with a recording of Oedipus rex, either on CD or DVD.