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Still More on Displacement
Author(s): Pieter C. van den Toorn
Source: The Musical Quarterly , Vol. 90, No. 3/4 (Fall - Winter, 2007), pp. 536-538
Published by: Oxford University Press
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Still More on Displacement
Pieter C. van den Toorn
My thanks to Don Traut for his very intriguing comments on the larger
role of displacement in Stravinsky's music. A strong parallel does indeed
seem to exist between the metrical displacement of repeated motives
and chords and the displacement of "contrapuntal lines." Especially
revealing is Traut's account of a passage from Stravinsky's Piano
Concerto (Ex. 3). Schenker's earlier commentary on this passage (Ex. 4)
is shown to have been a good deal more savvy about the nature of
Stravinsky's art than his outright rejection of it would have led one to
believe
The "overlapping" of tonic and dominant harmony, pervasive in
the composer's neoclassical works from the time of Pulcinella (1919), has
frequently been remarked upon, of course, as have the static, non
developmental implications of the practice. By way of the Piano Sonata
(Ex. 8), Traut includes it as a form of displacement. The sense of
motion associated with the actual progression of these chord functions
is more or less cancelled out by their superimposition. Harmony is
flattened out in the process.
My view of the Piano Concerto is that, at least on a local scale in
the first movement, many of the techniques cited by Traut derive from
Bach's use of the non-harmonic, metrically accented passing tone
(another from of displacement, of course). Bach's keyboard music served
as a constant point of reference for Stravinsky during the 1920s, even as
a kind of daily staple for a while. The anti-modernist slogan "back to
Bach" dates from this era.
Underscored by Traut as well is the governing role that displace
ment assumes in Stravinsky's music, whatever the stylistic orientation,
presumably Russian, neoclassical, or serial. Overlooked by him, however,
are the "contrapuntal shifts" that result as a matter of course from strati
fication. In Stravinsky's layered structures, superimposed fragments,
registrally and often instrumental / fixed, repeat according to spans or
cycles that vary independently of one another. The result is an
doi:10.1093/musqtl/gdn013 90:536-538
Advance Access publication September 23, 2008.
? The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions,
please e-mail: [email protected]
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Still More on Displacement 537
alignment that shifts not only in relation to meter but between the
superimposed fragments as well.
In turn, metrical displacement can be shown to underlie much of
what we regularly tend to identify with Stravinsky's style. It can account
for the literal nature of the repetition, for example, the lack of variation
and development along traditional lines; and it can account for much of
the articulation as well, such as the beams, staccato, and non-espressivo
markings in his scores.
In fact, the strict performance style on which the composer placed
such emphasis can also be traced to the displacement process. Among
Stravinsky's critics, the tendency has been to look to the outside, to
attribute this and other features of the idiom to extraneous forces.
Modernist fashion in the world of conducting has been cited in this
connection, as has the notorious bluntness of the composer's formalist
convictions. The specter of an anti-humanistic, autocratic personality
has been invoked. Yet there is a better way of explaining the strict style
and its rationale, and it lies with the materials themselves. It can be
found by starting with the music and fanning out from there, as it were,
allowing the music itself to stand as the catalyst that set (and that con
tinues to set) these other ideas and practices in motion. Seen from this
perspective, neither the strict style nor the bare-knuckled formalism can
be viewed as a starting point. Far more readily, both fall into place as
effects and consequences of musical processes such as displacement and
stratification
To condense but one small segment of this line of reasoning?if
the metrical displacement of a fragment, configuration, or block of
material is to have its effect, then (1) the repetition must be kept
fairly literal, and (2) the beat must be maintained fairly strictly. This
sounds innocent enough, yet the implications are far-reaching. While
a strict beat will lack much in the way of expressive timing and
nuance, it will make up for this by its ability to project a clear sense
of metrical placement and displacement; and the latter is essential in
a performance of Stravinsky's music. Without it, much of the point of
the invention is lost; so there is little reason why listeners and perfor
mers should feel themselves put out by a beat of this kind, unable to
come to grips with an underlying rationale, and at the mercy therefore
of a conductor's or composer's "ethic of scrupulous submission," as
one critic has phrased it. On the contrary, a relatively strict beat is
likely to leave that much more of the rhythmic play exposed to the
ear. Timing and the element of surprise are apt to be felt that much
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538 The Musical Quarterly
Much of this needs to be fleshed out analytic-theoretically, of
course; yet the idea of addressing issues of style, performance practice,
criticism, and aesthetic belief by way of the materials themselves (pro
cesses of displacement, for example) is surely an appealing one at times.
I am grateful to Don Traut for his response.
Notes
Pieter van den Toorn teaches music theory at the University of California at Santa
Barbara. His books include The Music of Igor Stravinsky (1983), Stravinsky and the Rite
of Spring (1987), and Music, Politics and the Academy (1995). Articles on a variety of
subjects ranging from Beethoven to Stravinsky and atonal music have appeared in the
Journal of Music Theory, Music Analysis, Perspectives of New Music, The Musical
Quarterly, and the Journal of Musicology. Email: [email protected]
1. See Scott Messing, Neoclassicism in Music from the Genesis of the Concept Through
the Schoenberg Stravinsky Polemic (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1988). Or see
Richard Taruskin, "Back to Whom? Neoclassicism as Ideology," Nineteenth-Century
Music 16, no. 3 (1993): 286-302.
2. Richard Taruskin, "Stravinsky and Us," in The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky,
ed. Jonathan Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 283.
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