Collected Essays on Stravinsky and Classical Music

The most celebrated of 20th-century composers, Igor Stravinsky may also have been the greatest. The early chapters in this volume address the dynamics of his music from a number of analytic-theoretical perspectives. Examined initially are the features of harmony, melody, and rhythm that would remain characteristic of his music regardless of the changes in stylistic orientation. Chapter 2 turns more specifically to the Stravinsky–Balanchine ballet Agon, an essay published here for the first time. The subsequent chapters focus on The Rite of Spring. The critical commentary of Theodor Adorno and Richard Taruskin is assessed, as is Matthew McDonald’s attempt to derive the irregular rhythmic patterns in The Rite from “intervallic series.” The topics in the latter chapters are aesthetic and critical as well as analytical: the New Musicology of the 1980s and 1990s, the use of overtly political and feminist ideas in the analysis of Beethoven’s music, the “relative autonomy” of music, and the pluralism of 20th-century music. Heinrich Schenker’s theory of tonal music is discussed and defended against many of its critics, past and present, while Ruth A. Solie and Marianne Kielian-Gilbert respond critically to these and many other issues, adding variety and life to the inquiry as a whole.

Author Biography

Pieter C. van den Toorn is professor of music emeritus at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Born in Montclair, New Jersey, in 1938, he attended Amherst College and Harvard University before studying for several years with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, France. Subsequently, in 1986, he received his PhD in music from the University of California at Berkeley. His books include The Music of Igor Stravinsky (1983), Stravinsky and “The Rite of Spring” (1987), Music, Politics, and the Academy (1995), Stravinsky and the Russian Period (with John McGinness, 2012), Simply Stravinsky (2020), and The Music of Stravinsky: Collected Essays (2023). Stravinsky and “The Rite of Spring” won the ASCAP Foundation Deems Taylor Award and the Outstanding Publication Award of the Society for Music Theory.