The parsing of Example 1a demonstrates how the chorus expresses a consistent message in a series of varied entreaties, insisting that Oedipus respond. Notice that the portions of the chorus’s melody on staves 2, 3, and 4 are noticeably shorter, and that as the chorus continues, its requests become more specific: in lines six and seven of Cocteau’s libretto the chorus asks Oedipus to free the Thebans from the plague and to save their dying city. As the chorus reaches its final line of text—“Urbem serva morientem” (Preserve our dying city)—it finally breaks the circular repetitions of BH, C, and DH in eighths, instead repeating those pitches in a descending cadential gesture from DH to the closing BH (see the end of system V). Although the chorus breaks off from the fundamental motive, moving instead to other twisted, chromatic melodies, it continues to repeat essentially the same text.
The chorus continues its demands for several more minutes until Oedipus finally sings his four words at rehearsal number 16, given in the same kind of format in Example 1b. Contrasting highly with the compact and countable music of the chorus, the essential shape of Oedipus’s repeated melody is an uneven descending line, passing chromatically downward through unpredictable durations. Each of these descents appears in its own system in Example 1b for comparison with one another.
Although we know from the opening narration that Oedipus’s responses will be in vain, we may still have enough faith to wonder if his first valiant attempt to assure his citizens will succeed. The elongation of the gesture at system III, beginning with introductory music at the left margin and extending beyond the lengths of the previous two gestures on the right, certainly suggests that he is willing to help the Thebans. These melodies have an operatic quality to them, reminding us that at this point in his compositional career (the so-called neoclassical period, extending from about 1920 through the mid-1950s) Stravinsky often borrowed gestures associated with tonal music (a point made even clearer in the discussion of Orpheus below).7 Oedipus’s first two recitative-like melodies begin with what appears to be a virtuosic display of courage, beginning on the dominant-functioning F above the tenors’ earlier melody, exceeding their registral reach. But from F he can only descend in a metrically ambiguous and indirect path toward BH. In his third attempt, given in system III, he reaches higher, beginning a step upward on G, and moving down once more through a minor scale (here based on C). Although Oedipus tries to replace the minor mediant EH with a Picardy-like EJ, that melodic extension (in the last two measures of system III) extends up a tritone to FG, as if he is not in control of his choice of scales. In one last try, shown as a revised repetition of system III on system IV, he descends in failure back down to B. These operatic bursts centered on the “wrong” tonics ironically set the text “Ego clarissimus Oedipus” (I, illustrious—or famous—Oedipus), a text that both the chorus and Oedipus repeat again in the opera, suggesting a grave mismatch between the reality of the situation and Oedipus’s own assessment of his powers. Stravinsky’s setting of his text reveals a hubris that must be addressed by fate.
Example 1a. Oedipus Rex, ordered succession for the first chorus from rehearsal number 2 through rehearsal number 4.
Example 1b. Oedipus Rex, ordered succession of Oedipus’s first response from rehearsal number 16 to seven measures after rehearsal number 18.
That Oedipus’s response has not been satisfactory is indicated by the return of the chorus’s music at rehearsal number 19 (Example 2a). Recapitulating the original DH–C–BH turning figure, the chorus continues to implore him for aid. A comparison with the earlier chorus music (see Example 1a) shows how the singing has become more desperate. In place of the three lines in Example 1a, the chorus nearly constantly reiterates the verb serva (preserve us); in place of the five subsections guiding the format of Example 1a we find an extended intonation on DH in system I, a contrasting, short petition in system II, and in the third a breathtaking breaking of the DH boundary. Even as the chorus sings “Serva nos, clarissime Oedipus” (Preserve us, illustrious Oedipus), reminding Oedipus of his own proud self-characterization, it begins to rise up via EJ (not the EH of a B-flat-minor scale) to reach his own earlier F. The substitution of E for EH suggests that the chorus is not satisfied he has heard them, or that he can save the Thebans.
Into this scene enters Creon, the brother of Oedipus’s mother and wife. As the bearer of truth, and thus the character who will eventually relieve Thebes of the plague, Creon’s initial music consists neither of the painful repetitions of the chorus nor the ambiguous chromaticism of Oedipus, both of which invoke the minor mode. Example 2b shows both the chorus music welcoming him and, after the narrator tells the audience that Creon brings the truth from an oracle, Creon’s initial response. Despite the narrator’s interjection, the harmonic connection between the chorus and Creon—a dominant resolving into a straightforward descent through a C-major triad—contrasts highly with the interactions the chorus has had with Oedipus. Even at this point of the story, Stravinsky makes it clear that Oedipus’s preceding song has not been sufficient, and that despite their best efforts, the Thebans’ exhortations to Oedipus will not work. Creon’s very first words “Respondit Deus” (God will respond) reveal that fate is in control, not Oedipus the King.
Example 2a. Oedipus Rex, ordered succession for second chorus from rehearsal number 19 through rehearsal number 20.
Example 2b. Oedipus Rex, Creon’s first response, two measures before to two measures after rehearsal number 27.
Oedipus eventually adopts Creon’s triadic singing, but not until it is too late. The final two examples for this opera describe Oedipus’s “moment of truth,” the point at which he finally puts together clues about his past and realizes what he has done. Example 3, an ordered succession for two measures before rehearsal number 167 to 170, shows music derived both from Creon’s C-major arpeggiations and the DH–C–BH core motive with which the chorus began (for reasons of space, systems IV and V are shown on the second page, and V has been shown over two systems). The passage begins with an uneasy alternation of D-minor chords (in the strings) and B-minor chords (in the winds), whose clash of F and FG prefigures Oedipus’s awful realization of his true identity. Choosing the winds’ key area to launch his melody in system III (rehearsal number 168), Oedipus repeats almost exactly three statements of a melody combining the limited melody of the opening chorus (here up a half step in the form of B, CG, and D) and the descending arpeggio of Creon (here as a B-minor triad). Drawing together the chorus’s appeals for help with the truthful music of Creon, Oedipus puts together the last pieces of the puzzle about his true origins. The lack of variation in the three statements, shown in systems III, IV, and V, suggests that Oedipus finally realizes his fate, and that there is no escape available. Even in his final, climactic melodic melody (at the end of system V) Oedipus cannot descend confidently from chordal root to root (from B to B), but from fifth to fifth, and not through a major triad but a minor one (FG–D–B–FG). As a replacement for his earlier chromatic descents, where Oedipus presents himself as the illustrious king, this descending minor triad on the text “Lux facta est” (All now is made clear) focuses not on him, but on the truth that we have known but that he never knew until this moment.
Although this moment is a denouement for Oedipus, it is hardly one for the audience, which has been told that from the start Oedipus’s fate will not be to save Thebes, but to bring dishonor and death upon himself and his family. The narrator has informed us in the preceding scene about what is about to transpire: “O, this lofty all-discerning Oedipus: he is in the snare. He alone does not know it. And then the truth strikes him.” Oedipus’s use of B minor—sitting unhappily at a half step between the B-flat-minor entreaties of the chorus and the C-major truth-seeking of Creon—draw us in not because we are surprised at the truth itself, but rather because we watch him accept the inevitable, and hear the terrible consequences of fate. In the opening chorus (rehearsal numbers 2–4 in Example 1a) minor variations to limited melodies take us thr
ough the chorus’s time of pleading; the lack of variation in Oedipus’s three repetitions (systems III, IV, and V in Example 3) indicate the end of his striving and the beginning of his resignation. This is the time of no change, of acceptance of the truth of the gods.
Example 3. Oedipus Rex, ordered succession for Oedipus’s realization, rehearsal nos. 167–69.
Example 4. Oedipus Rex, ordered succession for the chorus’s farewell to Oedipus, from 6 measures after rehearsal number 202 to the end of the piece.
All that is left is for the chorus also to accept Oedipus’s fate, and to bid him farewell. Example 4 shows its final speech to him—“Vale, vale Oedipus, miser Oedipus noster, te amabam, Oedipus. Tibi valedico, Oedipus, tibi valedico” (Farewell Oedipus, our poor Oedipus, I loved you Oedipus. I bid you farewell Oedipus)—as he begins his self-imposed, blind exile. Returning to its original exhortational music, the chorus no longer implores Oedipus for help, nor even invites him to remain in Thebes, but instead mourns its own powerlessness to change Oedipus’s fate. Even though the chorus loved him and pities him, it now knows its cries for help were in vain and that it too must accept the decisions of the gods and send him away. Example 4 once again aligns the original choral motive for comparison with its surrounding music; here it appears in a truncated version, transposed down to the pitches of BH, A, and G. Notice that immediately after the original motive returns, another one immediately follows. Gone are the longer, varied responses of the original chorus. After a single BH in system III, a single heart-wrenching new melody, where the chorus sings a rising G-minor scale, culminates not as expected but on the dissonantly chromatic DH, and stops on the open C, an unresolved scale-degree 4 in this G-minor context.
As shown in system V, the chorus fails to reach a cadence (as it did at the end of Example 1a), and simply dies away on the open BH. Certainly this recapitulation of the original choral motive clarifies its failure: it no longer reveres Oedipus as its powerful king. After the chorus’s final outburst in system III, it simply runs out of steam; its final repetitions in systems IV and V omit the characteristic first BH of the motive, and thus the last two statements (on A–G–A–BH) are incomplete. No longer is the chorus pleading to Oedipus; rather, it sings the sounds of resignation, of an acceptance of the futility of its original cries. As the chorus dismisses its blind hero from Thebes, the ostinato itself also ceases, and its final two lower Gs merely decelerate to an ensuing silence.
Orpheus
Written as a companion piece to the 1928 ballet Apollo (in collaboration with choreographer George Balanchine), the ballet Orpheus again shows Stravinsky’s fascination with casting central characters from Greek tragedy as victims of destiny. The composer commented later in life that he and Balanchine chose its series of dances “with Ovid and a classical dictionary in hand.”8 Although various versions of the story differ in some details, its essential elements are fairly consistent. Orpheus, having one human parent and one supernatural one (in the Stravinsky/Balanchine collaboration, the god Apollo is Orpheus’s father), has been endowed with an extraordinary gift of music, especially in his playing of the lyre. When Eurydice, his young bride, dies, Orpheus plays to the community of the Underworld so beautifully that he is allowed to travel there to retrieve her. Like Lot in Genesis, however, he must not look back at his beloved while he leads her back to Earth. But in his anxiety to see her again he does turn back, and all is lost: Eurydice returns permanently to Hades. Like Oedipus, Orpheus is punished for his actions, in this case by the Bacchantes, who dismember him.
This myth is not only about human weakness and the loss of love: like Oedipus Rex, Orpheus at a very fundamental level underscores the non-negotiable difference between finite human existence and the infinitely powerful world of the gods. Stravinsky’s characterization of Orpheus contrasts two irreconcilable conceptions about time: Orpheus is faced with an eternal separation from Eurydice, but through the use of music, which takes place through time, he wishes to restore her to his own time world, the world of time’s passage. Given the remarkable gift of music, the ultimate temporal art, he seems invincible, and yet being human, the power of his music cannot exceed that of the gods.
In the setting worked out between Stravinsky and Balanchine (published in 1947, near the end of Stravinsky’s deep engagement with Baroque and classical music genres) the story’s identity as a tragedy is made immediately apparent. We find Orpheus not in the nuptial bliss of marrying Eurydice, the way that Monteverdi begins his seminal version of the story in his opera L’Orfeo. Rather, Eurydice is already dead at the beginning, and in his first appearance Orpheus is already grieving her death. As we watch only his back, Orpheus plays on his lyre a grief-stricken stepwise descent from E (scale-degree 1) to B (scale-degree 5), recalling the well-known lament figure of Baroque music. In fact, in her valuable study of Stravinsky’s treatment of Greek subjects, Maureen Carr has discovered that an original scenario by Stravinsky and Balanchine describes the opening music as a “requiem for Eurydice.”9
However, as it continues, Stravinsky treats the lament figure uniquely, characterizing Orpheus not only as an exceptional musician, but also foreshadowing his downfall. After its initial descent to B, the melody first returns to E, as if it were to follow the Baroque practice of repeating this “stock” gesture. However, after that fifth pitch, Orpheus interrupts a supposed repetition of the lament, instead leaping down to A, and continuing through a second stepwise tetrachord down to the lower E; the two joined tetrachords create a Phrygian scale, also an emblem of sorrow (see Example 5). Taken together, their completion of the doleful scale signals an ominous continuation, foreshadowing both Orpheus’s trip to the Underworld and his ultimate failure; playing this music before he begins his journey frames the temperament of the entire ballet. As the well-known dance critic John Martin observed in his review of the ballet’s premiere, the work “is in essence that of a reperforming of a ritual before the tomb of a hero.”10
Orpheus continues to repeat his descending lament over much of the opening movement. Example 5 demonstrates a parsing of his melody from the opening of the piece to four measures after rehearsal number 1, when the harp (his lyre) comes to an unexpected stop on a low F, an unresolved scale-degree 2 in this Phrygian setting (see the very end of Example 5). As with earlier examples, I have vertically aligned key portions of the melody to point out how Stravinsky manipulates the descending scale in subtle ways; the example does not omit any part of the melody, and may be heard and read continuously. Each new system begins when the higher E occurs (or should occur) on a downbeat, and also includes the gathering accompanimental string parts below Orpheus’s tune. It shows how each of the repetitions is ordered into a larger series of varied laments.
Example 5. Orpheus, ordered succession for Orpheus’s opening music to four measures after rehearsal number 1.
Example 5 tracks the first four segments of Orpheus’s melody, paying particular attention to the places where he is able to begin on the upper E and where he is able to reach the lower E. In each iteration of Orpheus’s melody we may take note both of his growing urgency and the difficulty of his task. At the end of his first iteration (system I), Orpheus attempts to descend entirely through the Phrygian scale without the intervening leap up to E; notice that he does not arrive there (signified by the X at the end of the system). Instead, in a Sisyphean manner, he returns to his original E to begin another descent. The iterations in systems II, III, and IV show similar difficulties in completing the journey downward. In the second, Orpheus reaches the lower E, but at the expense of being able to return to the higher one on time (that is, on the downbeat). Instead he must leap up awkwardly through a dissonant minor seventh to continue his journey downward. System III repeats the difficulties of system I; system IV returns to the opening divided journey, and although it expands its register to reach an E even an octave lower, this journey begins with an enormous leap downward by a minor ninth, and just at the moment when Orpheus could arrive on a ve
ry low E, even on a downbeat, he ceases to play, as if he is unable to go on (see the exclamation marks at the end of system IV). Each of these imperfect descents suggests that even Orpheus’s music will be unable to save Eurydice. Along the way the accompanying strings also provide early hazardous signs: their initial arrival on the low E (at the end of system I) clashes with Orpheus’s F sounding directly above it, and as he continues downward during the second measure of I, they support his A rather than his goal pitch E, placing their lower E in less prominent inner voices. The strings’ lower-voice A overlaps into system II, where an additional lower G is added to their harmony. The resulting sonority at rehearsal number 1 (the first bar of system II) is an ambiguously rooted chord; that this harmonic uncertainty evolves as Orpheus misses his target pitch is a symbol of the time world of the ballet as a whole, where mortal efforts are thwarted just when success is within reach.
Stravinsky and His World Page 14