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Pastoral and neoclassicism: A reinterpretation of Auden's and Stravinsky's Rake's Progress

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 August 2008

Geoffrey Chew
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Extract

It is a commonplace that the poetry best suited to an operatic libretto has fewer pretensions, and more transparency in the range of interpretations that can be placed upon it, than ‘literary’ poetry. Otherwise, it will scarcely bear the weight of the music, much less contribute to the great emotional climaxes that justify opera for many listeners in the first place. And some might mistrust a libretto that is too ‘literary’ or too complicated, for metaphysical and other subtleties are not easily projected across the footlights. No one was more acutely aware of this ‘unliterary’ relationship between words and music in opera than W. H. Auden. Writing in 1948, he stated: ‘Poetry is in its essence an act of reflection, of refusing to be content with the interjections of immediate emotion in order to understand the nature of what is felt. Since music is in essence immediate, it follows that the words of a song cannot be poetry.’

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Opera Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , November 1993 , pp. 239 - 263
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

1 Auden, W. H., ‘Homage to Igor Stravinsky: Notes on Music and Opera’, in The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (1948; rpt London, 1962), 472.Google Scholar

2 See Zimmermann, Michael, ‘W. H. Audens Bekehrung zur Oper’, Musica, 38 (1984), 248–54.Google Scholar

3 There is no account of them, for example, in Griffiths, Paul, Igor Stravinsky: The Rake's Progress, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge, 1982)Google Scholar, nor in discussions of the opera by Kerman, Joseph, Opera as Drama (New York, 1956)Google Scholar and more recently by Joseph N. Straus (see references below).

4 The world première had taken place in Venice on 11 September 1951.

5 See Kerman, Joseph, ‘Opera à la mode’, The Hudson Review (Winter 1954), 560–77Google Scholar; McFadden, George, ‘The Rake's Progress: A Note on the Libretto’, The Hudson Review (Spring 1955), 105–12.Google Scholar

6 See Kerman, , Opera as Drama, chap. 8, pp. 234–47; 2nd edn (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 190–202.Google Scholar

7 Kerman, , ‘Opera à la mode’, 560.Google Scholar

8 Kerman, , ‘Opera à la mode’, 560.Google Scholar

9 Straus, Joseph N., Remaking the Past: Musical Modernism and the Influence of the Tonal Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 155–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Whittall, Arnold, Music since the First World War (London, 1977), 66Google Scholar: ‘The “fable” is a morality: the object is not to create sympathy for the destroyed protagonist but to learn from his destruction and avoid one's own: hence the overriding parallel with Don Giovanni. Unlike the typical modern operatic “victim”, Tom Rakewell deserves his fate: but his very weakness of character has given Stravinsky the chance to provide him with appealing and attractive music, direct yet idiosyncratic, and these qualities extend into the work as a whole.’ Indeed, several early reviewers took issue with the work on account of its failure to deliver, in Tom Rakewell, a convincing modern Don Giovanni; and Stravinsky's preoccupation with Mon (and not only with Don Giovanni) during the composition of the opera is well known.

11 Kerman, , ‘Opera ě la mode’ (n. 5), 561.Google Scholar

12 Kerman, , ‘Opera à la mode’, 561–2.Google Scholar

13 Kerman, , ‘Opera à la mode’, 577.Google Scholar The suggestion was avoided later in the subsequent reworking of this material in Kerman's monograph Opera as Drama (see n. 6) in both first and second editions.

14 Straus, , Remaking the Past (n. 9), 155.Google Scholar

15 See McFadden, , ‘A Note on the Libretto’ (n. 5).Google Scholar

16 Quoted by McFadden, from Harper's Bazaar (02 1953), 165.Google Scholar

17 McFadden, , ‘A Note on the Libretto’, 107.Google Scholar

18 McFadden, , ‘A Note on the Libretto’, 109.Google Scholar

19 See Auden, W. H., ‘The Ironic Hero: Some Reflections on Don Quixote’, Horizon 20, No. 116 (08 1949), 86–94.Google Scholar Auden had been concerned about the general relationship between Christianity and an earlier than this: cf. his ‘Postscript: Christianity & An’, in The Dyer's Hand and Other Essays (see n. 1), 456–61Google Scholar; and a further passage no doubt closely relevant to The Rake's Progress (dealing in particular with the relevance of naturalistic representation in opera and the appropriateness of a Mozanian model for it) can be found in ‘Homage to Igor Stravinsky: Notes on Music and Opera’, The Dyer's Hand, 465–74.Google Scholar

20 See Auden, W. H., introduction to The Living Thoughts ofKierkegaard (New York, 1952)Google Scholar, also published as Kierkegaard: Selected and Introduced by W. H. Auden (London, 1955)Google Scholar; the preface is reprinted in Auden, W. H., Forewords andAfterrvords (London, 1973), 168–81.Google Scholar

21 Auden, W. H., Forewords and Afterwords, 172–3.Google Scholar

22 Auden, , Forewords and Afterwords, 174–5.Google Scholar

23 Auden, , Forewords and Afterwords, 175–7.Google Scholar

24 The Rake's Progress, Act II scene 1.Google Scholar

25 Straus, , Remaking the Past (see n. 9), 156.Google Scholar

26 Auden, W. H., ‘The Ironic Hero’ (see n. 19), 91–2.Google Scholar

27 Savage, Roger, ‘Making a Libretto: Three Collaborations over “The Rake's Progress”’, Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex, The Rake's Progress, English National Opera Guide 43 (London, 1991), 51.Google Scholar

28 Auden, W. H., ‘The Ironic Hero’ (n. 19), 94.Google Scholar

29 For a summary of the literature as it affects opera, including an anticipation of the results of this paper, see Chew, Geoffrey, ‘Pastoral’, The New Grove Dictionary of Opera (London, 1992), III, 910–13.Google Scholar

30 Bloom, Harold, (The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry New York, 1973)Google Scholar, A Map of Misreading (New York, 1975)Google Scholar, Figures of Capable Imagination (New York, 1976)Google Scholar, Agon: Towards a Theory of Revisionism (New York, 1982)Google Scholar, etc. See, for example, Straus, , Remaking the Past (n. 9)Google Scholar; Korsyn, Kevin, ‘Towards a New Poetics of Musical Influence’, Music Analysis, 10 (1991), 3–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘Historical Reflection and Reference in Twentieth-Century Music: Neoclassicism and Beyond – A Symposium’ [four papers given on this subject at the American Musicological Society Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas, in October 1989], Journal of Musicology, 9 (1991) 411–97CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, most recently, Taruskin, Richard, ‘Revising Revision’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 46 (1993), 114–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar We have clearly not yet heard the last word on this subject, which deserves fuller exposition elsewhere.

31 Straus, Joseph N., Remaking the Past (see n. 9)Google Scholar; also, Straus, , ‘The Progress of a Motive in Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress’, The Journal of Musicology, 9/2 (Spring 1991), 165–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The quoted passage is from ‘The Progress of a Motive’, 168n5. Two other interpretations of the neoclassicism in this work may be mentioned at this point: Trowell, Brian, in ‘The New and the Classical in “The Rake's Progress”’, Stravinsky: Oedipus Rex, The Rake's Progress, English National Opera Guide 43 (London, 1991), 59–69Google Scholar, seeks generally to minimise the importance of the concept, but it is difficult to agree with him; and Jacquot, jean, in ‘The Rake's Progress et la carrière de Stravinsky’, Revue de Musicologie, 68/1–2 (1982), 110–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar, describes the allusiveness of neoclassicism in psychological terms as an ‘extension de la mémoire, [qui] est caractéristique de notre siècle’ (116).

32 Straus, , ‘The Progress of a Motive’ (n. 31), 168.Google Scholar

33 Stravinsky's use of the octatonic scale was first discussed by Berger, Arthur, in ‘Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky’, in Perspectives of New Music, 2 (Fall–Winter 1963) 11–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Boretz, Benjamin and Cone, Edward T., eds., Perspectives on Schoenberg and Stravinsky (Princeton, 1968; rev. edn New York, 1972), 123–54Google Scholar; of the more recent literature dealing with Stravinsky's octatonicism, see in particular Toorn, Pieter van den, The Music of Igor Stravinsky (New Haven, 1983).Google Scholar

34 See Forte, Allen, The Structure ofAtonal Music (New Haven, 1973).Google Scholar

35 Straus, , ‘The Progress of a Motive’ (n. 31), 168–9.Google Scholar

36 Straus, , Remaking the Past (n. 9), 155.Google Scholar

37 Straus, , ‘The Progress of a Motive’ (n. 31), 169.Google Scholar

38 Whittall, Arnold, ‘Some Recent Writings on Stravinsky’, Music Analysis, 8/1–2 (1989), 170.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

39 Straus, , Remaking the Past (n. 9) 156–9.Google Scholar

40 Griffiths, Paul, Igor Stravinsky The Rake's Progress, Cambridge Opera Handbooks (Cambridge, 1982), 77.Google Scholar

41 This is the criterion adopted by Allen Forte for permitting notes additional to the octatonic collection ‘in force’ in the music: Fone, Allen, ‘Debussy and the Octatonic’, Music Analysis, 10/1–2 (1991), 125–69.Google Scholar

42 Mila, Massimo, Guida musicale a ‘La carriera di un libertino’ di Igor Stravinsky (Venice, 1951), 25–6.Google Scholar I am grateful to Sabrina Doria for pointing out this reference to me.

43 Stephan, Rudolf, ‘Zur Deutung von Strawinskys Neoklassizismus’, MusikoKonzepte 34/35, Igor Stravinsky (Munich, 1984), 80ffGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Stephan, Rudolf, Vom musikalischen Denken: Gesammelte Vorträge (Darmstadt, 1985), 243–8.Google Scholar I am grateful to Stephen Hinton for drawing attention, at the Southampton Music Analysis Conference in 1993, to the importance of this article for the understanding of neoclassicism generally.

44 Mozart's quintet is exceptional within Così fan tutte: its text is recitative verse, which Da Ponte clearly did not expect Mozart to compose as a set piece, and Alan Tyson has shown that Mozan himself insened this piece (which Mozart headed ‘Recitativo’ and Tyson terms ‘the unnumbered quintetto’) into the scheme at a relatively late stage. See Tyson, Alan, ‘Notes on the Composition of Mozart's Così fan tutte’, Journal of the American Musicological Society, 37 (1984), 356–401.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It is not surprising, therefore, that the piece is not of normal dimensions: it is in fact far shorter than most Mozart ensembles. This, together with its affective suitability, may well have recommended it to Stravinsky as a model. It is well known that Stravinsky spent time listening to and studying Così fan tutte during the composition of The Rake's Progress (see Craft, Robert, ‘A Personal Preface’, The Score 20 [1957], 11).Google Scholar

45 Straus, , Remaking the Past (n. 9), 159.Google Scholar

46 See, for example, Griffiths, , The Rake's Progress (n. 40), 75ff.Google Scholar

47 For an exemplification of these, see Kerman, Joseph, ‘How we Got into Analysis, and How to Get Out’, Critical Inquiry, 7 (1980), 311–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar