Innovation and Influence
Stravinsky has been called "one of music's truly epochal innovators". The most important aspect of Stravinsky's work, aside from his technical innovations (including in rhythm and harmony), is the 'changing face' of his compositional style while always 'retaining a distinctive, essential identity'.
Stravinsky's use of motivic development (the use of musical figures that are repeated in different guises throughout a composition or section of a composition) included additive motivic development. This is where notes are subtracted or added to a motif without regard to the consequent changes in metre. A similar technique can be found as early as the sixteenth century, for example in the music of Cipriano de Rore, Orlandus Lassus, Carlo Gesualdo and Giovanni de Macque, music with which Stravinsky exhibited considerable familiarity.
The Rite of Spring is notable for its relentless use of ostinati, for example in the eighth note ostinato on strings accented by eight horns in the section Augurs of Spring (Dances of the Young Girls). The work also contains passages where several ostinati clash against one another. Stravinsky was noted for his distinctive use of rhythm, especially in The Rite of Spring. According to the composer Philip Glass, "the idea of pushing the rhythms across the bar lines led the way . The rhythmic structure of music became much more fluid and in a certain way spontaneous". Glass mentions Stravinsky's "primitive, offbeat rhythmic drive". According to Andrew J. Browne, "Stravinsky is perhaps the only composer who has raised rhythm in itself to the dignity of art". Stravinsky's rhythm and vitality greatly influenced the composer Aaron Copland.
Stravinsky's first neo-classical works were the ballet Pulcinella of 1920 and the stripped-down and delicately scored Octet for Wind Instruments (1923). He may have been preceded in his use of neoclassical devices by composers such as Prokofiev and Erik Satie. By the late 1920s and 1930s, the use by composers of neoclassicism had become widespread. He composed pieces that elaborated on individual works by earlier composers, a tradition that goes back at least to the fifteenth century quodlibet and parody mass. An early example is his Pulcinella (1920), in which he used music attributed to Giovanni Pergolesi and other composers. His source material was at times quoted directly and at other times reinvented. He developed this technique further in the ballet The Fairy's Kiss (1928), which was based on music by Tchaikovsky. Later examples of comparable musical transformations include Stravinsky's use of Schubert's Marche Militaire No. 1 in his Circus Polka (1942) and "Happy Birthday to You" in Greeting Prelude (1955).
Read more about this topic: Igor Stravinsky
Famous quotes containing the words innovation and, innovation and/or influence:
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)
“Both cultures encourage innovation and experimentation, but are likely to reject the innovator if his innovation is not accepted by audiences. High culture experiments that are rejected by audiences in the creator’s lifetime may, however, become classics in another era, whereas popular culture experiments are forgotten if not immediately successful. Even so, in both cultures innovation is rare, although in high culture it is celebrated and in popular culture it is taken for granted.”
—Herbert J. Gans (b. 1927)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)