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Histoire du soldat (1918)

Other contexts can illuminate the present perspective more fully. Most compelling among these are passages of irregular barring in which a steady meter, as forcibly applied to the opening blocks of Les Noces, surfaces more explicitly in the guise of an ostinato, generally in the bass. Such passages abound in Stravinsky's music, of course. The opening "Soldier's March" of Histoire du soldat is a particularly apt example, if only because the habit of applying "smaller divisions" had by the time of its completion reached a decisive formulation. Moreover, the disruptive  image bars of the March closely parallel the  image bars of the 1929 revision of the "Evocation of the Ancestors" (which, as was indicated in Chapter 2, was actually completed in 1926). Indeed, the renewed conception of the motivic repeat structure of the "Evocation" could have come—it seems fair to suggest—only as a consequence of contexts such as Les Noces (1914–23), Renard (1916), Histoire (1918), and the Octet (1924). Quite apart from the changed dimensions in the successive revisions of the "Evocation," the re-barring of 1926 reflects a new interpretation of fixed metric identity.

The disruptive content of Histoire 's March can be traced to the marching tune's B-C image-D upward sweep, which, as shown in Examples 25a–25d, is barred throughout as a  image unit. In opposition to this barring, a steady  image meter is imposed at the outset by a G-E/D basso ostinato whose connecting beam invariably crosses the bar line during stretches of foreground irregularity. The contradictions to which the B-C image-D sweep are subjected can be apprehended by examining the alignment of subsequent repeats with the G-E/D ostinato pattern. In Examples 25a–25d these repeats are duly aligned and then marked with a series of dotted lines.

Similar implications can be applied to the terminating E of the sweep which, like the E in the opening blocks of Les Noces , functions as a melodic point of departure and return. Indeed, there is an obvious correspondence here between the over-the-barline D-E succession of Les Noces and the B-C image-D-(E) sweep of the March: E, as termination of B-C image-D, always falls on the downbeats of the irregular measures. Yet, while B-C image-D-(E) is the focal point in this display, the effect of dislocation is felt well beyond its immediate confines.

This is especially true of the climactic passage at mm. 50–57, as shown in Example 25d. In Example 25a, these motivic components are introduced with a minimum of disturbance. Here metric identity is first established in relation to the ostinato's  image periodicity and is not as yet subject to displacement. The  image bar of the B-C image-D sweep is followed by another  image bar that immediately cancels the threat to the quarter-note tactus. Moreover, with the earlier  image bar at m. 14, the two  image bars are effectively cancelled out at m. 18. Hence the  image bar at m. 16 figures merely as a potential troublemaker. And the terminating E


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Example 25:
Histoire du soldat


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at m. 17 is likely to be heard as an offbeat element, a syncopation pursuant to the steady  image framework of the ostinato.

Moreover, at mm. 45–46 in Example 25b, this identity is not markedly affected. For while B-C image-D is shifted to the second, "weak" beat of the  image frame of reference, E retains its syncopated, offbeat identity. But further along, at mm. 49–50 in Example 25c, this identity is contradicted. For in accord with the  image meter, the sweep now falls off the beat, which means that its terminating E will assume an onbeat, not, as earlier, an offbeat identity. Hence a contradiction is forged, and here of the conspicuous offbeat-onbeat variety. Notwithstanding the preserved  image bar of the B-C image-D-(E) sweep, the initial offbeat identity of its terminating E is contradicted by an onbeat appearance.

Finally, at mm. 50–57 in Example 25d these conflicting identities are presented successively in a final, tutti summation. In the first occurrence, at mm. 52–53, the initial offbeat identity of the terminating E is restored; in accord with the  image meter, E resumes its initial syncopated identity. But instead of an immediate cancellation of the first  image bar, as earlier at mm. 16–17 in Example 25a, a resolution of the  image troublemaker is delayed to mm. 56–57, where B-C image-D-(E) reappears in its displaced, contradicted version. Yet it may be prior to this final contradiction, already at m. 53 in fact, that giddy doubt and uncertainty arise. Indeed, the contradiction at mm. 56–57 may not even be felt as such. For the reversals have now become so persistent and the highly irregular stresses in the percussion (not shown in Example 25d) have wrought such additional havoc that the steady  image periodicity of the ostinato itself is challenged. Listeners seeking to hold on to the initial onbeat identity of the B-C image-D sweep might here begin to question the stability of the ostinato's  image meter.[38]

In other words, the sense of a "true" metric identity for the B-C image-D-(E) fragment is temporarily lost, as its point of departure can no longer be distinguished from subsequent displacement. And with the loss of such identity comes the simultaneous loss of periodicity and pulse (here the quarter-note with a marking of 112); offbeats are for a moment no longer distinguishable from onbeats. True, order is eventually restored as the climactic stretch draws to a close at m. 57; the foreground irregularity emerges on target with the background  image meter. Yet the overall effect differs little from that noted earlier in connection with the "Augurs of Spring" chord and other contexts as well. Identity is first established in relation to a steady periodicity, which (1) is subsequently displaced; (2) leads climactically to a temporary state of disorientation where the periodicity and tactus are disturbed; and (3) is followed by a resolution of the conflict as the foreground irregularity and background periodicity emerge on target.

Nonetheless, in direct opposition to displacement, the irregular barring


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stubbornly preserves fixed metric identity. In Historie 's March, B-C image-D is always barred as a  image unit, while its terminating E always falls on the first beats of the succeeding measures. And that Stravinsky was conscious of this counteraction seems indicated by the stress and slur markings at m.49 in Example 25c. These are introduced precisely at the point where the initial onbeat identity of B-C image-D is first contradicted by an offbeat placement. Consequently, in opposition to the strong current of displacement, these markings attempt to hold B-C image-D's initial onbeat identity as introduced at mm.16 and 45.

The double edge here is critical. On the one hand there is a form of displacement, an effort to contradict the accentual identity of a reiterating fragment (which presupposes steady metric periodicity, even if of the concealed, background type as bracketed or re-barred in the preceding examples), and, on the other hand, there is an effort to counter this displacement by pressing for a fixed metric identity in repetition. And if the strategy does in fact entail an element of "sadism," this can perhaps best be heard and understood as it relates to counteraction, to the attempt to press for a sameness in the repetition of a fragment (and often, in effect, a static, downbeating kind of sameness), to compose, indeed, as if the repetition were metrically genuine.

Still, questions may linger about the ultimate effectiveness of counteraction, of fixed metric identity in repetition and as it here entails the integrity of the preserved  image bar in Histoire 's March. At m.16 in Example 25a, for instance, just how authentic is the  image "feel"? Obviously, the character of the  image bar is quite different from what it would have been had it been situated within a  image periodic mold—or, as might here have been more likely, within a  image mold. Given the strong  image current in "The Soldier's March," the irregular barring takes on the "feel" of a self-conscious counting, which replaces the automatic sense of a steady periodic undertow; in a conventional context, the March's  image bar would undoubtedly have been replaced by stress and slur markings. (Gray, Lambert, and Adorno would all have concurred, of course, citing the "disintegration" of rhythm into meter and the consequent "abstract" character of the metric design.) Yet a change in character does not here signal an absence of purpose. A respect for the preserved  image bar is essential if the element of counteraction is to be observed properly. This is important in a performance of this music, where a strict, metronomic, percussive approach is required. For the point of the invention, of its displacement and fiendish counteraction, is lost if subjected to any fluctuation of the beat, to "any subjectively expressive flexibility of the beat," in Adorno's words. Indeed, it is from this kind of an angle that Stravinsky's "formalist" convictions can perhaps best be understood—not merely as philosophy, but as a reaction to the special articulative demands of the music, demands patently at odds with the articulative conventions of nineteenth-century symphonic literature. The March leaves little room for interpretation along conventional lines. If counteraction is applied, then this can come only by way of a strictly mechanical reproduction of the metrically fixed elements. Hence, too, the re-barring of Stravinsky hazarded in this chapter is


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analytical, designed to uncover the concealed side of the double edge, not to serve as a substitute for the printed page.

Indeed, as is in this respect sufficiently evident, Stravinsky himself was a radical interpreter of his music. And as a conductor he favored a strict adherence to the bar line, a fact borne out today by a number of recorded rehearsals[39] and by the following excerpt from Conversations with Stravinsky . Here, of course, accent means phenomenal accent or stress.

R. C.: Meters. Can the same effect be achieved by means of accents as by varying the meters? What are bar lines?

I. S.: To the first question my answer is, up to a point, yes, but that point is the degree of real regularity in the music. The bar line is much, much more than a mere accent, and I don't believe that it can be simulated by an accent, at least not in my music.[40]

Yet it seems inconceivable that he could have been oblivious to the contradictions in the metric identity of the reiterating components that, hinging on a steady periodicity, lie concealed beneath the imposition of a foreground irregularity. The shifting meter can acknowledge only one side of the coin, only one side of the double edge, namely, counteraction, the effort to render the repetition as metrical sameness. And such an effort can be appreciated only in relation to the current against which it is directed. The surface of this music may be radical, but its meaning is subject to a deeply conservative grain of musical thought.

A passage from Oedipus Rex (1926) serves as a final illustration. Shown in Example 26, a melodic fragment is introduced at no. 139 and is then repeated at no. 140. Of course, as in previous examples, the repeat harbors a contradiction. For in accord with a concealed  image periodicity, the initial statement begins off the beat while the repeat begins on the downbeat. Yet the high point of this passage comes later, at no. 144, where the concealed  image meter is brought to the surface and the irregular subdivisions are replaced by stress and slur markings. From the standpoint of the initial irregularity, the later conception exposes the background periodicity, while from the standpoint of the later periodicity, the earlier irregularity dissects or slices up a periodic conception in accord with its stress and slur articulation. Here, then, at nos. 139 and 140, meter and a localized type of "phrasing" coincide.


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Example 26:
Oedipus Rex


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