Chapter 4 – The Lost Ballet
Gwen looked at her husband, silently asking him if the score was genuine. His Divvy Sense was bonging ever so sweetly and profoundly, so he answered her silently, yes. Gwen said, “It’s real. It’s Stravinsky.”
Selgey said, “I know something about music. If Pater can read the Russian notes, I can try to understand the score.” Roger picked up the document and took it to the dining room table, where Selgey and Pater sat down together and began to turn pages. The others went into the kitchen, where Helstof made coffee. Everyone sensed they would be together for many hours.
Gwen said, “Let’s recap what we know. Stravinsky and Diaghilev did three ballets together in Paris, for the Ballets Russes, between 1910 and 1913: Firebird, Petrushka, and Rite of Spring. The Wikipedia articles don’t show any ballet works for either of them until Pulcinella in 1920, but they do say Stravinsky went from Switzerland to Saint Petersburg in mid-1914, where he researched another piece, Les Noces, which was produced in 1923. What we know from the letter we have, that no one else has seen, is that for the previous six months in 1914, he worked on a ballet based on some French paintings he had seen in Lausanne, Switzerland. He wasn’t sure he liked the music, but he had the score with him, because he would look at it when he was bored with the research.” Gwen looked around at the others for confirmation. She said, “What else? What else do we know about Stravinsky from that time period?”
Bart got up and went back into the living room, where he got the Wikipedia articles from the table. He read the following. “While the Stravinskys lived in Switzerland, their second son, Soulima, was born in 1910, and their second daughter, Maria Milena, was born in 1913. During this last pregnancy, Katerina was found to have tuberculosis, and was placed in a Swiss sanatorium for her confinement.”
Gwen said, “So Katerina is his wife, right?”
Bart nodded and went on reading. “After a return to Russia in 1914 to collect research materials for Les Noces, Stravinsky left his homeland and returned to Switzerland, just before the outbreak of World War I brought about the closure of the borders. He was not to return to Russia for nearly fifty years.” He looked around the kitchen table at the faces of his friends. Gwen closed her eyes and parsed the data. In ten seconds she made the connections. She said, “So he’s in Saint Petersburg in mid-1914, with a score he wasn’t sure he liked. At home in Switzerland he had a wife, a four-year old, and a new baby. And the wife was sick with tuberculosis. Europe was tense, and a world war was about to break out. What if,” and she paused, “what if he found out something about his wife’s health, which made him go back to Lausanne unexpectedly. But he thought he would be going back to Saint Petersburg right away. So he hides his letters in the desk he was using, and hides the score there too, that he’s not sure he likes. He thinks he’ll be back for them. But the war breaks out, and the borders are closed. He can’t go back to Russia, and doesn’t go back for fifty years. And he forgets about the score, or doesn’t care. And it sits in the desk. Until today.”
Roger said, “It’s possible. It could have happened that way.” The others thought about the information they had, and no one could offer an objection to Gwen’s analysis. It appeared they had an original ballet score by Stravinsky, sitting on the table in front of them.
Selgey and Pater came into the kitchen. She said, “It’s a complete score, in four acts. He called them dances. I don’t know enough to tell you what style it is, but I can tell you it’s not like Rite of Spring, which was written for a very large orchestra. This score is for a small orchestra, and it’s unbelievable. Every page is full of scribbles and notes about the story. The music and the story correlate perfectly through the entire score. Tell them,” looking at Pater.
He said, “Each act, each dance, is based on a different painting. He didn’t write down the titles of the paintings, but he did note the painters. Guess who?” The others waited. “Van Gogh, Cezanne, Matisse, and Picasso. He saw all the paintings in 1913 at a show in Switzerland, and they had a major impact on him. He began to write the music immediately. The story of each act is different, but the music is in the same style throughout the entire score, and his notes say the dancers and the dancing should be the same throughout the piece. So there’s a difference in content between the acts, but the music and dance tie them together.”
Henric got up and went into the dining room, where he spent a half hour paging through the score. He’d never seen anything like it before. The world of art was new to him and it rang a bell. Over the last year, since buying a house in Charleston where he and Helstof now lived part time, retired, he had found a new love. Sailing. They owned a very nice boat, and had made a trip in it over to St. Barths. It was a great time, and unlike anything he ever had done before. It had expanded his horizons, far out into the ocean. Now he was looking at a book, filled with unknown symbols. He felt himself wondering about music and dance. Was this another new challenge for him?
The Lost Ballet Page 4