For it is not art that falls from the heavens through a bird’s song; rather, the simplest modulation, correctly executed, is already incontestably art.
Some of Roland-Manuel’s “note-taking” drafts are clearer than others, as in the example below. And yet even such a page as this one can hardly be considered a composed text; rather it remains an example of written-down speech, as is clear by the large number of truncated words, unintended repetitions, and errors in syntax and spelling it contains. Under any other writing conditions, Roland-Manuel would have had time to finish his words and correct the punctuation:
But having arrived at this point it is no less necessary to obey not new idols but the eternal necessity to found our solidly our music and to reco yield to the need to fix poles recognize the existence of to recognize poles of attraction. Tonality is only one way of orienting music, the function of tonality seems to us subordinate to the function of attraction of the polesCX
all music being made up of a series of surges and rests supposes an orientation toward a definite pole. in every specific case, this true for Gregorian cantilena asCXI for the music of Mozart—of Brahms or of Debussy. There is To this general law of attraction the traditional tonal system brings nothing more than a provisory solution because there is no absolute value.
This type of note-taking conjures up the image of someone rapidly transcribing a lecture given by Stravinsky. Indeed, in certain cases, it seems the composer’s ideas were very definite before being passed along to Roland-Manuel. This was under no circumstances a meandering discussion, but rather a dictation of ideas Stravinsky wished to see included in the lessons.
Written-up Notes. Roland-Manuel’s files also contain manuscript pages that are much more finalized. The handwriting of these pages is much more careful, their sentences complete; the organized whole makes sense and there are few grammatical or spelling errors. For his written-up notes, Roland-Manuel used different paper—larger, faintly lined sheets that he folded, or more often cut in two, to create pages similar in size to the ones he used for note-taking. The presence of these two paper types reveals what we already know, namely that there were two stages in his process, corresponding to Roland-Manuel’s two trips to Sancellemoz: the first, in which Roland-Manuel wrote down what Stravinsky said; and the second, in which he read to Stravinsky the written-up drafts of their conversation, noting on them any additional observations from the composer (as is suggested by the numerous cross-outs and rephrasings they contain). This two-fold process allows readers to distinguish clearly between what Stravinsky originally said and what Roland-Manuel added later, as well as to realize how truly involved Roland-Manuel was in the project.
Despite the many modifications and annotations they contain, Roland-Manuel’s written-up notes strongly resemble the final published version of the Poétique musicale. Except for minor changes in vocabulary and turns of phrase, the only larger differences are that several paragraphs have been shifted within or among lessons, and that ideas have been added. Roland-Manuel also took notes on the fly on the back of some of these pages, writing all over the place, cutting off sentences, and creating a chaotic order of thoughts as he tried to write down at the last minute what Stravinsky probably asked him to add.41
Roland-Manuel’s written-up notes also contain certain sections in which he was clearly trying to put into prose what Stravinsky had listed in his original outline for the project. Here Roland-Manuel acted more as a transcriber than collaborator; even though the notes are in his hand, the content belongs to Stravinsky, as is evident in the following example:
[but I must warn you that this material is a bit serious
or don’t be afraid of the specific gravity this material entails and requires]CXII
Lesson III
The musical métier
[I feel all the responsibility]
…
I find myself in the process of creation and this process at some point is driven by inertia. …
The deliberate and the unexpected in the creative process: I have an idea and in the process of working I arrived at something unexpected (which is not to be confused with fantasy).
… The kingdom of necessity and the kingdom of liberty. The dialectic is the following. Everyone thinks art is synonymous with free creation, which is not quite right. Art is all the more free the more it is limited in the canonic and dogmatic legal order.CXIII
These notes give a fairly obvious impression of how Roland-Manuel and Stravinsky communicated: Stravinsky probably relied on his outline, developing ideas out loud from it for Roland-Manuel as they spoke. Stravinsky may have drafted another written document to help him gather his thoughts before meeting with Roland-Manuel, but there is no evidence to suggest this thesis and it offers no new perspective on their basic process. Roland-Manuel’s written-up notes also give a clear impression of how Stravinsky positioned himself in the conversation. When Roland-Manuel writes down a sentence like “But I must warn you that this material is a bit serious or don’t be afraid of the specific gravity this material entails and requires,” he is already facing a man who has taken on the role of a lecturer. This proves yet again that it was Stravinsky who controlled the broad outlines of his lectures, even before he transmitted them to Roland-Manuel.
Commentary
Roland-Manuel’s extended drafts and notes on the Poétique musicale reveals less his intervention in the project than the primacy of Stravinsky’s spoken word; they give evidence of the composer’s true contribution to the book he authored, in addition to the nineteen pages of outline he completed in written form. It becomes clear that Roland-Manuel’s contribution is much less important than Myriam Soumagnac made it out to be, and that to say he “wrote” the Poétique is incorrect.42 It is more precise to say that he took note of Stravinsky’s ideas and gave them literary form. If Roland-Manuel also sometimes brought in philosophical, historical, and literary examples, perhaps most notably in reference to Aristotle and Jean Mounet-Sully, it was with the goal of improving the text’s structure and readability, rather than because he wanted to express his own convictions, equivalent to those of Suvchinsky and Stravinsky, concerning the making, the poiesis of music. Roland-Manuel worked essentially at the level of form. He was an impressive editor who effaced himself in the service of conveying Stravinsky’s speech as truthfully as possible and in its most direct, rough, and unadorned state. His greatest contribution to these lectures was to have formulated Stravinsky’s concepts so faithfully, without unduly infusing the text with his own convictions.
The term “ghostwriter,” which commentators use and abuse in referring to Stravinsky’s Poétique musicale, implies a certain fraudulence. The imposter, in this case Stravinsky, whose signature shines on the cover of a book, is immediately tacitly accused of usurping, lacking talent, and of incompetence and hypocrisy. In the present case, as I have hoped to demonstrate in this essay, the truth lies elsewhere. The process can be summarized as follows: the Poétique’s first collaborator—Pyotr Suvchinsky—gave the text its structure, and inspired the ideas of its “sponsor”—Igor Stravinsky. He probably discussed his outline with Stravinsky, leading the latter to draft his own outline, in which Stravinsky developed Suvchinsky’s ideas and transmitted them to an editor, a secretary—Roland-Manuel—who offered his informed opinions while putting the manuscript into shape. As I mentioned earlier, Roland-Manuel then presented the lessons to Suvchinsky, who made potential modifications before the final text was sent back to Stravinsky. In conclusion, I argue that although Suvchinsky dominated the entire working process and was responsible for the Poétique’s structure and fundamental ideas, the final work expresses Stravinsky’s wishes, and can be considered a fully authoritative work of the composer.
NOTES
An extended version of this article was previously published in French as “Poétique musicale: Miroir des échanges dialectiques—genèse du texte et emprunts conceptuels,” in Valérie Dufour, Stravinski et ses exégètes (1910–
1940) (Brussels: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2006), 213–44.
1. Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Themes and Conclusions (London: Faber & Faber, 1971), 49.
2. Robert Craft, “Roland-Manuel and the Poetics of Music,” Perspectives of New Music 21/1–2 (Autumn 1982–Summer 1983): 487–505; repr. as “Roland-Manuel and La Poétique musicale,” in Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, ed. Robert Craft (London: Faber & Faber, 1984), 2:503–17. In this essay citations are from the former source. Suvchinsky gives a sense of the real divergence of his and Craft’s views on Stravinsky, in “(Notice autobiographique inédite écrite en 1982),” in (Re)Lire Souvtchinski: Textes choisis par Eric Humbertclaude (Paris: Efflorescence, 1990), 8.
3. Myriam Soumagnac, foreword to Igor Stravinsky, Poétique musicale, ed. Myriam Soumagnac (Paris: Flammarion, 2000), 9.
4. Soumagnac, preface in ibid., 38–39. Suvchinsky explained to Stravinsky in a letter dated 23 May 1939: “I am sending you the text of the fifth part rather than the materials. I decided to articulate and elaborate them to make things easier for you.” Suvchinsky to Stravinsky, 23 May 1939, in I. F. Stravinskiy: Perepiska s russkimi korrespondentami. Materialï k biografii, ed. Viktor Varunts (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2003), 3:676–77 (hereafter SPRK).
5. See especially Felix Meyer’s summary in Settling New Scores: Music Manuscripts from the Paul Sacher Foundation (Mainz: Schott, 1998), 134n67. See also Heinz Werner Zimmermann, “Igor Strawinsky—Verfasser seiner Musikalischen Poetik? Zur Entstehung seiner Schriften,” Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 1467–68 (1985): 17–25.
6. In the biographical note he wrote about Suvchinsky as a foreword to his composition Sonate Souvtchinsky (Paris: Salabert Editions, 1986), composer Gérard Masson assumes a collaboration: “It was in Berlin, 1922,” he writes, “that the indestructible friendship between Stravinsky and Suvchinsky formed, a friendship that would lead in 1952 to Suvchinsky collaborating, on the composer’s request, on the Poetics of Music.” (Masson mistakes the date of the collaboration, which took place in 1939 and not in 1952, when the second French edition appeared.) In his article “Souvenirs d’un ami en commun: Pierre Souvtchinski,” Claude Helffer briefly evokes Suvchinsky’s journey to Sancellemoz to “write” the Poétique “with” Stravinsky, in Musiques, Signes, Images: Liber amicorum François Lesure, ed. Joël-Marie Fauquet (Geneva: Minkoff, 1988), 159–61.
7. See SPRK, vol. 3; and Alla Bretanitskaya, ed., Pyotr Suvchinskiy i ego vremya (Moscow: Izdatel' skoye ob'yedineniye, 1999).
8. Sancellemoz, a village in the Haute-Savoie region of France, was Stravinsky’s place of retreat in 1938 and 1939.
9. Suvchinsky discusses the matter of payment in a letter to Stravinsky a few days later: “Roland-Manuel said, as was agreed upon, that you can give a total of 10,000 francs for all the preparatory work concerning the writing of the lectures, including traveling expenses, coming to Sancellemoz, the purchase of books, etc. After tallying up the expenses, there will be an amount left over that will be for the participants and that will be divided among them according to the amount of work each person does. You will see for yourself in a few days of collaborative work if Roland-Manuel is indeed a suitable fit or not. This circumstance will determine whether I participate or not in the project in the future. I personally think that Roland-Manuel will now definitely be able to manage on his own, and that is why I leave it entirely to you and him to decide if there will still be something or nothing for me beyond the 1,000 francs.” Suvchinsky to Stravinsky, 29 April 1939, SPRK, 3:673.
10. Suvchinsky to Stravinsky, 26 April 1939, SPRK, 3:671.
11. Eric Humbertclaude provided me with a copy of this document, for which I am deeply grateful.
12. SPRK, 3:676–77.
13. Ibid., 3:680–81.
14. This manuscript is in the Collection Suzel Duval and is the property of Eric Humbertclaude. I published a facsimile of it in ibid., 387–90.
15. This manuscript is kept in microfilm 117.1, 497–507, Paul Sacher Stiftung (hereafter PSS). Craft provides an incomplete and very faulty English translation of this document in “Roland-Manuel and the Poetics of Music,” 496–501.
16. These are kept in microfilm 257.1, “Dossier Roland-Manuel,” 29–189, PSS. Myriam Soumagnac uses and discusses these documents in Stravinsky, Poétique musicale.
17. This manuscript is kept in the “Dossier Souvtchinsky,” not on microfilm, PSS. Svetlana Savenko presented this document in “‘Chudo Stravinskogo’ dlitsya mnogiye desyatiletiya: Iz perepiski P. P. Suvchinskogo i I. F. Stravinskogo” (Stravinsky’s wonder lasts many decades: P. P. Suvchinsky and I. F. Stravinsky’s Poetics of Music) in Bretanitskaya, Pyotr Suvchinskiy i ego vremya, 259–72. Savenko does not mention that this text is the oldest version of the fifth lesson, which was subsequently largely reworked. The value of this original text comes from its status as the only surviving document in Russian linked to the production of the lectures.
18. The composer’s youngest son, Soulima Stravinsky (1910–1998) was close to Suvchinsky during his father’s stay at Sancellemoz. The subject of Soulima’s mental state dominates the letters exchanged between Suvchinsky and Stravinsky in spring 1939. Suvchinsky discussed with Stravinsky the possibility of Soulima translating his Russian text in a letter dated 23 May 1939, SPRK, 3:676–78.
19. These are kept in microfilm 117.1, PSS.
20. An English summary of each lesson was also planned for those who attended the lecture and published by Alexis Kall in “Stravinsky in the Chair of Poetry,” The Musical Quarterly 26/3 (1940): 283–96.
21. Igor Stravinsky, Poétique musicale sous forme de six leçons (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942). For an inventory of later editions of the Poetics of Music, see Soumagnac’s preface to the Poétique musicale, 21–24. Concerning the text’s reception, see Gianfranco Vinay, “‘Pour’ et ‘contre’ Stravinski: La réception de la Poétique musicale en France et en Allemagne après la deuxième guerre mondiale,” in La Musique depuis 1945: Matériaux, esthétique et perception, ed. Hugues Dufourt and Joël-Marie Fauquet (Sprimont: Mardaga, 1996), 195–210.
22. This section is based on my article “La Poétique musicale de Stravinsky: Un manuscrit inédit de Souvtchinsky,” Revue de musicologie 89/2 (2003): 373–92.
23. This document is reproduced in Dufour, “La Poétique musicale de Stravinsky: Un manuscrit inédit de Souvtchinsky,” 391–92.
24. On this topic, see Alain Le Boulluec’s summary of Clement of Alexandria in Histoire du christianisme, ed. Luce Pietri (Paris: Desclée, 2000), 1:536–39.
25. Pyotr Suvchinsky, “Igor Strawinsky,” Contrepoints 2 (February 1946): 20–21.
26. See Myriam Soumagnac’s introduction in Stravinsky, Poétique musicale, 19; and Christian Goubault, Igor Stravinsky (Paris, Champion, 1991), 88.
27. See Suvchinsky to Stravinsky, 26 April 1939, SPRK, 3:671.
28. See Dufour, Stravinski et ses exégètes.
29. This document is kept in microfilm 117.1, PSS, and includes a note on reverse of an envelope (497); folios 1–6 (498–503); 2 unnumbered folios (504–7); Roland-Manuel’s typescript of pages 504–7 (508–10); second typescript of pages 504–7 (511–13); envelope (514–15); unnumbered folio (516); 4 numbered folios (517–20); 2 unnumbered folios (521–24); and a typed transcription of pages 523–24 (525). Somebody, probably Roland-Manuel, regularly transcribed some of Stravinsky’s words in more legible writing above his original text in the manuscript pages included here.
30. Craft, “Roland-Manuel and the Poetics of Music,” 496–501.
31. Ibid., 487.
32. In Soumagnac’s edition of the Poétique in French, the two sections in question appear on pages 67–68 (“So I am obliged to be polemical” to “A revolution whose conquests are said to be in the process of assimilation today”) and on pages 74–75 (“As you see, this explanation” to “one of the results of my course, a result I greatly desire”). In Stravinsky’s manuscript these two sections are connected by two small pa
ragraphs, also used by Roland-Manuel, found on page 72 (“Therefore, I am going to be polemical” to “… each of which I want to have a separate title”). For the English version of these passages see Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1947), 8–9, 18–19, 15.
33. See Stravinsky to Edward Forbes, ex officio chairman of the committee for the Charles Eliot Norton Chair of Poetry, 3 June 1939, summarized in Craft, “Roland-Manuel and the Poetics of Music,” 493.
34. See Craft, “Roland-Manuel and the Poetics of Music,” 489.
35. The two friends must have talked, since in almost every case Stravinsky’s additions are identical to the notes Suvchinsky added in pencil to his own outline.
36. Gérard Genette, Palimpsestes: La littérature au second degré (1982; repr., Paris: Seuil, 1992), 16. A portion of the following analysis was previously published in Valérie Dufour, “Strawinsky vers Souvtchinsky: Thèmes et variations sur la Poétique musicale,” Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung 17 (March 2004): 17–23.
37. These are kept in microfilm 257.1, “Dossier Roland-Manuel,” PSS.
38. Soumagnac, “Annexe I,” in Stravinsky, Poétique musicale, 159–62. This appendix contains an error in the pages’ order, with the three pages dated November 1938 placed after those dated February 1939.
39. Soumagnac labels them Cahier de conversations avec Stravinsky in Stravinsky, Poétique musicale, app. 1. In the PSS, the notebook is simply labeled Notizbuch.
40. Stravinsky may be referring to the legend about Pope St. Gregory’s invention of Gregorian chant here. See Stravinsky, Poétique musicale, 78; Ingolf Dahl and Arthur Knodel translated this passage as “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.” See Poetics of Music, 24.
41. For example, on the back of a page numbered 23 in folder 1, Roland-Manuel writes considerations linked to the word cacophony, a word present in the text on the page’s front.
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