Poetics Of Music

Igor Stravinsky

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In truth, I should be hard pressed to cite for you a single fact in the history of
art that might be qualifed as revolutionary. Art is by essence constructive.
Revolution implies a disruption of equilibrium. To speak of revolution is to
speak of a temporary chaos. Now art is the contrary of chaos. It never gives
itself up to chaos without immediately finding its living works, its very
existence, threatened.
The quality of being revolutionary is generally attributed to artists in our day
with a laudatory intent, undoubtedly because we are living in a period when
revolution enjoys a kind of prestige among yesterday's elite. Let us understand
each other: I am the first to recognize that daring is the motive force of the
finest and greatest acts; which is all the more reason for not putting it

unthinkingly at the service of disorder and base cravings in a desire to cause

sensation at any price. I approve of daring; I set no limits to it. But likewise
there are no limits to the mischief wrought by arbitrary acts.

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it is impossible for a self-respecting mind equipped with genuine musical

culture not to feel that the composer of Pierrot Lunaire is fully aware of what he
is doing and that he is not trying to deceive anyone. He adopted the musical
system that suited his needs and, within this system, he is perfectly consistent
with himself, perfectly coherent. One cannot dismiss music that he dislikes by
labeling it cacophony.
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Thus I take cognizance of the existence of elemental natural sounds, the raw
materials of music, which, pleasing in themselves, may caress the ear and give
us a pleasure that may be quite complete. But, over and beyond this passive
enjoyment we shall discover music, music that will make us participate actively
in the working of a mind that orders, gives life, and creates. For at the root of all
creation one discovers an appetite that is not an appetite for the fruits of the
earth. So that to the gifts of nature are added the benefits of artifice - such is the
general significance of art.
For it is not art that rains down upon us in the song of a bird; but the simplest
modulation correctly executed is already art, without any possible doubt.
Art in the true sense is a way of fashioning works according to certain methods
acquired either by apprenticeship or by inventiveness. And methods are the
straight and predetermined channels that insure the rightness of our operation.
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The plastic arts are presented to us in space: we receive an over-all impression

before we discover details little by little and at our leisure. But music is based
on temporal succession and requires alertness of memory. Consequently music
is a chronologic art, as painting is a spatial art. Music presupposes before all
else a certain organization in time, a chrononomy –if you will permit me to use
a neologism.
The laws that regulate the movement of sounds require the presence of a
measurable and constant value: meter, a purely material element, through
which rhythm, a purely formal element, is realized. In other words, meter
answers the question of how many equal parts the musical unit which we call a
measure is to be divided into, and rhythm answers the question of how these

equal parts will be grouped within a given measure. A measure in four beats,

for example, may be composed of two groups of two beats, or in three groups:
one beat, two beats, and one beat, and so on...
Thus we see that meter, since it offers in itself only elements of symmetry and is
inevitably made up of even quantities, is necessarily utilized by rhythm, whose
function it is to establish order in the movement by dividing up the quantities
furnished in the measure.
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What gives the concept of musical time its special stamp is that this concept is
born and develops as well outside of the categories of psychological time as it
does simultaneously with them. All music, whether it submits to the normal law
of time, or whether it disassociates itself therefrom, establishes a particular
relationship, a sort of counterpoint between the passing of time, the music's
own duration, and the material and technical means through which the music
is made manifest.
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This problem of time in the art of music is of capital importance. I have thought
it wise to dwell on the problem because the considerations that it involves may
help us to understand the different creative types which will concern us in our
fourth lesson.
Music that is based on ontological time is generally dominated by the principle
of similarity. The music that adheres to psychological time likes to proceed by
contrast. To these two principles which dominate the creative process
correspond the fundamental concepts of variety and unity.
All the arts have recourse to this principle. The methods of polychromatics and
monochromatics in the plastic arts correspond respectively to variety and unity.
For myself, I have always considered that in general it is more satisfactory to
proceed by similarity rather than by contrast. Music thus gains strength in the
measure that it does not succumb to the seductions of variety. What it loses in
questionable riches it gains in true solidity.
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Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into an

harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the
addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever

since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word dissonance has carried with it a
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certain odor of sinfulness.

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Modality, tonality, polarity are merely provisional means that are passing by,
and eventually will even pass away. What survives every change of system is
melody. The masters of the Middle Ages and of the Renaissance were no less
concerned over melody than were Bach and Mozart. But my musical
topography does not reserve a place for melody alone. It reserves for melody
the same position that devolved upon it under the modal and diatonic systems.
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If it is easy to define melody, it is much less easy to distinguish the

characteristics that make a melody beautiful. The appraisal of a value is itself
subject to appraisal. The only standard we possess in these matters depends on
a fineness of culture that presupposes the perfection of taste. Nothing here is
absolute except the relative.
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Most music-lovers believe that what sets the composer's creative imagination in
motion is a certain emotive disturbance generally designated by the name of
inspiration.
I have no thought of denying to inspiration the outstanding role that has
devolved upon it in the generative process we are studying; I simply maintain
that inspiration is in no way a prescribed condition of the creative act, but
rather a manifestation that is chronologically secondary.
Inspiration, art, artist so many words, hazy at least, that keep us from seeing

clearly in a field where everything is balance and calculation through which the
breath of the speculative spirit blows. It is afterwards, and only afterwards, that
the emotive disturbance which is at the root of inspiration may arise - an
emotive disturbance about which people talk so indelicately by conferring upon

it a meaning that is shocking to us and that compromises the term itself. Is it

not clear that this emotion is merely a reaction on the part of the creator
grappling with that unknown entity which is still only the object of his creating
and which is to become a work of art? Step by step, link by link, it will be
granted him to discover the work. It is this chain of discoveries, as well as each
individual discovery, that give rise to the emotion an almost physiological
reflex, like that of the appetite causing a flow of saliva - this emotion which
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 invariably follows closely the phases of the creative process.
All creation presupposes at its origin a sort of appetite that is brought on by the
foretaste of discovery. This foretaste of the creative act accompanies the
intuitive grasp of an unknown entity already possessed but not yet intelligible,
an entity that will not take definite shape except by the action of a constantly
vigilant technique.
This appetite that is aroused in me at the mere thought of putting in order
musical elements that have attracted my attention is not at all a fortuitous thing
like inspiration, but as habitual and periodic, if not as constant, as a natural
need.
This premonition of an obligation, this foretaste of a pleasure, this conditioned
reflex, as a modern physiologist would say, shows clearly that it is the idea of
discovery and hard work that attracts me.
The very act of putting my work on paper, of, as we say, kneading the dough, is
for me inseparable from the pleasure of creation. So far as I am concerned, I
cannot separate the spiritual effort from the psychological and physical effort;
they confront me on the same level and do not present a hierarchy.
The word artist which, as it is most generally understood today, bestows on its
bearer the highest intellectual prestige, the privilege of being accepted as a pure
mind this pretentious term is in my view entirely incompatible with the role of
the homo faber.
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We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.

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Thus, what concerns us here is not imagination in itself, but rather creative
imagination: the faculty that helps us to pass from the level of conception to the

level of realization.
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One does not contrive an accident: one observes it to draw inspiration

therefrom. An accident is perhaps the only thing that really inspires us. A
composer improvises aimlessly the way an animal grubs about. Both of them go

grubbing about because they yield to a compulsion to seek things out. What
urge of the composer is satisfied by this investigation? The rules with which,
like a penitent, he is burdened? No: he is in quest of his pleasure. He seeks a
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 satisfaction that he fully knows he will not find without first striving for it. One
cannot force one's self to love; but love presupposes understanding, and in
order to understand, one must exert one's self.
It is the same problem that was posed in the Middle Ages by the theologians of
pure love. To understand in order to love; to love in order to understand: we
are here not going around in a vicious circle; we are rising spirally, providing
we have made an initial effort, have even just gone through a routine exercise.
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A real tradition is not the relic of a past that is irretrievably gone; it is a living
force that animates and informs the present. In this sense the paradox which
banteringly maintains that everything which is not tradition is plagiarism, is
true ..
Far from implying the repetition of what has been, tradition presupposes the
reality of what endures. It appears as an heirloom, a heritage that one receives
on condition of making it bear fruit before passing it on to one's descendants.
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I shall go even further: my freedom will be so much the greater and more
meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I
surround myself self with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint,
diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees
one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.
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Style is the particular way a composer organizes his conceptions and speaks the
language of his craft. This musical language is the element common to the
composers of a particular school or epoch. Certainly the musical physiognomies
of Mozart and Haydn are well known to you, and certainly you have not failed
to notice that these composers are obviously related to each other, although it is
easy for those who are familiar with the language of the period to distinguish
them.
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It follows that academicism considered as a scholastic exercise based on

imitation is in itself something very useful and even indispensable to beginners
who train themselves by studying models. It likewise follows that academicism
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should find no place outside of the conservatory and that those who make an
ideal of academicism when they have already completed their studies produce
stiffly correct works that are bloodless and dry.
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Bad interpreters should not make us forget the good ones. I agree -noting,
however, that the bad ones are in the majority and that the virtuosos who serve
music faithfully and loyally are much rarer than those who, in order to get
settled in the comfortable berth of a career, make music serve the them.
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To speak of an interpreter means to speak of a translator. And it is not without

reason that a well-known Italian proverb, which takes the form of a play on
words, equates translation with betrayal. Conductors, singers, pianists, all
virtuosos should know or recall that the first condition that must be fulfled by
anyone who aspires to the imposing title of interpreter, is that he be first of all a
flawless executant. The secret of perfection lies above all in his consciousness of
the law imposed upon him by the work he is performing, And here we are back
at the great principle of submission that we have so often invoked in the course
of our lessons. This submission demands a flexibility that itself requires, along
with technical mastery, a sense of tradition and, commanding the whole, an
aristocratic culture that is not merely a question of acquired learning. This
submissiveness and culture that we require of the creator, we should quite
justly and naturally require of the interpreter as well. Both will find therein
freedom in extreme rigor and, in the final analysis, if true success, the not in the
first instance, success - true success, the legitimate reward of the interpreters
who in the expression of their most brilliant virtuosity preserve that modesty of
movement and that sobriety of expression that is the mark of thoroughbred
artists.
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I said somewhere that it was not enough to hear music, but that it must also be
seen. What shall we say of the ill-breeding of those grimacers who too often
take it upon themselves to deliver the "inner meaning" of music by disfiguring
it with their affected airs? For, I repeat, one sees music. An experienced eye
follows and judges, sometimes unconsciously, the performer's least gesture.
From this point of view one might conceive the process of performance as the
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creation of new values that call for the solution of problems similar to those
which arise in the realm of choreography. In both cases we give special
attention to the control of gestures. The dancer is an orator who speaks a mute
language. The instrumentalist is an orator who speaks an unarticulated
language. Upon one, just as upon the other, music imposes a strict bearing. For
music does not move in the abstract. Its translation into plastic terms requires
exactitude and beauty: the exhibitionists know this only too well. The beautiful
presentation that makes the harmony of what is seen correspond to the play of
sounds demands not only good musical instruction on the part of the
performer, but also requires a complete familiarity on his part, whethersinger,
instrumentalist, or conductor, with the style of the works that are entrusted to
him; a very sure taste for expressive values and for their limitations, a secure
sense for that which may be taken for granted -in a word, an education not only
of the ear, but of the mind.
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How are we to keep from succumbing to the irresistible need of sharing with
our fellow men this joy that we feel when we see come to light something that
has taken form through our own action? For the unity of the work has a
resonance all its own. Its echo, caught by our soul, sounds nearer and nearer.
Thus the consummated work spreads abroad to be communicated and finally
fows back towards its source. The cycle, then, is closed. And that is how music
comes to reveal itself as a form of communion with our fellow man and with the
Supreme Being.
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