PARTISAN REVIEW
should like other musicians to do is being taught by Nadia Boulanger.
He is right. For many years this strange woman has been the high priest
of the Stravinsky cult. She has turned out numerous composers-French,
Russian, English, American-to whom she has illuminated the works of
a few great masters of the past in the light of Stravinsky's neo-classicist
outlook, and has thus set up Stravinsky's music itself as an ideal of a
refined and elegant style. Invariably these composers, wherever they
come from, write the same "Stravinskyish" scores, light, superficial, in–
terchangeable, their lack of genuine musical thought being equaled only
by the boredom which they promote. They are the only young musicians
who receive Stravinsky's praise.
Both composers make a living from works which they are com–
missioned to write, but their ways of composing differ in every respect.
Stravinsky writes slowly, meticulously, every day at regular hours, with
the cold determination and control of an engineer. His musical hand–
writing alone is amazing in its precision and clarity and a page from
his scores resembles the blueprint of an architect. His works continue,
one after the other, the destructive process he began in 1912, and which
has become more and more open. These works are brilliantly made as
far as craftsmanship goes, and every note seems to be the result of
absolute lucidity. But behind these frozen and sometimes readymade
patterns (or rather, these petrified sound forms, put together with such
diabolical skill) there is nothing except perhaps the illusion of music.
In Stravinsky's hands the musical materials are like stone, wood, or
leather. The complete work is, in the long run, a grouping of diverse
elements which
~ounds
because it is made of sounds but which only
conveys the deadly
Maya
of a musical work. Usually Stravinsky's latest
pieces are very tame in structure and expression, but once in a while–
as in the first movement of the recent
Third Symphony-some
of the
violence of the older works comes back, creating the impression of utter
hatred, even revolt, against every item of musical organization.
Talking with Stravinsky about his work, one notices that nothing
new has preoccupied him of late. To him, composing music means to
gain a victory over some precise difficulty, to solve a problem and
nothing else. Perhaps the key to the only evolution Stravinsky has
ever undergone can be found in this paradox: an ever increasing mastery
and control applied to less and less significant musical problems.
How different again it is with Schonberg. His work is sporadically
full of renewal, dominated by passion, boldness, and risk. Like a gambler
who puts everything he owns on one last, final, perhaps fatal, stake,
Schonberg composes every work with his entire being. This is true in
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