Stravinsky and his Harmony
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- Опубліковано 3 чер 2024
- In this video I look at the harmony of Stravinsky's Ebony Concerto. It's a short piece and written in unusual circumstances for a jazz ensemble, but it still shows off many of the main harmonic techniques Stravinsky used throughout his career, so i thought it offered a nice chance to give an overview of those techniques.
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I like this format! Little analyses of single pieces with connections to bigger ideas/composer style!
Amazing!
Yes! More of this!
what is his style of music?
My only problem with this video is that it wasn't long enough. I need at least a one hour video discussing this 9 minute piece.
Zachary Gagnon Exactly! We need to hear those chords you’re talking about until they sink in.
My favorite composer. To me that man came from another planet in order to show us what music can be.
Got to enjoy the Firebird driving home tonight on the radio a nice surprise , its my fav piece of music right after Petrushka and the Rite! Great analysis thx!! I like the video clip of him saying"for me it's the rhythm and the intervals" simplifying his approach, you demonstrated this concept right here for sure!
I think it is one of the most beautiful attributes of Stravinsky's music, the switching between the diatonic scales and chords to more chromatic, octatonic structures. One of my favourite music moments is the finale of the Firebird with the extended diatonic harmony and horn melody. A moment made all the more beautiful by the interchanges of the harmony, in the ballet, before it.
I never thought of this; you are completely correct.
I am a massive fan of Stravinsky for this exact reason. He had an amazing sense of aesthetic balance. We often define dissonance by how far it strays from consonance and vise versa. In a piece that is all consonance and no dissonance it is dull and lacking in tension and drive. A piece that is all dissonance is ugly, chaotic, and disordered. Bring them both together, and play off consonance from dissonance, and dissonance from consonance, and you can create truly magical, impactful, and symbiotic musical moments. I think Stravinsky understood this thoroughly and it is why he had so many memorable musical moments, due to the way he handled this playing of off of dissonance from consonance.
The Firebird is a good example, but so is Rite of Spring. There is a moment in the Rite of Spring during the Augur dance where the chaos and turmoil of the jarring dissonance and orchestra falls away and it breaks out into a sort of, slow funeral march in the strings. It is wonderfully beautiful, full of longing, nostalgia, pathos, and the beauty of nature. It strikes me right to the heart every time, it is almost pure bliss. Of course, this is Stravinsky, so the moment doesn't last and is brought to an abrupt end by the return of the jarring and terrifying dissonance and discombobulation of the orchestra. But it is moments like that grand and sorrowful march that reel you into to Stravinsky's music, they make sticking with the more dissonant and crushing sections of his music worth it. Not only that, but the beautiful near diatonic sections of the music give utility and purpose to the more dissonant and unsettling sections of his music. You can't have respite without something to gain respite from.
Ooh the beard is growing....
I like how Stravinsky sits right at the edge of the harmonic and melodic tradition. He’s like the impressionists who were trained in more traditional art techniques but chose to break the mold. I feel like a lot of the composers and painters in the early 20th century brought this trend a little too far. I think the really great art works that continue to appeal to people throughout time are those that can appeal to a general audience while maintaining artistic integrity and complexity. But then again Stravinsky was seen as a barbarian in his day, so maybe I’m just a grumpy old traditionalist!
Bill Herreid I think the same is true of shoenberg in that they were both trained in a very conventional way. Shoenberg probably was more conservative then Stravinsky in his views on music (even though his music is often thought to be more radical). I think many 20th century composers had a more traditional background because that was the only kind of background you could have at that time. It's not like Stravinsky could have studied jazz or world music at the St. Petersburg conservatory.
Nicholas Mackelprang you’re right. Plus, I think Shoenberg was more systematic in his approach. But I have to say Sprechstimme gives me nightmares.
@@billherreid9661 I love the theatrical aspect of sprechstimme in perriot lunare and other second Viennese pieces. I think those composers use it in a way that blends a kinda of expressionist/affected kind of theater with music. I think it works really well. And the music that happens behind it is really strong too. shoenberg may be more systematic and his music more chromatic and dissonant but I really think its right at the center of the tradition of melody and harmony. I think his music is harmonic in the beethoven sense of the word. Thats the way he talked about it at least. I think you could even argue that everything expect the notes in shoenberg is really traditional. Especially in his later period when he was actually using classical forms. You could maybe argue the opposite of stravinsky in that his notes are more conventional but his forms are more new then shoenbergs. I bet theres a relationship between the way he uses rhythm and the way his forms work. But Idk.
Stravinsky was the first Primitivist, he coined the term. Primitivism is related to Impressionism, as both serve the senses and the ambience instead of the feelings as in romantism and expressionism.
Primitivism is also part of a general de-europezation of art and music, a search for exotic far away styles, cultures or even ancient civilizations, which started with Debussy, Ravel and Scriabin. Bartók is also such a composer, and it's easy to see the similarities between the use of Harmony in Stravinsky and Bartók. The extended harmony turning to polychords, mutable keys while a tonal or home chord is still. In rythm the clash between sincopations etc.
@Bill Herreid Wasn't Schoenberg self taught, unlike Stravinsky? I'd not sure I'd describe Schoenberg's early pre-serial atonal music as more organised than Stravinsky - Pierrot Lunaire etc - it's pretty wild. But personally I always preferred Stravinsky - easier to hear. I like Stravinsky's serial stuff though... Still sounds like him!
Excellent video.I keep returning to it,thank you,David.
Your point about the chromatic sax section at 2:20 is really fascinating. I love how the top voice (and to a lesser extent, the bottom voice) contains all the information necessary for your ear to latch on to the melody, and the rest of the harmony is almost just there as a textural component. It strikes a really amazing balance between dissonance and consonance without quite falling on one side of the fence or the other.
Excellent analysis and breakdown of the main compositional material. Thanks
I also love Stravinsky's Atonal Pieces. Unfortunately, not many people know that he was also a really good atonal composer and was someone who deeply appreciated the Second Viennese School.
postonal. He liked Schoenber after AS died, and thanks to his interest in Webern, through Craft. If you are talking about those short, odd pieces from early on? Or Agon, Requiem Canticles, etc?
Now I see the connection between Stravinsky and Louis Andriessen!
I loved this. It would be great if you could talk about Messiaen, of course, like a favor.
I was about to say that too! His harmony is so fascinating
Massiaen is, thankfully, a lot easier to understand. His music sounds otherworldly but yet distinct, bound to Messiaen's own very strict rules of harmony.
@@ze_rubenator Messiaen's voice in music is very distinctive and unmistakable.
Stravinsky's Mass for Chorus and Double-Wind Quintet is an absolute modern (still) masterpiece!
I love his music. It's homely and folksy, not too clean and polished. I could expect it in a village as I pass through.
Dallas Crane It always surprises me to find how difficult it is to achieve that authentic rawness when I try and write in this style. His asymmetries are just perfect, complete unpredictable but seeming perfect in retrospect.
I remember playing this piece in school, i was playing the piano. It was so much fun
I wanted to add that the Em7 over Bbm7 octotonic is a standard way of viewing chord scales as deriving from the whole tone scale into the three diminished 7ths and all the chords that come from those diminshed 7ths. The Bbm7 comes from the Db6 chord (inverted) with the Edim7 naturally creating the rest of the scale. So while it seems to be a Bbm7 over an Em7 it's actually just the Db6 scale as played with 8 notes, which was commonly used in classical music centuries prior. It's my belief that this is one of the reasons Billy Strayhorn grew up treasuring Stravinsky as his primary inspiration but also why the bebop movement mirrored so much of Stravinsky's work: because they fed off each other threw musical conversation between the figured heads (Hank Jones, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, etc.) who all were aiming to advance classical music from the early 1800s. Chopin for example would use the Em7 over Bbm7 all the time, while thinking of it as the Db6 scale. Barry Harris talks a lot about this in his videos.
Excellent ,great video.Thank you.
I love Stravinsky, he is my favorite composer, but the masterworks I love most are the one that came from the so called neoclassical period. Symphony in C, Apollo, Orpheus, Concerto in D, Concerto Dumbarton Oaks, and of course, his latest serial period. What is intersting is that, many harmonic (I prefeer call them "vertical alignaments" for Stravinsky's writting) habits or process are present in his very first works when he still was a Rimsky-Korsakav pupil, and they are still there in his latest serial pieces. After a long time of loving his music, I have the perception that people who heard eventualy his work may think that he was always changing, and for me his genius was always be him with different clothes.
Great video, thanks for making these
Thanks, David. I LOVE videos like this. I love Stravinsky and have since I was a wee lad, and it's wonderful to see (hear?) some of his techniques deconstructed. I think Stravinsky can be added to the list of composers who would be excited by all the tools and techniques we have now.
As an aside, I have a CD of him conducting the CBS orchestra in "The Rite of Spring" and "Petrushka". Much has been made of his deficiencies as a conductor (I cannot judge), but it's wonderful to hear how he, himself, approached his music. The point is that his jazz influence is clearly evident in his own readings - at least the later ones from the 60's.
Thanks!
Another fantastic video!
Can you talk about Prokofiev music next?
Really this this kind of video btw!
Another great video!
This was such a great video! Got to watch it again to take it all in
Very insightful and compact as well, thank you
This video is pure gold, thanks
great video, do more of these please!
Fantastic video as usual. Deserves so many more views!
Fantastic analysis. Thank you 🙏🏼
Very good, David! Thanks
In-depth and helpful, thank you so much!
Great analysis! Thanks for this amazing Video ☺
Thanks for posting this well put together episode on Stravinsky. One of the highlights was unrelated however. It was the close up and lean into the camera towards the end that had greatest impact. Thank you.
I really enjoyed this. Thank you!
Excellent analysis! Thank you so much for your penetrating approach to this especially challenging topic.
Thank you - very well explained.
very interesting, thank you for the upload.
Nice one, thank you!
Most heartfelt thanks Mr. Bruce! This is literally the best video I've seen this year. It was a Godsend for I have only recently entered the wonderful world of Stravinsky. What I needed was a video that explained in a relatively simple manner the secrets of modern harmony. The ones before were too technical and geared to professionals. This was right up my alley. You accomplished this with such simplicity, thourougbness and clarity that I am as excited as well as pleaseed. I look forward to similar videos and thank you again. Mr. Bruce, this Bud's for you!
Nice! Thanks again for sharing very intersting aspects of music.
Incredible detailed analyses. These kinds of info kind of go into my listening understanding so much better than vague describtions
This is excellent, thanks
Awesome video as always, with bonus scruff!
These comments are all very enlightening. Excellent presentation by Mr Bruce, as usual.
Muito bom ! Parabéns 🎶🌍🎸
I'm so glad you finally posted this! YES!
meth is so evil
Really great beatiful good job
The Petrushka chord (if we're referring to the one at the end) is actually a C Major chord against an Eb Minor chord in 2nd Inversion. In terms of key centers, they are a tritone apart, but they are different in pitch by seconds (both major and minor)
Great insight into sometimes murky theoretical waters! Thanks!
Please, make MORE and longer, more detailed videos about Stravinky!
Wonderful work this. Interestingly many of the examples you show seem to have roots in Symphonies of Wind Instruments and there are many moments when the sounds are quite reminiscent of SofWI.
great video , major 3 and minor same time , excelent exemple , thanks
played "the rakes progress" from stravinsky last semester in music college. it was particularly fascinating how tonal everything was until the story demanded some harshness in harmony as well.. and oh boi it was harsh indeed! Love your video and your work!
I definitely hear that Eb F A chord as Eb Lydian.... Man, I'm such a jazzer. Awesome vid BTW, waiting for something like this for a long time....
whoop thanks for another solid video babe x
Fantastic! I like the way how you explain harmony and how it relates to other pieces of the composer.
Always thought your compositions had a "Je ne sais quois?" of Stravinsky chamber music.
Most of all his "Septet" and your "Steam Punk".
Coincidentally, this video came at the right time for me. I'm gonna give a lecture to composition students next friday about Narrative in Primitivism. This includes The Rite, although focousing on "Sensemayá" by Silvestre Revueltas, which was inspired by Stravinsky, obviously.
I get the harmony references now: moveable agains unmoveable elements.
Great video, love the harmonic analysis :)
as well as the dip into rhythmic analysis!
couldn't resists a touch of rhythmic analysis! Many thanks!
@@DBruce I love it -- I think it's one of the most under-analyzed topics at least in western music theory.
Thank you! This is one piece by Stravinsky I've neglected. Great orchestration. Igor was so funky. Cooler and hipper than pretty much anyone.
Thanks for the post about Stravinsky. The explanation of the dissonance chords use reminded me of the composer Carl Davis probably not a great comparison to anyone else but only to me as I am a music amateur. Thanks again.
Thank you!
The adagio that begins the 2nd half of the Rite of Spring. As polytonal as it is it's presented like some other worldly choral and I've never quite heard anything like it.
Always interesting..
super explanations!
6:03 is really cool, reminds me Gil Evan's stuff on Sketches of Spain, maybe Stravinsky was an influence. I'm always interested about these things that can be done in the higher register, I find interesting how clusters of notes can sound pleasant on a higher register, and not on the low. I saw that Ravel's Bolero thing with piccollo on the other video you did, I am still trying to understand, but it is indeed really cool.
Also, an instrument that I find really cool and that uses clusters of high notes is the japanese shō (笙)
Brilliant analysis, David. I appreciate having things pointed out without awkwardly forcing the piece into a music theory coffin.
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STRAVINSKY 🤘🤘🤘
I like how you can talk about Stravinsky without having the need to talk about The Rite of Spring. Don't get me wrong: I love myself a good listening of the Rite of Spring, but Stravinsky has done much more than that. Something by him that I find really interesting is "The Flood." It's about the first book of the bible, Genesis, and it leads up the the flood part.
Thank you for clarifying the mystifying!
Great video! Would love to see more of these on other paramount works of the 20th cent.
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STRAVINSKY 🤘🤘🤘
Never heard someone describe a dominant 7th resolving to the tonic as cliched before... but thanks for yet another excellent video!
I suppose when you are talking about music such as this many of the "rules" of harmonic progression are simply cliches that should be challenged!
@@kapitankapital6580 I was sceptical about the point you were making but the exclamation mark convinced me.
A dominant 7th resolving is the biggest cliché in music theory, how is this the first time you've heard of this?
@@diegeigergarnele7975 I'm not sure it's really fair to apply the term "cliché" to music considering a lot of what makes music sound "good" is recognising learned patterns.
@@diegeigergarnele7975 That's like saying the leading note rising to the tonic is a cliche, or that a falling 7th is a cliche, or that a melodic minor scale is a cliche. These are just elements of the language of tonality. You wouldn't listen to the end of the first movement of Beethoven's 5th symphony and say all those perfect cadences are cliched. It's just an unusual thing to say, in my opinion.
Gold
David, could you do an analisys of Ravel's String Quartet in F major? Man, I just love the sounds, the colour, everything, but I would love to understand a little more of the piece over and harmonic point of view, just like you did in this vid. Thank you for being who you are!
I think a strategy he often used was to dirt tonal harmonies with notes from the octatonic mode you can find them. It’s pretty basic but still a starting point to start understanding his strategies…
Hi! Love your videos. I was wondering if you could make a video about the Carl Orff piece Carmina Burana. I am highly intrigued by the piece and i cant find any good videos about it on the internet. Keep up the good work!
If you had a course or book on harmony, I'd love to buy it! You are a great teacher
Much of the melody and chord structures in the first movement were used 3 years earlier earlier in "Dance Concertants". Second movement goes back even further, to Le Sacre
Great content! I am so excited to watch! Thanks a lot! Greetings from Turkey!
I would absolutely love to hear more harmonic overviews of well-known composers. Debussy perhaps?
MY NEW FAVOURITE VIDEO OF YOURS ABOUT MY FAVOURITE COMPOSER- THANK YOU!!
and your favorite band is mahavishnu orchestra. correct?
Mine is, but only tge Billy Cobham and also the Narada Michael Waldon itinerations. However, I never latched on to any of McLaughlin's fiddle players.
That movement of one voice while others stay the same is used by Rimsky Korsakov in Scheherezade
Just found your channel yesterday, David... Love these videos. Do you have any or plan to make any on Sibelius? I really like Op 5, impromptu V
Thx
< So enlighting ! Thank You ¡ :-)
Love it. I see a bhayan on the shelf behind. Do you play tabla?!
I would love to watch an analysis of Messiaen's relationship with jazz harmony: you can perceive it even if Messiaen never wanted to be seen as a Jazz composer. I do not know any bibliography on this topic.
Nice aproach! At 7:45 wouldn't the chord be a Dsus13?
Stravinsky: *does something chaotic*
Musicians: "let's spend the rest of all time figuring this out"
Thanks from Buenos Aires, David!
the score at 2:07 reminds me of: "salt peanuts" by Dizzy Gillespie
I really enjoy watching you videos. Thank you for giving us these. It seems that the use of classical tonal terminology is really inadequate to describe Stravinsky’s use of chords. He seems to edge towards Modalogy ( his extensive use of folkloric melody) rather than classical harmony. Rather than polychords an “augmented fourth” apart it might be better to think “a tritone apart” which is in keeping with Jazz altered harmony, which would make a lot more sense. Use of modal sounds, proto-alt dominant harmony. He might of been thinking this earlier than later Jazz masters. He uses many situations which could be more aptly described as alt dominant passages. This would make a lot more sense than trying to spell them as a quirky tonal curiosity. In a complete sense he was a Fusion composer bringing his knowledge of western art music to compose music highly influenced by his folklore. I hope Im making sense :-)
Hi David, just watched your Vid on The Rite, where can I get the 4 stave score that i saw in your video? Thx. PS: Enjoy your presentation.
When Mr. Bruce says that there is no one 'theory' that explains or defines Stravinsky, it is because, I think, as much as the composer knew his theory, that he essentially trusted his intuition vs. a theoretical 'set of rules. By Contrast to that, we have Hindemith, lol.
id love if you analyze soctt joplins rag opera treemonisha!
Would be great if you did an analysis of some Moondog, maybe something from his 1969 self titled LP or his later German period stuff.
harmony
Only vaguely related, but I was surprised to find an octatonic scale explicitly in Chopins 1st Ballade
Thank you, interesting content, as always))
Really liked your "petrushka", must say you did pretty good))
I'm from Ukraїne and Ukrainian has this word in commom with Russian. (Means parsley, which I think you know, but just in case someone is curious)
How do the saxophones' chromatic clusters establish A major?
I've heard about something called bi-quintal harmony in the opening to most of Stravinsky's works from Petrushka onwards.The interpretation is that he takes a fifth(like D-A) and its inversion(A-D).Then,he displaces the inversion(B-E),causing it to clash against the fifth.
To be honest, this sounds like Stravinsky using jazz harmonic ideas, such as Bebop ideas of Charlie Parker, which were heavily influenced by... Stravinsky. By 1945 Bebop was fully developed, with a harmonic theory based on chord extensions and octatonic scales. It may also be a case of the Leibniz/Newton thing with calculus where the same ideas cropped up in different people at roughly similar times.
Systematic use of the octatonic scale dates back to before the turn of the 20th century. Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky were using it before Stravinsky.
+adamatari As mentioned in the video,Stravinsky had been using the octatonic scale from the beginning.
It represented the mythical creature ''Firebird'' in his 1910 ballet.
Checkout Igor's Asymmetry Racket parts 1&2 on my channel for some of Bernstein's observations on this subject. These are excerpts from lecture 6 of the Unanswered Question.