The Early Musical Language of Stravinsky

As is generally know, music is a language.

At the end of the 19th century, the language that had sustained the music of Monteverdi through Wagner, Strauss and even Schoenberg changed dramatically.

The influence of non-western musical elements, as well as the ever-increasing need for greater expression through chromaticism destroyed, what was for nearly 1500 years, an inherent language built on the balances of consonance and dissonance.

Stravinsky found himself at the end of this great tradition. His early works demonstrated his clear understanding and mastery of the earlier language. But for Stravinsky it was a language that was limited in expression and lacking in the exotic musical elements required for the new ballet projects that were only a few years ahead of his Symphony #1. Imagine Stravinsky composing in the elegant but dated style of Glazunov or even in the troubled style of his teacher. Instead, Stravinsky took those elements that would enable him to express the exotic as well as his Russian past.

Stravinsky’s association with his compatriots of Rimsky’s salon and its influences gave Stravinsky the choices necessary to move beyond the limits of tonal space as composers and performers had known it for hundreds of years. The musical elements that enabled this transformation were based upon the concepts of the past.

From Schubert to GlinkaCycles of 5 and 3

The language of the Common Practice Period (@1600-1900) was based upon the Cycle of Fifths, a movement of chords that moved around the musical alphabet by fifths. The origins are found in nature – the Overtone or Harmonic Series. The following are 2 cycles; one that begins on A, the other on C.

Cycles can ascend or descend forward or backward in the alphabet. Cycles may begin on any letter of the alphabet and either descend or ascend.

This operation can be translated into familiar harmonic progressions, the descending version is the preferred and the one found and supported in nature. Here they are both on C:

Composers also know that each 5th could be dived into 3rds. Therefore, a cycle of thirds became self evident as in the following:

The examples above form 3rd relations within a given scale or key, alternating major and minor 3rds; what Bach called large or small 3rds.

But what if a composer used all major, or large, 3rds one after the other or all minor, or small, 3rds one after the other? Such a progression created very interesting relationships within the octave. These relationships divided the octave evenly, symmetrically. No longer were Tonic-Dominant relationships the central relationships between chords or keys. New “mediant” relationships appeared allowing the composer greater expressive potential. Below are both major and minor 3 rd cycles. Remember that enharmonic spelling is necessary at some point to complete the cycle at the starting pitch – otherwise such cycles never end on the same note name an octave higher or lower.

major 3rd cycle minor 3rd cycle

A Brief History of Chromatic Mediants

Rimsky told Stravinsky: “You know, Schubert was the first composer in whom one can meet such bold and unexpected modulations. Before Schubert there was no such thing.” Although this is a bold statement, to be sure, Rimsky is correct only as far as the ‘use’ of such unexpected modulations. However, Beethoven, Schubert’s great influence, and even Bach had already foreshadowed such unexpected modulations and key relationships.

Rimsky saw Schubert as the godfather of the New Russian School. Schubert’s harmonic relationships of keys and often progressions themselves can be viewed “as embodying two incipient circles of thirds, one major and the other minor, the tritone being the sum of two minor thirds” (Taruskin). As Taruskin also points out, “A large chapter in the as-yet-unwritten history of 19th century harmony will show how composers increasingly availed themselves of these new harmonic paths that short-circuited the traditional key system.”

The use of the previously discussed ‘third’ relationships begins early in the Common Practice, pre-Bach. But a ‘systematic’ use of them was not found until Beethoven. The use of these Mediant relationships was to provide greater distance between the Tonic and a related key area, usually the Dominant.

Two brief examples (among countless examples) demonstrate Beethoven’s mediant ‘shifts’. Note that no modulation takes place between the keys, rather, a sudden ‘shift’ occurs by transposing up or down the distance of a third. In his 6th Symphony below a dynamic shift between the keys of Bb and D appears. Later, in the same symphony a shift occurs downward from Bb to G. These shifts up or down of a major 3rd create a specific ‘chromatic’ mediant relationship, intensifying the shift.

The following is the Largo from the transition movement between the second and last movement of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Piano Sonata:

Each of the triads represents a dynamic, sudden ‘shift’ between tonal centers. The cycle alternates major and minor triads cycling through all chromatic possibilities beginning on F and ending on F.

Schubert borrowed from Beethoven the same mediant concepts, but expounding on them through greater chromatic variation as in the following examples:

A more interesting cycle is found in his Mass in Eb, below:

The cycle is one of descending major thirds. The triads are Eb, B, G, Eb, Cb (B) – cadence. The passing notes between each of the triads creates a whole-tone scale, as above.

Glinka, influenced by Beethoven and Schubert creates a similar cycle one half step lower than Schubert’s above. Note the Major third cycle and the whole tone scale below it:

Liszt, taking his cue from Schubert progresses easily and quickly through 2 cycles of Major thirds – with no modulation, below:

Liszt’s Ce qu’on entend sur la montagne cycles through a minor 3rd series creating an octatonic scale below versus the whole tone scale in the examples above. See below:

In Liszt’s Faust Symphony, the cycle, or ‘ladder’, is all major thirds placed a minor third apart. Note the upper part and the enharmonic respellings of the major 3rds as diminished 4ths. In the left hand a series of chromatically descending augmented triads:

Based upon a ladder of ascending dimished 7th chords, the example below reveals the emergence of an octatonic collection below:

The octatonic collection is a cycle of triads or seventh chords that are a minor 3 rd apart, with a passing note in between which is 1 half step above the previous triad or seventh chord, as in the following chart.

Two French Augmented Sixth chords a minor 3rd apart also contains the complete pitch content of the octatonic collection, above.

Rimsky,borrowing again from Liszt and Glinka utilizes the octatonic collection in a descending series, as below:

In the example below Rimsky alternates Major 3rds the distance of a minor 3rd apart:

Stravinsky borrows the ladder of alternating 3rds from Rimsky (and Liszt, Glinka, etc). In the only technical description of his music that Stravinsky would ever publish he writes of the following example taken from the Firebird:

Thus, in the Firebird, all that relates to the evil spirit, Kashchey, all that belongs to his kingdom – the enchanted garden, the ogres and monsters of all kinds who are his subjects, and in general all that is magical, mysterious or supernatural – is characterized musically by what one might call a leit-harmonie. It is made up of alternating major and minor thirds, like this: A minor third is always followed by a major third and vice versa.

minor 3 major 3 minor 3

These combinations were worked out in his work The Nightingale, the first act written just before his work on The Firebird.

m3 M3 m3 M3 m3 M3 m3 M3

Stravinsky created a ‘ladder’ exhausting all chromatic possibilities before returning to the first 3rd at #25 below. This is identical to the concept of Beethoven’s ladder of descending triads in the Hammerklavier sonata above. Each of the thirds has been labeled chronologically in order to refer to the examples which will follow:

At rehearsal #2 in the score the follow passage appears, note the referential ‘ladder’ numbers in the bass, 4-5-4:

Another example from latter in the ballet is the following in which the woodwinds mix sequence 4-9 over another sequence 16-21 from the ‘ladder’ above: Again, note the alternating major and minor 3rds.

The opening of the Firebird demonstrates the origin of this process which extends throughout the ballet, alternating the first 2 dyads of the ladder of thirds.

The following are further examples of the use of the Stravinskian ladder:

Stravinsky’s reinvented use of the ‘ladder’ or ‘chain’ of thirds, first used as such by Beethoven, allowed him to ‘invent’ a sound and tonal methodology which separated himself from the language of the Common Practice, a language firmly based upon the Cycle of 5ths, and yet, retain the tonal influences of the triad based upon the consonant interval of the third.

This new use of the stable interval of the third allowed for a sonic soundscape that both gave tonal centricity but, because of its basis upon the equal division of the octave, nullified the juxtaposition of the elements of tension and resolution found in the traditional cadence. Elements of tension and resolution needed to be presented in new ways, by orchestral size, shifts in orchestral colors, huge crescendos and decrescendos, layering of ideas which build to gigantic climaxes, speed of harmonic change, etc.; the more equality of relationships, the less powerful the range of tensions and resolutions. Tension and resolutions common to the language of the Common Practice needed to be reinvented. Stravinsky’s answer was not a single idea but the fusion of many compositional elements.