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Notes on Petrushka

04 July 2008

Of all Stravinsky's ballets Petrushka is the most graphic: the one where the music seems most conspicuously to be telling a story, and where correspondingly, substantial passages suggest action in mime rather than formal dance. The score appears to have been fitted exactly to this particular narrative, whereas, to give just one example, even The Rite of Spring has been shown by Walt Disney to be just as suitable for dinosaurs to dance as ancient Scythians.

However, in his own account of the work's genesis, Stravinsky was at pains to affirm that the music of Petrushka came before any notion of subject matter.

According to his memoirs, the ballet he was planning to follow The Firebird was The Rite of Spring of which he had had a vision in spring 1910 while he was completing the earlier score. The Firebird opened in Paris in June, as the main new item in Diaghilev's second Ballets Russes season, Stravinsky then took his family for a holiday in Brittany, where he began sketching The Rite. In August however they moved to Switzerland, and Stravinsky decided he needed a break before continuing with another ballet, particularly one that was obviously going to be such a challenge: I wanted to refresh myself by composing... an orchestral piece in which the piano would play the most important part; In composing the music, I had in mind a distinct picture of a puppet, suddenly endowed with life, exasperating the patience of the orchestra with diabolical cascades of arpeggios. The orchestra in turn retaliates with menacing trumpet blasts. The outcome is a terrific noise which reaches its climax and ends in the sorrowful and querulous collapse of the poor puppet.

This sounds like a description of the ballet's second scene, though at this point, Stravinsky insists, he still did not know he was writing a ballet, even less one with this subject. 'I struggled for hours, while walking beside the Lake of Geneva, to find a title which would express in a word the character of my musicŠ One day I leapt for joy. I had indeed found my title Petrushka, the immortal and unhappy hero of every fair in all countries.

All that was needed now was for this unhappy hero to step forward out of the score and dance, and that transition from concert piece into ballet was, again following Stravinsky's story, coaxed into happening by Diaghilev. He visited the composer in Switzerland, heard what had been written of the puppet concerto, and persuaded Stravinsky he had the makings of a ballet.

The rest followed quickly, in October Stravinsky and his family moved to Beaulieu, near Nice, and by December he had added the first scene and the start of the third. Christmas he spent in St Petersburg, discussing the ballet with Diaghilev and with others who would be closely involved: Alexandre Benois, who had a share with him in the scenario and created the designs; Mikhail Fokine, the choreographer; and Vaslav Nijinsky, who was to be the first interpreter of the title role.

In January 1911, having returned to Beaulieu, he wrote back to a Russian friend about the progress of his work: 'My last visit to Petersburg did me much good and the final scene is shaping up excitingly... quick tempos, concertinas, major keys: smells of Russian food - shchi - and of sweat and glistening leather boots. Oh what excitement.' (It is interesting to note how very Russian he felt the music to be while he was writing it, whereas two decades later, in the memoirs already quoted, he was concerned to present Petrushka as an international figure.)

The final scene was interrupted for a month while Stravinsky was ill with nicotine poisoning. In late April he sent his family back to Russia and went himself to Rome, where the Diaghilev company were appearing and where he completed the score on 26 May. The first performance took place just 17 days later, in Paris, with a cast led by Nijinsky, Tamara Karasavina (the Ballerina), Alexandrew Orlov (the Moor) and Enrrico Cecchetti (the showman), and with Pieree Monteux conducting.

Click here to read the second half of these notes.

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