Stravinsky and His World

by Levitz, Tamara

  In this way freedom plays a key role in defining the nature of religious as well as secular art.

  Religious music, for its part, is absolutely free and has no specific laws, for its essence resides in musical language and material, not in style. Styles may vary here depending on momentary conditions, just as in objective art. The important thing is not these variations in style, but rather the permanent element through which tradition is imposed. This permanent element is the musical language.

  The only living tradition in this case is the tradition of musical language, since in religious music the musical material’s role is not to restore old things but to be in constant and direct contact with life, to rediscover life through the artist’s spiritual experience. Today, the musician involved in religious art is faced with a formal problem—he has to, first, reestablish the value of modes in themselves. These modes have been neglected and even forgotten in contemporary atonal music, which has exaggerated to the extreme the role of chromaticism, considered not as a function but as a substance. By doing this, contemporary music has destroyed the unity of musical language and manufactured a great number of idioms that fail to communicate among themselves.

  In contrast, by giving new importance to the mode, by letting it be reborn on new foundations in its in relationship to tonality, one finds the means to separate the poles of attraction between tonality and mode and synthesize their two natures.

  Such are the very conditions of musical language by which, we believe, religious music communicates a certain spiritual reality.

  The great difficulty is not to turn backward by restoring old forms and modes and by being contented with a scholiast’s work. But neither should we fall back into anarchy, which is nothing more than an elementary and scattered form of life.

  We must confess that one does not always encounter the strongest trace of religious life in art that presents itself officially as religious art. But whereas in so many other forms of artistic expression, such as poetry or painting, a negative aspect of the work can lead to a sort of reverse witnessing, as for example in Rimbaud or Baudelaire, in music it can only be a question of positive witnessing: by its essence music always affirms Being. It is precisely because it has this character that music can acquire a purifying meaning for the artist, and rise to the heights of religious expression.

  It seems that Nietzsche would have known how to address this problem and that it was even the basis of his quarrel with Wagner. “From what do I suffer,” he says in Ecce Homo (“The Case of Wagner: A Musical Problem”),31 “when I suffer from the fate of music? From the fact that music has been stripped of its purifying virtues, of its affirmative character, from the fact that it has become a music of decadence and that it is no longer Dionysus’s flute.” It is not so surprising that the father of Zarathustra understood that Wagner, despite his genius, betrayed this profound meaning of music by making it serve the resurrection of a manufactured mythology.

  So we see that the problem of religious music goes back to the very sources of inspiration, and we also see how rich this particular music can be and must be among all other musics; for it molds living material, which seems to us to be the richest and ultimately only true kind.

  —Translated from the French by Bridget Behrmann and Tamara Levitz

  NOTES

  1. Arthur Lourié, “Krizis iskusstva 1” and “O Rakhmaninove” (About Rachmaninoff), Yevraziya 4 (15 December 1928): 8; “Krizis iskusstva 2” and “Kontsertï v Parizhe: Otto Klemperer” (Concerts in Paris: Otto Klemperer), Yevraziya 8 (26 January 1929): 8. Only one other article by Lourié appeared in Yevraziya, on Bartók. See “Béla Bartók,” Yevraziya 18 (23 March 1929): 8.

  2. “Authors’ Introduction,” in Exodus to the East: Forebodings and Events, An Affirmation of the Eurasians, trans. Ilya Vinkovetzky with Catherine Boyle and Kenneth Brostrom, ed. Ilya Vinkovetsky and Charles Schlacks Jr. (Idyllwild, CA.: Charles Schlacks Jr., 1996), 4.

  3. The motto is taken from what is commonly referred to as “The Moscow Program,” a fifteen-page brochure that appeared as Yevraziystvo (Paris: Yevraziyskoye knigoizdatel'stvo, 1927); and in Yevraziyskaya khronika 9 (1927): 3–14.

  4. Marina Tsvetaeva, “Mayakovskomu,” Yevraziya 1 (24 November 1928): 8.

  5. Simon Karlinsky, Marina Tsvetaeva: The Woman, Her World and Her Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 192.

  6. For Savitsky’s 1929 memorandum about Yevraziya and the circumstances of the split in the Eurasianist movement, see Irina Shevelenko, “K istorii yevraziyskogo raskola 1929 goda,” in Themes and Variations: In Honor of Lazar Fleishman, ed. Kovistantin Polivaviov, Irina Shevelenko, and Andrey Ustinov, Stanford Slavic Studies 8 (Stanford: Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, 1994), 376–416. For more documents relating to the movement, see Sergey Glebov, Yevraziystvo mezhdu imperiyey i modernom: istoriya v dokumentakh (Moscow: Novoye izdatel'stvo, 2009).

  7. Russian title: O gazete ‘Yevraziya’: Gazeta ‘Yevrazia’ ne est' yevraziyskiy organ (Paris, 1927).

  8. For Savitzky’s criticism of Lourié see his 1929 memorandum in Shevelenko, “K istorii yevraziyskogo raskola 1929 goda,” 399. He writes: “In Lourié’s [article] the clearly and essentially expressed enthusiasm for the Knowledge of God (or the rebellion against God) and God-creation (or God-destruction) in art are substituted with ‘common cause’ and with the vaguely defined ‘spiritual experience.’”

  9. Suvchinsky’s group tried to combine Fyodorov’s ideas with Marxism. See Stephen Lukashevich, N. F. Fedorov (1828–1903): A Study in Russian Eupsychian and Utopian Thought (Cranbury, NJ.: Associated University Presses, 1977), 27.

  10. For more about Scythianism see Russia Between East and West: Scholarly Debates on Eurasianism, ed. Dmitry Shlapentokh (Leiden: Brill, 2006), esp. Marlène Laruelle’s chapter, “The Orient in Russian Thought at the Turn of the Century,” 9–38. Lourié quotes Blok’s reaction to the Bolsheviks’ failed peace negotiations with Germany at Brest-Litovsk from an entry in the poet’s diary, 11 January 1918: “If you do not wash away the shame of your wartime patriotism with at least a ‘democratic peace,’ if you destroy our revolution, then you are no longer Aryans. And we shall open wide the Eastern Gates…. We’re barbarians? All right, then. We’ll show you what barbarians really are. And our cruel reply, our terrible reply, will be the only answer worthy of man…. Europe (her theme)—Art and Death. Russia—life.” Aleksandr Blok, Dnevnik, ed. Andrey Grishunina (Moscow: Sovetskaya Rossiya, 1989), 261; translated into English by Avril Pyman in “An Introduction to ‘The Scythians,’” Stand 8/3 (1966–67): 32.

  11. Pyotr Suvchinskiy, “Novïy ‘zapad,’” Yevraziya 2 (1 December 1928): 1–2, quoted and translated in Richard Taruskin, “Eurasia Revisited with Lourié as My Guide,” in Funeral Games in Honor of Arthur Lourié, ed. Klára Moricz and Simon Morrison (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming). For Lourié’s anti-individualistic views see ibid., and Lourié’s “Neogothic and Neoclassic,” Modern Music 5/3 (March–April 1928): 3–8.

  12. Suvchinskiy, “Novïy ‘zapad.’”

  13. For a more in-depth analysis of Lourié’s article see Taruskin, “Eurasia Revisited with Lourié as My Guide.”

  14. Marie Belmon, “La Fresque”; Dr. Adelheid Heimann, “L’Iconographie de la Trinité”; and Maurice Brillant, “Joie et liberté de l’art catholique,” L’Art chrétien 2 (November 1934): 7–18, 19–30, and 35–75, respectively.

  15. L’Art chrétien 2 (November 1934): 31.

  16. For more about Maritain’s relationship to Lourié see Mikhail Meylakh and Olesya Bobrik, “Semya Zhaka Mariten i russkiye muzïkantï,” Muzïkal'naya akademiya 2 (2010): 96–102; and Caryl Emerson, “Jacques Maritain and the Catholic Muse in Lourié’s Post-Petersburg Worlds,” in Moricz and Morrison, eds., Funeral Games in Honor of Arthur Lourié. Emerson explores in depth the neo-Thomist aspects of Lourié’s art. Lourié’s correspondence with the Maritains, reviews of his concerts, Raissa’s notes concerning Lourié’s musi
c, and a typescipt of “The Problem of Modern Religious Art” are kept in the Centre d’Archives, Cercle d’Etudes Jacques et Raïssa Maritain, Kolbsheim, France.

  17. Jacques Maritain, “Art and Scholasticism,” in Art and Scholasticism, with Other Essays, trans. J. F. Scanlan (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1937), 68.

  18. Jacques Maritain, “Some Reflections Upon Religious Art” (1924), in ibid., 143–47.

  19. Maritain, “Art and Scholasticism,” 69–71.

  20. Henri-Irénée Marrou, “Lourié 1936,” in Crise de notre temps et réflexion chrétienne (de 1930 à 1975) (Paris: Editions Beauchesne, 1978), 377.

  21. Jacques Maritain, “The Freedom of Song” (1935), in Art and Poetry, trans. Elva de Pue Matthews (New York: Philosophcal Library, 1943), 97. “If the musical work of Arthur Lourié appears to me so rich in sense, this is because it seems to me that in no other artist today is the creative intuition born at a deeper level” (92).

  22. Ibid., 96, 98.

  23. Russian title: Artur Lur'ye, “Krizis iskusstva 1–2,” Yevraziya 4 (15 December 1928): 8; and Yevraziya 8 (26 January 1929): 8. Emphasis in original.

  24. Mikhail Vrubel (1856–1910), a Russian painter.

  25. Domostroitel'stvo, literally “building of a house,” is a theological term, originating from the Greek oikonomia (divine economy, economy of salvation, or stewardship). The term appears in Proverbs 9:1: “Wisdom has built her house, she has set up her seven pillars”; in 1 Peter 4:10: “As each has received a gift, employ it for one another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace”; 1 Corinthians 4:1–2: “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy”; Ephesians 3:2: “Assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you.” Mirostroitel'stvo, literally “world- or peace-building,” refers to the active, human construction of a world full of divine presence; though the words for “world” and “peace” were different in church Slavic, this concept seems to bring them—conceptually—together. Special thanks to Boris Wolfson and Serge Glebov for explaining these terms.

  26. Lourié incorrectly quotes from Alexander Blok’s diary entry: “Europe (its theme) is art and death. Russia’s is life.” For a fuller quotation of a different translation of this passage, see n. 10 above.

  27. “Primitive accumulation” is Marx’s term for an accumulation that is “not the result of the capitalist mode of production, but its starting point.” Karl Marx, “The Secret of Primitive Accumulation,” in Capital, vol. 1, part, 8, chap. 26, paragraph 1.

  28. “Qu’on ne dise pas que je n’ai rien dit de nouveau: la disposition des matières est nouvelle. … J’aimerais autant qu’on me dit que je me suis servi des mots anciens. Et comme si les mêmes pensées ne formaient pas un autre corps de discours par une disposition différente aussi bien que les mêmes mots forment d’autres pensées par leur différente dispositions.” Blaise Pascal, Pensées, art. 7, sec. 9.

  29. French title: “Le Problème de la musique religieuse moderne,” L’Art chrétien (November 1934): 31–34.

  30. Lourié uses the term fabriquer throughout this essay in direct reference to Maritain’s philosophy. The more proper term here would be made, but for fluidity we have translated it as manufactured.

  31. The correct title of part 1, Ecce Homo (1889), is “The Case of Wagner: A Musician’s Problem.” Lourié misquoted this passage, which in the original reads: “From what do I suffer when I suffer from the fate of music? From the fact that music has lost its world-transfiguring, yea-saying character—that it is decadent music and no longer the flute of Dionysus.”

  Igor the Angeleno: The Mexican Connection

  TAMARA LEVITZ

  Stravinsky arrived in New York City aboard the Manhattan on 30 September 1939 to begin a series of lectures as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard. Within months of his arrival, Carlos Chávez sent a telegram inviting him to conduct the Orquesta Sinfónica de México. If Stravinsky could arrange to travel to Mexico City on his own dime, Chávez explained, adding that the train ride from New York took a mere 72 hours, the Orquesta would pay Stravinsky $1,250 for a two-week visit, 15–28 July 1940.1 In the weeks that followed, and in their first face-to-face meeting in New York, on 14 March, the two composers solidified the details. The first concert would include Cherubini’s Anacreonte Overture, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 2, Stravinsky’s Petrushka Suite, and his Divertimento.2 The second would include Stravinsky’s Apollon musagète, a repeat performance of the Divertimento, Jeu de cartes, and the Firebird Suite. Stravinsky agreed to the terms and on 23 April asked for and received double the proposed fee ($2,500).3 That summer the Orquesta and Stravinsky signed a contract with RCA Victor Mexicana to record the Divertimento with the orchestra for a flat fee of $1,000.4

  A few months after Stravinsky’s successful first visit to Mexico, Chávez wrote apologetically to explain that interference from a local radio station had damaged the recording they had made of the Divertimento and that they would have to record it again. To provide a pretext for Stravinsky’s return visit, Chávez invited him for a one-week stay from 14 to 20 July 1941 during which he would conduct the Orquesta in two broadcast concerts and redo the recording.5 Stravinsky wrote back, suggesting as repertoire his Symphony in C, Capriccio, Pulcinella Suite (a premiere in Mexico), and, again, his Divertimento. He urged Chávez to listen to Koussevitzky’s recording of the Capriccio with soloist Jesús María Sanromá (which he thought “wasn’t bad”), told him he would make a “photostat” of the score for him, and suggested they find a pianist for it in Mexico to bring down costs (Chávez chose Salvador Ochoa).6 This time the distance to Mexico was not as great: Stravinsky and Vera had arrived in Los Angeles on 9 February and on 6 April had moved into their new home at 1260 North Wetherly Drive.

  In spite of the mutual goodwill, it was not effortless for Stravinsky to travel to Mexico; both of his trips—in 1940 and 1941—were hindered by visa difficulties. In 1940 Ricardo Ortega, the Orquesta’s manager, and Stravinsky’s lawyers had worked hard to organize for Stravinsky and Vera’s six-month visitor visas and reentry permits to the United States with the aid of former Mexican president Adolfo de la Huerta.7 In spite of these efforts, Stravinsky experienced trouble obtaining a reentry permit. Ortega and Chávez urged Stravinsky to cross the border by train at Ciudad Juárez on the way down—a border crossing Vera described as “miserable, where Mexicans with guitars, babies, and bundles crowd on board. Next to the station is a café, ‘Cabellero,’ and in front of it in the middle of the street a dead cow.”8 On the way back, Stravinsky had to wrangle with a “very suspicious” border guard in Nogales, Arizona, for three hours as he and Vera reentered the United States as numbers 1053425 and 1053429 under the allowable quota of Russian immigrants permitted by the U.S. Immigration Act of 1924.9 Several months later Stravinsky told a reporter in Cincinnati about the “red tape” involved and “inconvenience” of traveling to Mexico. “Ah, the convenience,” of becoming a U.S. citizen, he had exclaimed in French, “the happiness when I discovered I could be in the quota!”10 The Stravinskys were not yet U.S. citizens by the time of their next trip to Mexico, however, and the Mexican consulate denied them visas in part because Vera was a “Russian émigré” with nothing more than a Nansen (stateless person’s) passport and titre d’identité et de voyage for the United States from the French government but no French passport (although she was married to Stravinsky, who had one). Stravinsky also complained to Ortega that the U.S. government was now stipulating that anybody who left the country first pay their taxes for the past six months—and that he wouldn’t be able to come unless the Orquesta advanced him $700, which it did.11 Adolfo de la Huerta again facilitated the couple’s passage with an official note filled with high praise.12 Stravinsky crossed at Ciudad Juárez, requesting from Ortega that a big bottle of water be ready for him at the Reforma Hotel when he and Vera arrived.13
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  The above description of Stravinsky’s preparations for his first trips to Mexico challenges the classic image of the composer as suffering in exile during the twenty-eight years he lived in Los Angeles after 1941. Stravinsky appears in this account less as a Russian émigré preoccupied with his homeland than as a savvy cosmopolitan attentive to new markets and willing to jump on a train to Mexico for the purpose of monetary gain within months of arriving on U.S. shores. The story gives credence to the thesis that Stravinsky immigrated to the United States for economic rather than political reasons, seeking financial opportunity lacking in war-torn Europe. He chose to settle in the Hollywood Hills, and to organize his extensive concertizing activities from that location.

  The story of Stravinsky’s Mexican travels also reveals that he was not primarily a victim—as the standard narrative about his state of exile in the United States can romantically imply—but rather a cosmopolitan celebrity with immense class privilege and extraordinary mobility enabled by networks of friends and associates who provided visas and passports, money, materials (scores, parts, bottles of water), and technologies (trains, photostats, recording companies). Just a year after the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service stopped “Mexican repatriation”—an illegal process that led to the deportation of a million or more Mexicans from the United States within a decade—teams of lawyers and representatives of the highest echelons of the Mexican and U.S. government helped Stravinsky secure visas to travel to Mexico City to perform.14 Those same friends in high places ensured that he could apply for U.S. citizenship within the quota for Eastern Europeans entering from Mexico—privileges extended, as is well known, selectively and in an extremely limited fashion to Eastern European Jews.15