Danses concertantes (Stravinsky)
Danses concertantes is a work for chamber orchestra by Igor Stravinsky, composed in 1942. A performance lasts about twenty minutes. Although written as an abstract ballet for concert performance, it has been choreographed numerous times.
History
The Danses concertantes were commissioned by the Werner Janssen Orchestra of Los Angeles, and was intended not for the stage but for concert performance. Stravinsky nevertheless cast it in the form of an abstract ballet, composing it in Hollywood beginning in 1941. The score was completed on 13 January 1942, and it was published later that same year by Associate Music Publishers in New York. The composer conducted the first performance, with the Werner Janssen Orchestra, in Los Angeles on 8 February 1942.[1] The French premiere, in February 1945 on the second of an extended series of concerts devoted to Stravinsky's work, was met by vocal protests from a group of students from Olivier Messiaen's class, including Serge Nigg and Pierre Boulez, who found Stravinsky's neoclassicism to be intolerably old-fashioned. Although this action has been interpreted as a championing of post-war serialism, in fact at this early date it was the exoticism and mysticism of Messiaen's music that fired the young composers' imagination, and not Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.[2]
Instrumentation
Stravinsky scored the Danses concertantes for a chamber orchestra consisting of flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, two horns, trumpet, trombone, timpani, and a string section specified as six violins, four violas, three cellos, and two double basses.[1]
Analysis
The work is divided into five movements:
- Marche – introduction
- Pas d'action – Con moto
- Thème varié – Lento
- Variation 1: Allegretto
- Variation 2: Scherzando
- Variation 3: Andantino
- Variation 4 (Coda): Tempo giusto
- Pas de deux – Risoluto – Andante sostenuto
- Marche – conclusion
The music is closely related to several of Stravinsky's immediately preceding works. The
Ballet productions
References
- ^ a b White 1979, p. 410.
- ^ Sprout 2013, pp. 151–157.
- ^ White 1979, p. 411.
- ^ White 1979, p. 412.
Sources
- Sprout, Leslie A. 2013. The Musical Legacy of Wartime France. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. JSTOR 10.1525/j.ctt3fh2q4.
- White, Eric Walter (1979). Stravinsky: The Composer and His Works (2nd ed.). Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-03985-8.