Stravinsky The Soldier's Tale

STRAVINSKY THE SOLDIER’S TALE Thursday 7 January 2021, The Queen’s Hall, Edinburgh –––––

PROGRAMME NOTE

SCO.ORG.UK

PERFORMERS CONDUCTOR Gordon Bragg

CLARINET Maximiliano Martín

NARRATOR Matthew McVarish

BASSOON Alison Green

VIOLIN Siún Milne

CORNET Peter Franks

DOUBLE BASS Nikita Naumov

TROMBONE Nigel Cox

PERCUSSION Louise Goodwin

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WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO HEAR Stravinsky (1882-1971) The Soldier's Tale, K029 (1918) Conceived by Igor Stravinsky and Swiss writer C.F. Ramuz Presented here in an English version by Michael Flanders and Kitty Black Part 1 Marche du soldat Petit airs au bord du ruisseau Marche du soldat (reprise) Pastorale Petite airs au bord du ruisseau (reprise) Petite airs au bord du ruisseau (reprise) Part 2 Marche du soldat Marche Royale Petit concert Trois danses: Tango; Valse; Ragtime Danse du diable Danse du diable Petit choral Couplets du diable Grand choral

––––– An age of global turmoil, death and devastation, with the arts eking out a precarious existence, live music and other events curtailed by the cataclysm happening around them. That might seem an apt description of our current times, but this is a little more than a century ago, with the globe engulfed by the First World War. The parallels with our own tribulations of 2020-21, however, are hard to ignore, and they’re only made more vivid by the pandemic of so-called ‘Spanish’ flu that swept the globe in the years immediately following the conflict.

Earlier the same decade, Igor Stravinsky had achieved astonishing successes with his trilogy of revolutionary ballet scores – The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring – for Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Just a few years after shocking and titillating audiences with those radical works, however, he was facing the harsh realities of the economic fallout from the war.

Performances were thin on the ground.

Payments from his German publishers were held back because of the conflict.

The 1917 Russian Revolution had cut off income from his family estate. He found himself isolated in Switzerland – protected from the conflict itself, perhaps, but also cut off from audiences, and the income and recognition they’d generate.

Stravinsky had been dividing his time between Switzerland and Russia since 1910, alongside a few periods in France.

His wife Katherine had been diagnosed with tuberculosis following the birth of their fourth child, Marie Milène, in 1914, and was confined to a sanatorium in the Swiss Alps. The following year, he and the family moved to Morges, near Lausanne,

Despite – or perhaps because of – the turmoil in his life and musical activities, it felt like something of a turning point for Stravinsky, perhaps just as our current times do for us.

Igor Stravinsky

on the shores of Lake Geneva. Following the 1917 Revolution, he was unable to

In truth, he’d been thinking along more intimate lines for a while, and had

return to his homeland at all.

already written the small-scale theatrical burlesque Renard for the Paris salon of the Princesse de Polignac in 1916, though it wasn’t premiered until six years later. Like The Soldier’s Tale, Renard is based on a fable from Russian folklore, but in many ways feels like a tryout for the later work, in which Stravinsky distilled his thinking to an even purer level.

Despite – or perhaps because of – the turmoil in his life and musical activities, it felt like something of a turning point for Stravinsky, perhaps just as our current times do for us. In the same way that circumstances are now forcing us to explore the potential of online activity, smaller-scale ensembles, intimate audiences and outdoor performances, so Stravinsky made an adjustment to his thinking. It was simply no longer practical to conceive music of luxuriant excess for the enormous symphony orchestras he’d used with his early ballet scores. Instead, he produced something entirely different: The Soldier’s Tale.

The composer hatched a plan with two friends he’d made in Switzerland – the writer Charles Ferdinand Ramuz and the conductor Ernest Ansermet – for a small-scale work that might ease their financial difficulties. Stravinsky described the project: "Ramuz and I got hold of the idea of creating a sort of little travelling theatre, easy to transport from place to

place and to show in even small localities."

Inside their travelling theatre, they’d tell one of the oldest of all tales: of a man

flourish across the 20th and 21st centuries.

Schoenberg may have already kicked off that trend with the intense expressionism

who unwittingly sells his soul to the Devil.

Stravinsky and Ramuz worked together on adapting two tales from Russian writer Alexander Afanasyev’s collection of Russian folk tales for their brand new work.

of his 1912 Pierrot lunaire, but Stravinsky transformed it into something immediate, appealing and unashamedly entertaining.

And for it, Stravinsky shrank the enormous, glittering orchestra of his ballet scores down to a tiny ensemble of just seven musicians. He wanted to use a group that would encompass high and low instruments from each main instrumental type, he explained: hence clarinet and bassoon; cornet and trombone; violin and double bass; and a percussionist playing a range of instruments. He was tempted to add a piano, but realised this would limit outdoor and touring performances hugely, so abandoned the idea. Most importantly, however, his ensemble would not be hidden away in an orchestral pit.

Instead, the musicians would remain visible on stage throughout, joined in his original conception by three actors and a dancer, though performances with a single narrator, as today’s, are common now.

Similarly, and inevitably, the music he wrote for his seven-piece ensemble is a world away from the opulence of his Ballets Russes scores, focusing on economy, precision, rhythmic inventiveness and sardonic humour in its piquant harmonies and melodies – all concerns that would dominate Stravinsky’s music across the following decades. Out of necessity, Stravinsky almost single-handedly created an entirely new form, setting a trend for small-scale ensembles and a new kind of music theatre that would develop and

The Soldier’s Tale project was almost entirely bankrolled by Swiss industrialist and financier Werner Reinhardt, himself an amateur clarinettist. He underwrote the piece’s premiere, on 28 September 1918 in Lausanne, though the tour of smaller Swiss towns that Stravinsky, Ramuz and Ansermet had planned was cancelled when the Spanish flu pandemic hit. Nonetheless, Stravinsky showed his appreciation for Reinhardt’s generosity the following year by dedicating his Three Pieces for Clarinet to the philanthropist.

There are undeniably many parallels between the context within which Stravinsky created The Soldier’s Tale and our own pandemic times, and many aspects to the work – not least its modest forces – that make it particularly suitable for our own socially distanced era. And the moral of its story, too, while certainly fitting in a world recovering from war and pandemic, may also offer some harsh lessons for us in 2021. As the Soldier makes his final, fateful decision to return home, the Narrator tells us: "You must not seek to add to what you have, what you once had. You have no right to share what you are with what you were." Don’t pine for the pleasures of the past, in other words, but be content with what you have now. It’s somewhat bleak advice, but nonetheless a stoical instruction we might all consider in these difficult times. © David Kettle

SYNOPSIS The Soldier's Tale, K029 (1918) Conceived by Igor Stravinsky and Swiss writer C.F. Ramuz Presented here in an English version by Michael Flanders and Kitty Black

Part 1 Heading home on leave along a lonely road, a young Solider stops to play his fiddle by a river.

Unbeknownst to him, the Devil (disguised as a little old man) is listening. Revealing himself, the Devil makes the Soldier an offer: if he’ll give him his fiddle, the Devil will give him a book that tells the future. Finding he can’t play the violin, the Devil then persuades the Soldier to come home and teach him, but just for three days, during which time he’ll also explain how to use the book to grow fabulously rich. The Soldier eventually accepts.

But it’s been a trick – naturally. When the three days are up, and the Soldier returns to his village, everyone is terrified of him. His mother thinks he’s a ghost, and his fiancée is now married with children. It’s been three years, not three days, that he’s been gone. The Devil appears as a cattle merchant, and reminds the Soldier that he can still make a fortune using the book’s predictive powers. But even having accumulated great wealth, the Soldier finds it meaningless and casts the book aside. He meets an old woman selling wares – again, the Devil in disguise – and notices his violin among them. He buys it back from her, but discovers he can no longer play it, since the fiddle mysteriously makes no sound. He tosses it away, tearing the book to shreds.

Part 2 The Soldier is back on the road, and at an inn he hears of a sleeping Princess, whose father the King has offered her hand in marriage to anyone who can wake her. The Soldier arrives at the palace, where he again meets the Devil, this time dressed as a virtuoso violinist. While waiting to be admitted into the Princess’s chamber, the Soldier shatters the Devil’s hold over him by letting him win all his money in a game of cards, thereby discharging his outstanding debt. All the while, he plies the Devil with drink until he falls unconscious. He recovers his fiddle, and gives a short serenade over the Devil’s unconscious body.

The Soldier goes on to wake the Princess with his fiddle playing. He plays three dances – a tango, a waltz and a ragtime – and once revived, the Princess dances to them. Magically revived himself, the Devil storms in, now undisguised, hoping to snatch back the violin, but the Soldier makes him dance to exhaustion. As the Soldier and the Princess are embracing, however, the Devil warns them that the Soldier will forfeit his soul again if he leaves the confines of the castle.

The Soldier ignores the warnings and departs to share his new wealth with his mother, whom he wishes to invite to live with him and the Princess. The Devil celebrates his victory, and leads the Soldier away behind him.

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