4-2 Young People's Concert: Happy Birthday, Igor Stravinsky

[ORCH: Greeting Prelude]

Did you guess what that was? What is it?

[AD LIB]

Happy Birthday all right, only it's the great Igor Stravinsky's individual way of saying Happy

Birthday, in an arrangement he made a few years ago to celebrate the eightieth birthday of his

great friend Pierre Monteux, the famous conductor. And so, now that Mr. Stravinsky's own

eightieth birthday is coming up in June, what better way is there for us to say "Happy Birthday"

to him than by playing it back to him, in his own language? But when we say "Happy Birthday"

to Igor Stravinsky, as we are doing on this program, we are not only giving him our

congratulations and our wishes for many more healthy productive years. We are also paying

tribute, with all our respect and admiration and devotion, to the greatest composer in the world

today. Now that's a big statement, but I don't think anyone will argue about it. Whatever your

tastes are—romantic or classical or very up-to-date—there are always works by Stravinsky that

you will love. And all these works are in a personal style and language all his own: You can

never mistake that Stravinsky sound, just like the version of Happy Birthday we just heard. It's

an amazing thing, this original personality he has, especially when you think of how many times

he has changed his style of composing in the last fifty or sixty years, just as he has changed his

country from Russia—where he was born—to France to America, where he lives now in

California. He started back in Russia writing for big orchestra, brilliant, luscious, colorful

music—like the ballets Firebird, Petrouchka and the world-shaking ballet The Rite of Spring.

Now that was a revolutionary piece: It changed the history of music with its strange new

rhythms, its barbaric grunting and howling, and its massive dissonant chords, like these—

[ORCH: Sacre du printemps]

Now everyone was shocked by that back in 1913, shocked into either wild excitement or into

fury, but everyone was impressed by this new, thunderous genius. And just when they thought

they had his number—a thunderer—he switched on them, with the ease of a bullfighter reversing

his cape. Whoosh—and Stravinsky had a new style: Small orchestras, sharp pointy, little music,

precise tricky rhythms, plus a whole new idea called neoclassicism, which means a new look at

old classic styles. That is, he was suddenly writing music that reminded one faintly of old

Handel, or of Mozart, or of Bach as in these few bars from his concerto for small orchestra called

Dumbarton Oaks.

[ORCH: Dumbarton Oaks]

Quite a change isn't it, from the howling of The Rite of Spring? But then came the biggest switch

of all, only in these last ten years. You see, since the beginning of our century there has been a

new kind of music developing in the world, sometimes called atonal music, sometimes twelve-

tone music or serial music. Now Stravinsky had always written the exact opposite of this kind of

music, but lo and behold in the last ten years he has fooled the bull again, with a swish of the

cape again, and begun to write his own kind of serial music, or atonal music, or whatever you

want to call it. Just listen to these bars from his latest ballet, called Agon.

[ORCH: Agon]

Now that's really a switch. In fact, Stravinsky has now become the world leader of this kind of

music. And so it is this king Igor that we salute today, the ever-changing, ever-new, ever-young

Igor who at the age of eighty, imagine eighty, is still handing out the biggest surprises in the

world of music.

And just to help you understand what we mean by "surprises," let's jump for a minute from

music to painting and think of the greatest painter in the world today, who is Picasso of course,

who also is in his eighties, and who also holds some kind of world record for changing from one

style to another. Just look at these three pictures. Here is a drawing of a woman by Picasso,

normal enough, made in the year 1905. Now here is one dated 1911, also of a woman, if you can

believe it. Can you believe it's by the same man who painted the first picture? And here is a

woman, believe it or not, also by Picasso, painted in 1945. They might be three completely

different painters. How about that for fooling the bull!

And this is exactly what Stravinsky has done, only in music through musical notes. I wish we

had time today to give you a sample of all his different styles and moods, but then you wouldn't

get to hear any one of his works whole. So, to honor him today on his birthday, we have decided

to play for you one masterpiece of his, and play all of it—the famous ballet Petrouchka. We're

going to play Petrouchka not only because it's exciting music, but especially because it is so

close to young people and to children. Stravinsky himself has said that his music is loved and

understood best by children; I don't know if this is strictly true, but it is certainly true of his

Petrouchka, which takes us into the world of dolls and puppets, with all the imagination and

fantasy that go with it. But what makes Petrouchka even more special is that the story of the

ballet tells of two worlds at once—the real world of people like us and the unreal world of

puppets who come to life, so that the doll-world and the human-world almost become one and

the same.

The story of Petrouchka is based on an old Russian legend, but I'm not going to tell you the

whole story at once because I don't want to give away the surprise ending until it comes. Instead

I will tell you about each one of its four scenes as we go along. First scene: Imagine yourselves

at a fair in a great crowded square of St. Petersburg, Russia, over a hundred years ago, long

before that city got its modern name of Leningrad. It is carnival time, a bright cold day, and

everyone in town has turned out for a good time: Old and young, rich and poor, drunk and sober,

they are all crowding around the booths and into the carousel and onto the swings. The music is

all festivity and bustle.

[ALL remaining music is from PETROUCHKA]

[ORCH: 5 to 7, no dbt.]

In one part of the square, a bunch of the boys are whooping it up with a Russian folksong:

[ORCH: Upbeat to 7 to 1 before 11]

And over in another part of the square an organ grinder is playing a waltz while a young girl

dances to it:

[ORCH: 22 (no vlns) to 23]

While across the way another pretty girl is waltzing to a music box:

[ORCH: 1 before 26, cel & hp. only, to 27]

Then we hear the two waltzes together:

[ORCH: same, tutti]

Then, suddenly, two drums announce that a puppet show is going to begin and the crowd surges

around the puppet theatre in the middle of the square. Now this theatre is run by a mysterious old

Oriental-type magician, whom Stravinsky describes like this:

[ORCH: 2 before 58]

This old magician opens the curtain of his little theatre, revealing three life-size puppets: First, a

beautiful Ballerina in her ballet dress; and a fierce-looking African prince, or Moor, as he's

called, all decked out in silks and velvets with jewels in his turban; and last of all, little

Petrouchka (which, as you can guess, is a Russian nickname for Peter)—Petrouchka, a sweet,

pathetic, awkward boy, rather like Pinocchio. While the orchestra plays spooky music, the old

magician makes some hocus pocus at the three puppets, and he plays to them on his magic flute,

and suddenly, one—

[FLUTE—63]

two—

[PICC—2nd bar of 63]

three—

[PICC—3rd bar]

They magically come to life. And to the amazement of the crowd they begin to dance, under

their own steam.

[ORCH: 64 to 66]

And with this famous dance, the first scene ends. But for the story of Petrouchka himself, it is

only the beginning as we will see. Now here is the entire first scene of Petrouchka.

[PETROUCHKA PART I, ORCH: Beginning to 5 after 90]

We left Petrouchka dancing, along with the Ballerina and the Moor, before an astonished crowd

in the square at St. Petersburg. But now, with the second scene, we leave the square and the

crowd and all of what we call "real life," and move into the world of the puppets themselves—

that is into their real world, backstage in the puppet theatre, where each of them has his own little

room to live in. Don't forget that the moment these three dolls received life from the magician's

flute, they also acquired all the human feelings and passions that go with life. And Petrouchka

has the most sensitive feelings of the three. He is lonely, funny-looking, awkward, and madly in

love with the beautiful Ballerina. But, of course, she won't have him: She prefers his rival, the

fierce, foolish Moor, who is richer and bigger and fancier. Petrouchka naturally is desperate. As

we move toward his room in the little theatre, to the accompaniment of those drums,

[ORCH: 3 after 91 to 5 after 92—drums play p]

we hear little doll-like screams. They are Petrouchka's cries, of course, as he flings himself about

his room, sobbing.

[ORCH: 93 to 95, for 2 bars only]

That is what this whole scene is about—the agony of Petrouchka. In it you will hear every

imaginable kind of sobbing, weeping, shrieking, wailing, and beating the walls. It is heart-

breaking music: Just listen to Petrouchka's theme on the two clarinets, with the bassoon against

them sobbing its heart out:

[ORCH: 95 to 96]

Isn't that a weird and wonderful sound? And do you know what makes it so special? Our old

friend bitonality—remember that hard word from our earlier programs this season? Bitonality,

music played in two different keys at once. You see, one clarinet is playing in one key, C major:

[CL 1, 3 bars]

and the second clarinet is in another key, F-sharp:

[CL 2, 3 bars]

And together they make that special sound that has become the most famous example of

bitonality in all music. In fact, musicians always refer to this combination of C major and F-

sharp as the "Petrouchka sound."

[Both clarinets, 3 bars]

Isn't that wonderful? And when Petrouchka goes really mad with suffering, his theme sounds like

this:

[CLS, 2 after 118, with upbeats]

Well, I guess that's about all you have to know about this short but high-powered second scene,

of Petrouchka, which is a picture of Petrouchka alone in his room.

[PETROUCHKA, PART II, ORCH: 3 after 91 to 119]

[Drums continue, dim., pp., under following paragraph, and crescendo on cue into 120]

The drums tell us that we are moving into Scene 3, which is in the Moor's room. Now the

Ballerina, at one point, pops in to visit him, playing on a toy trumpet, and the Moor dances a

sentimental little waltz with her—a sort of dolls' love scene. And in the middle of it we suddenly

hear Petrouchka's theme, coming closer and closer until finally he breaks into the room in a fit of

jealousy. There is a chase around the room, the Ballerina faints, and at the climax the Moor grabs

poor little Petrouchka and boots him out with a painful series of whacks, which I'm sure you'll all

recognize. Here we are in Scene 3: In the Moor's room.

[PETROUCHKA, PART III: Drums crescendo into 120, ORCH: to 160 (no drums)]

Poor Petrouchka! He doesn't stand a chance in this cruel real world he's been brought into. And

at this point, we too are brought back to our real world, in the fourth and last scene we're taken

back to the great square of St. Petersburg, where we started, where the carnival fun is at its

height. By now it is late in the day, the lights are beginning to come on, and the air is thick with

sounds and smells and human bodies everywhere. This marvelous final scene is like a huge

painting of Russian life, full of lusty Russian folktunes and foot-tapping rhythms. And into the

midst of all this wild hilarity, runs poor, half-crazy Petrouchka, fleeing for his life from the

wicked Moor. Somehow they've both broken out of their world backstage and are running loose

in the square. You see how the two worlds have gotten mixed up together into one? So here

comes Petrouchka, with the Moor in hot pursuit. The crowd stops dead in its tracks, seeing this

incredible sight, and it is only a moment before the Moor catches up with Petrouchka and—I'm

sorry to say—kills him with one blow of his sabre. Petrouchka falls and dies in the snow, with

everyone looking on in horror. At this very second in hobbles the old magician who started the

whole thing by bringing his puppets to life in the first place. But the old man simply picks up

Petrouchka's lifeless body, and shows it to the crowd. "Look," he says, "it's only a doll. Rags,

sawdust, stuffing, and a wooden head." And indeed, it is only a doll. So everyone quietly goes

home. It is now dark; it begins to snow. Finally, the stage is empty except for the weird old

magician, dragging his broken doll away. But at that moment of near-silence, two trumpets

suddenly pierce the air like flashes of lightning, playing Petrouchka's theme,

[SING]

and there, on the roof of the little theatre, we see Petrouchka's ghost, laughing away at the old

guy, thumbing his nose at him. The magician is terrified, drops the doll, and runs away. Silence.

Absolute emptiness. Just a tiny, faint echo of the accordion-like music hangs in the air. And then,

a few vague plucked notes in the strings, and the ballet is over, leaving us hanging in suspense

between one world and the other. Did all this really happen? Was that Petrouchka's ghost up

there, or was it the real Petrouchka? Or is the real Petrouchka, after all, only that broken hunk of

rags and stuffing, which was made real to us for a few minutes by the magic of Stravinsky's great

art?

[PETROUCHKA, PART IV, ORCH: 160 to end]