1

THE EFFECT OF THE AMERICAN MUSICAL ENVIRONMENT ON

RUSSIAN ÉMIGRÉ COMPOSERS

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DON’T MENTION THE WAR! GERMAN STYLE AND AMERICAN SELF-IDENTITY

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The final decades of the 19th Century saw considerable changes in the American

musical environment. A new urban ruling class was benefitting from the industrial

and technological advances of the age, and the economic improvements they

ushered in; a new quest for cultured self-improvement was beginning to reap

rewards; and America began to step up its campaign for New York, Chicago, and

other cities to replicate the cultural patterns of the European elite. The result,

musically, was a predominance of German instrumental music and Italian and

French opera.1

After Tchaikovsky opened Carnegie Hall in 1891, Americans’ next important

exposure to Russian culture was in 1916. Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes toured North

America performing The Firebird, Petrouchka, and Scheherazade, amongst others. The

reaction was cooler than in Paris: critics praised the visual display, ensemble, and

scores, yet still conceded that there were ‘pages which baffled the ear’.2 They

preferred music of the German romantics, which they deemed more accessible, and

to which they could attach a narrative (regardless of whether one was intended).

Yet this respect for German music rapidly waned after the United States entered

World War One in April 1917, as Ogasapian explains:

The musical result was that French and Russian musicians and

conductors, the latter refugees from the Russian Revolution, began to

displace Germans in American orchestras; and programmes included less

1 For a more comprehensive survey see Carol Oja’s chapter in Locke and Barr: Cultivating Music in

America, California Press, 1997, and Ogasapian and Lee-Orr: Music of the Gilded Age, Greenwood

Press, 2007. 2 W.J. Henderson, writing in the New York Sun, 9th April 1916. Reproduced in van Norman Baer: The

Art of Enchantment: Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes 1909-1929, St. Martin’s Press, 1988, p.127.

2

German repertoire and more music from France, Eastern Europe and

Russia.3

The Americans now had to seek their own musical identity, having split with the

German inheritance for political reasons. More ominously, it became clear they had

no musical identity with which to compete against Italian, French, and Russian

music. Joplin had died in 1917 and any emerging American composers were

rejected, as many had trained in German institutions or with German professors.

Neither could the Americans claim African American music as their own, since that

originated in Africa, as did jazz (notwithstanding the contentious issue of having a

national identity based on slave labour). Americans began to label other nation’s

music, hoping to distil the uncategorisable elements into an ‘American’ style to

replace the eschewed German music, resulting in a tendency to assess a foreign

musician against their homeland’s idiosyncratic image.

This paper will examine the effects of this environment upon three Russian émigré

musicians: Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, and Stravinsky.4 Political issues had created

problems in the American musical scene; problems which, apart from needing to be

addressed, pressurised those within it to find and encourage a true, independent

American musical style to compete against France, Germany, Italy, and Russia.

Examination of press reactions to the music of the three émigrés, the musician’s own

thoughts preserved in diaries and letters, and some of the works they composed in

America will be combined to argue that the American musical environment elicited

a number of changes, both in the compositional and performing contexts of the three

musicians. Focussing upon these three musicians permits an additional discussion

comparing Prokofiev and Rachmaninov, who experienced the American musical

scene as performers and composers, with Stravinsky, who worked primarily as a

composer.

3 Ogasapian and Lee-Orr: ibid., p.27. This was not the first foray into Russian music: Stokowski had

been introducing it into programmes of the Philadelphia Orchestra since 1912, yet the extent of the

American audience’s exposure to Russian music was still not significant. 4 For consistency the ‘v’ endings will be used throughout.

3

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‘NEW MUSIC FOR NEW EARS’: THE RUSSIAN MUSICIANS MEET THEIR NEW (WORLD)

ENVIRONMENT

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1918. Prokofiev and Rachmaninov arrive in the United States in August and

November respectively. Fearing for their lives they fled the revolutions in Russia

and, having little money and few possessions, now had to make a living from

performing.5 Prokofiev, deciding it would be safer not to play an entire programme

of his own music for his first major performance, included two Scriabin etudes and

three Rachmaninov preludes, his own Four Etudes for Piano, and his Second Piano

Sonata.6 The reviews were presumably not what he had hoped for. The New York

Times wrote:

He is blonde, slender, modest as a musician, and his impassability

contrasted with the volcanic eruptions he produced on the keyboard…

His fingers are steel, his wrists steel, his biceps and triceps steel, his

seapula steel… As a composer he is cerebral. His music is volitional and

essentially cold… Immense technical difficulties deafen one to the intrinsic

poverty of ideas in his music. The four études have in a nutshell his style;

the sonata… contains no sustained musical development… Of his instant

success there can be no doubt. Whether he will last – Ah! New music for

new ears. Serge Prokofiev is very startling.7

Here we observe the American desire to categorise and caricature: adjectives

(particularly ‘steel’) to match what Americans associated with Russia: an

environment and soul which was cold, melancholy, and isolated.8 Political

instability with the Bolsheviks (and lack of communications with the outside world)

elicited curiosity, and encouraged speculation and elaboration. American critics to

some extent copied the colourful writing of the news reporters, yet their

commentary on Prokofiev’s music showed a lack of understanding not only of

Russia, its culture, and its people, but also of Prokofiev’s allegedly ‘cerebral’ music.

5 Rachmaninov fled Russia for Helsinki, residing for nearly a year and spending much of his time worrying

about his finances. Deciding that America could be more lucrative, he left in 1918. 6 Prokofiev’s first performance was at the Brooklyn museum on 29th October 1918. The Aeolian Hall

performance was the first performance attended by critics and, in the context of this investigation, is

more significant. 7 New York Times, 21st November 1918, accessed via www.nytimes.com. 8 The use of ‘steel’ could also reflect the emerging industrialisation.

4

Similar reviews followed his performance of his First Piano Concerto three weeks

later. Prokofiev’s diary entry the following day makes for interesting reading:

There is a great deal of press coverage yesterday and today… most of it

negative. The level of understanding revealed is positively asinine.9

American audiences and critics, accustomed to the German and French romantics,

would naturally label Prokofiev’s music cerebral and inaccessible because it was

different, not because it was actually incomprehensible. This may also explain the

critics’ portrayal of Prokofiev as ‘the other’, isolated, or abnormal in some way by

overly-describing his appearance (‘blonde’, ‘slender’, ‘steel hands’), rather than

focussing on his music.

It was to work to Prokofiev’s advantage, as Maes writes:

[His] playing… caused a sensation… his reputation as a ‘Bolshevik

pianist’ elicited suspicion as well as curiosity.10

The Americans knew of the battle with the Bolsheviks in Russia: Prokofiev was

billed as ‘the Bolshevik pianist’ in concert posters. Despite the interest he generated,

Prokofiev still dismissed the American musical environment as ‘conservative and

narrow minded’.11

Rachmaninov’s experience shares similarities. The New York Times article described

his first recital as ‘making the listeners feel as if they were prisoners bound for

Siberia’, and his music as ‘being weighted down with melancholy’.12 Here we see

parallels with Prokofiev: critics evoking coldness (largely in ignorance) to link the

music they were hearing with their impression of its composer’s homeland.

The reason for the critics favouring coldness could, alternatively, be attributed to

Prokofiev and Rachmaninov’s personalities: they were as inaccessible as their

homeland. Prokofiev was abrupt with reporters and Rachmaninov was not famed

for his verbosity either. Reporters and critics would perhaps have been more

justified in applying the adjective cold to the composers’ temperaments, rather than

their music.

9 12th December 1918. Reproduced from A. Philips (trans.): Prokofiev Diaries: 1915-1922, Faber, 2008. 10 Maes: A History of Russian Music, California Press, 2006, p.292. 11 Maes: ibid., p.318. 12 New York Times, 14th November 1909, sourced from www.nytimes.com.

5

In the absence of solid information (from the composers and their homeland) the

critics speculated and invented descriptions in order to satisfy the curiosity the

composers generated. Both men suffered from caricaturing. The images below

appeared in various newspapers and journals during Prokofiev and Rachmaninov’s

first few years in the United States.

Alfred Bendiner’s caricature of Rachmaninov13 An uncredited cartoon of Prokofiev14

But describing their music in terms of emotionless adjectives was to have another

effect: Prokofiev and Rachmaninov felt isolated from their homeland and the

American musical environment. If their careers were to be successful in the United

States a compromise, either from themselves or the Americans, was required.

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(NOT) ENGAGING WITH THE AMERICAN AUDIENCE

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Sometimes I would wonder around enormous Central Park in the centre

of New York, looking at the skyscrapers that framed it, and I’d think with

cold fury of the wonderful American orchestras that were indifferent to

my music; of the critics… crudely rejecting anything new; of the

managers, who organis[ed] long tours for artists playing the same

program of familiar numbers fifty times over… America still hadn’t

matured to an understanding of new music. Go back home? But how?15

Prokofiev

13 R. Taruskin: The Oxford History of Western Music, Volume IV, Oxford University Press, 2010, p.552. 14

From The Daily Worker, 19th April 1919. Sourced from www.apus-06-07.wikispaces.com/cartoons/&7667. 15 S.I. Shlifshtein (ed.): Prokofiev: Materials, Documents, and Reminisces, Moscow Press, 1961, p.166.

Taken from Prokofiev’s diaries.

6

Prokofiev’s frustration is clearly apparent in the above excerpt from his diary.

American reaction to his music and performing was often damp and, if expressing

mild interest, was more due to curiosity. He had been labelled ‘the Bolshevik

pianist’ – less than desirable since he had left Russia to disassociate himself from the

political movement. Being labelled a pianist can only have added to the frustration

of a musician wanting to be recognised as a serious composer, and the lack of

concert appearances put Prokofiev in financial difficulty. Yet Prokofiev still refused

to engage with the American audience. His programmes still mostly included his

works, or works of his fellow countryman, and he refused to compromise as a

performer by playing the works in vogue.

Rachmaninov took a different path:

[He] recognised the necessity of the laws sanctified by the greatest names

in the pianistic world of submitting to a taste in music which has

remained unchanged for decades. So he played the music which was in

demand.16

Prokofiev was disgusted – after attending one of Rachmaninov’s concerts, he wrote:

His programme… No, Rachmaninov has sold his soul to the devil for

American dollars! Chopin waltzes, Liszt rhapsodies, Mozart variations,

his own Polka – dreadful! He should have instead devoted at least three

quarters of the programme to his own compositions… I regret the waste

of his talents on such a ‘public’ programme. Probably, the root of it lies

less a practical calculation than a profound contempt for Americans.17

Although arguably it was Prokofiev’s contempt for Americans coming through here.

The situation was different for Rachmaninov, as he had a family to support. Years

later, in an interview with a Russian magazine, Rachmaninov recalled:

The audiences are astonishingly cold, spoiled by the tours of first-class

artists and forever looking for novelty, for something they’ve never heard

before. Local papers are obliged to note the number of times you are

16 Reismann: Rachmaninoff’s Recollections, Arno Press, 1979, p.193. 17 Prokofiev’s diary, 21st December 1918. Reproduced in A. Philips (trans.): ibid.

7

recalled to the stage, and the public regards this as a yardstick of your

talent.18

The American response had a noticeable effect on Prokofiev and Rachmaninov as

musicians. Where one refused to cater for his audience’s needs, the other recognised

the need to, and had to provide for his family. (Notice the reversal in Rachmaninov

calling the audiences cold.) As composers, however, their experiences were

different.

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COMPOSITIONAL COMPROMISE?

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Prokofiev and Rachmaninov spent their first few years in the United States playing

extensive tours in order to make a living. Although composing was less of a priority,

both still completed works – there was always a chance a publishing deal could

provide much-needed income.

Prokofiev’s compositional output did not slow. From 1918-20 he composed Tales of

an Old Grandmother, Four Pieces for Piano, and The Love for Three Oranges, after which

the pace slowed for ten years or so because of concert tours. The Love for Three

Oranges was commissioned after the success of the Chicago premiere of his First

Symphony, written a year before his emigration in vague imitation of Haydn and

Mozart and dubbed the Classical Symphony.

It was to prove more successful than his other compositions because it implied links

with composers the Americans loved and knew well. Anything which imitated the

trends of the classical period was going to fare better against the American press

than anything trying to be new. Oscar Thompson’s review of Schoenberg’s Serenade

a few years later in 1925 shows the kind of reaction a composer could expect to

radically new music:

If it was because he did not understand this music that the reviewer

thought it feeble, vacuous, spineless, eviscerated, essentially artificial and

18 Interview in Muzykalni Truzhenik, reproduced in Zaruya Apetianz (ed.): S.V. Rachmaninov: Pisma,

Moscow, 1955. Taken from Bertensson and Leyda: Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music, Indiana

University Press, 2001, p.165.

8

unoriginal… then the reviewer must frankly admit that he did not

understand this music.19

The success of the Classical Symphony was due to its accessible and familiar style: so

perhaps we may be justified in investigating whether there is evidence that

Prokofiev, in the knowledge of what worked well with the American audiences,

compromised compositionally, if not as a performer.

The Tales of an Old Grandmother, whose opening is shown below, is noticeably

simpler from his earlier, more virtuosic piano pieces.

Prokofiev returns to a melody and accompaniment texture to clarify his musical

ideas. Yet, despite the reduced level of dissonance, the distinct harmonic vocabulary

still marks the music out as his. The return to simpler compositions has, perhaps,

another explanation, as Shlifshtein argues:

Tales of an Old Grandmother show Prokofiev in an uncharacteristically

reflective, soft and nostalgic mood; perhaps he was only beginning to feel

the full force of his separation from Russia… All four [pieces] are

markedly less dissonant, less chromatic and less rhythmic than most of his

earlier piano music. The tempos are slow and the appealing melodies are

wistful, simple and sustained.20

19 Musical America, Vol. 41, No.20 (March 1925), p.13. 20

S.I. Shlifshtein (ed.), ibid., p.151/2.

9

Turning to his Four Pieces for Piano, we find each subtitled Dance, Minuet, Gavotte,

and Waltz. The question here is not why Prokofiev gave each piece a title – his

earlier sets of pieces for piano were also subtitled with gems including Phantom,

Legenda, and Despair – rather why he eschewed descriptive titles for Baroque ones,

knowing American audiences appreciated titles to which they could add their own

narrative to understand the music.

Below are two pages from sets of pieces for piano composed before and after his

emigration.

(left) A page of ‘Story’ from his Four Pieces for Piano, Op.3 (1911) and (right) the simpler Four Pieces for Piano, Op.32 (1918) – here the ‘Minuet’.

The more complex music Prokofiev composed before moving to the United States

did not generate as much interest as his simpler compositions; his Tales of an Old

Grandmother provoked more interest than his Visions Fugitives. Wanting to be

acknowledged as a serious composer (paradoxically) meant writing simpler, less

dissonant pieces. The difference between the writing in the above examples is

marked. Prokofiev may have believed that descriptive titles were no longer

necessary, since less dissonant music was more likely to be understood. The titles no

longer described the music, but the compositional mould into which he poured

elements of his style. This may have been deliberate: audiences knew what to expect

10

with a minuet or waltz. Compositionally Prokofiev had to compromise, even if he

refused to as a performer. Yet he was still not being taken seriously as a composer:

While Prokofiev the pianist was expected to compete in technical

virtuosity with the likes of Rachmaninov, his compositions, not

infrequently assumed to be part of some vast Bolshevist conspiracy, were

treated as mere ‘novelties’.21

The compromise reached its peak with The Love for Three Oranges, as Prokofiev

himself explained:

…taking American taste into consideration, I chose a more simpler

musical language than I had used in The Gambler.22

One of the most famous parts of the opera is the March from Act II.

cont.

21 D. Gutman: Prokofiev, Alderman Press, 1988, p.63. 22 S.I. Shlifshtein (Ed.), ibid., p.151.

4

7

*

* *

11

etc.

Notice Prokofiev’s preference for short phrases, each as memorable as the last. It is a

feature shared by the Minuet from Four Pieces for Piano, Op.32, and the opening of

10

13

15

17

19

22

12

the Tales of an Old Grandmother, both examined earlier. Also apparent is the simpler

harmonic vocabulary: each two bar phrase (see bars 3, 5, and 7) begins with a pure

tonic triad, functioning to ground the music in a tonal idiom American audiences

would perhaps relate to more easily. It allows Prokofiev greater scope within the

phrase to use the distinct harmonies he favoured before his emigration. The use of

Vb6/9 in bars 3, 4, and 5 (marked with an asterisk), for example.23 The harmonically

ambitious phrases are neutralised by tonic triads (see bars 6-8). Notice, too, the more

traditional structure: the opening material is repeated from bar 19 up an octave, and

the same harmonic progressions are employed without alteration. We have also

neglected the unambiguous title – the marching figures and short, clinical melodic

figures would have satisfied American audience’s expectations for a march. As

Prokofiev remarked, the musical language is simpler. He had to compromise.

If Prokofiev was hoping that this would make the score more comprehensible to the

audience, he was to be disappointed. The review from the Chicago Daily News:

…to the untutored ear there is a charming capriciousness about the

sounds from the orchestra… What is it all about? Ah, Mr. Prokofieff [sic]

knows and Boris [Ansfeld – the set and costume designer] knows and

maybe the actors know. But all it is necessary for us to know is that music

and colour and a quaint, almost gargolylian, caprice are tumbling around

in front of our eyes and ears.24

Though it was no more comprehensible for being simpler musically, it did not stop

the American critics trying to explain it, much to Prokofiev’s amusement:

[Reviewers] found in Oranges mockery, challenge, grotesque, and what

not: all I had been trying to do was write an amusing opera.25

Nevertheless, after the mediocre success of Oranges, Prokofiev left America in April

1920, returning ten years later.

Rachmaninov appears to have had the opposite experience to Prokofiev, in that his

compositional output slowed significantly. A heavy performing career meant that,

from emigration in 1918 to his death in 1943, he composed only six major works; the

most significant being his Fourth Piano Concerto, Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini,

23 Vb6/9 in C major. 24 S. Morrison (Ed.): Prokofiev and his World, Princeton University Press, 2008, p.364. 25

S.I. Shlifshtein (Ed.), ibid. p.151.

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and his Symphony No.3. It was eight years between his arrival in the United States

and the premiere of his Fourth Piano Concerto. In an interview in the Daily Telegraph

sometime later, Rachmaninov commented on the gap:

…for seventeen years, since I lost my country, I have felt unable to

compose. When I was on my farm in Russia during the summers, I had

joy in my work. Certainly I still write music – but it does not mean the

same to me now.26

Maes offers a succinct explanation:

The reasons for this decline were practical as well as emotional.

Rachmaninov was already in his forties when, to support his family, he

was forced to start a new career as a concert pianist. To do so called for

courage and discipline. He was admittedly familiar with concert life, but

even so he had quickly to acquire a repertoire of his own and to adapt

himself to the demeaning tempo of Western stage appearances. The

resulting stress was an important reason for his diminished creativity,

although the emotional factors, too, should not be underestimated.27

With Prokofiev compositional compromise had to be made to be recognised as a

composer; with Rachmaninov it was a result of emotional pressures exerted by the

new musical environment, and also because he had to become recognised as a

performer, more so than as a great composer. The key factor was that Rachmaninov

had to think of his family, and had to support them. The emotional stress of this,

Maes writes, ‘put a break on his creative activity’.28 Prokofiev had only himself to

support.

Rachmaninov’s Fourth Piano Concerto is markedly different from his previous

three, showing the influence of musical genres to which he was exposed in the

United States. He was present at the premiere of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue in

1924, and greatly admired Paul Whiteman’s Jazz Orchestra which hosted the

premiere. In New York Rachmaninov regularly attended concerts by Duke Ellington

and his orchestra, and became interested in jazz, then taking New York by storm.

The Fourth Piano Concerto shows traces of this. On the next page is part of the

second theme of the first movement:

26 Rachmaninov in an interview with H.E. Wortham, Daily Telegraph, 29th April 1933. 27 Maes, ibid., p.273. 28 Maes, ibid., p.271.

14

Gm: ii6/9________________________________ III _________ VII4/#5 III___________ V4/5/#7/9

Notice particularly the chromatically altered 4ths, 5ths, 7ths, and 9ths, which feature

less in his earlier concertos. The improvisatory nature of jazz is also apparent at the

end of the second movement:

This careful elision of a typically Rachmaninov pianism and a freer, more

contemporary American idiom went almost unnoticed with American audiences

and did not have the effect Rachmaninov desired. As Martyn explains, it went

against the lush romantic melodies American audiences had come to associate with

him:

What audiences expected and wanted was a wholly different concerto

from the one Rachmaninoff [sic] wrote; what he gave them is a work of

considerable originality in an unfamiliar vein, a work which, though

uneven, has several memorable moments of real inspiration.29

Where Prokofiev kept aspects of his style, but made his music simpler for American

tastes, Rachmaninov merged aspects of popular American music into his own style,

not to compromise his compositional traits, but to enhance them. Initially the surface

details indicated Prokofiev and Rachmaninov had opposite experiences, yet deeper

analysis shows both composers’ experiences and decisions have several points in

common. Neither experienced an overwhelming reaction from the American critics

29 B. Martyn: Rachmaninoff: Composer, Pianist, Conductor, Scholar Press, 1990, p.308.

15

or public as a result, and the reception of their works suffered detrimentally from

the expectations which the audience had.

Rachmaninov’s Symphony No.3 suffered similarly. A. Peter Brown writes that,

although Rachmaninov used elements from composers including Schoenberg and

Gershwin, the problem with the symphony was that it was

…too Romantic for connoisseurs, but not Romantic enough for

aficionados of the Second Symphony.30

After the performance Rachmaninov wrote in his diary that the audience and critics

‘responded sourly’.31 One of the sternest reviews came from Edwin H. Schloss,

writing in the Philadelphia Record:

The new Rachmaninoff [sic] symphony was a disappointment at least to

one member of the audience. There are echoes of the composer’s earlier

lyric spaciousness of style, but sterility seems largely written in the pages

of the new score… The concert carried this moral: That Serge

Rachmaninoff [sic] did not have another symphony in him.32

Several intensive tours of America left Rachmaninov exhausted. From 1932-9 he left

for Switzerland each summer to escape the emotional and professional pressures of

the American concert environment. It may be this which rendered the Third

Symphony less effective than it otherwise may have been.

Despite this, his compositional style continued the legacy of Tchaikovsky, and his

music contained the lyricism and romanticism Americans enjoyed. In short, he did

not have to compromise stylistically.

30 A. Peter Brown: The Symphonic Repertoire Volume III, Indiana University Press, 2008, p.517.

Who these connoisseurs and aficionados were is unclear. The orchestral scores were not published or

arranged into piano transcriptions, so it was not the public, and the two symphonies were not performed

frequently enough for anyone other than the musicians playing them to know the scores in any great depth. It

is possible that A. Peter Brown is referring to the critics, who would have access to (and time to study in

detail) the intricacies of both works. 31 Rachmaninov’s diary, 12th November 1936. Sourced from A. Peter Brown: ibid., p.517. 32 Philadelphia Record, 11th November 1936.

16

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STOP PRESS! THE ‘LITTLE SCIENTIFIC MAN’ ARRIVES (PERMANENTLY)

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Stravinsky made his American debut in January 1925, seven years after Prokofiev

and Rachmaninov arrived, conducting The Firebird, Pulcinella, and Petrouchka. Since

this study is on Russian émigrés, the period between Stravinsky’s first appearance

on American soil and his subsequent emigration must be somewhat overlooked. It

does, however, have significance when comparing his experiences with those of

Prokofiev and Rachmaninov, and so will be returned to later.

Olin Downes of The Times, on Stravinsky’s first conducting appearance after his

emigration in 1939, wrote:

…all this was done by a little scientific-looking man with eye-glasses, who

rose from time to time on his heels and beat the measure, frequently in

wide windrow motions, to be certain that the orchestra understood him.33

We find ourselves returning to two themes from section two: the American critic’s

tendency to over-describe in order to categorise, and that of understanding. By 1939

Copland was gaining a reputation as an American composer and was composing

film scores for Hollywood; Gershwin had brought the Tin Pan Alley style into

‘serious music’, catalysed the success of the Broadway musical, and had left the

world with Rhapsody in Blue, An American in Paris, and several other ‘American’

works; and Cowell was gaining popularity (and notoriety) with his experimental

works. The question here is not why Downes focussed on Stravinsky’s appearance

instead of the music, but why Americans still felt the need to classify music twenty-

one years after it was triggered because of the political situation.

The tendency to categorise was originally to distil the uncategorisable elements into

a true ‘American’ music. When critics encountered something which they could not

easily classify (but was definitely not something ‘American’), they would describe

the music as inaccessible (‘cerebral’ in Prokofiev’s case). Prokofiev then accused the

Americans of not understanding his music, or his musical outlook. Now that a

national style was taking root and the concert audiences’ musical knowledge was

more advanced, the continued categorisation of the music assumed another

33 Sourced from S. Walsh: Stravinsky: The Second Exile, Knopf Press, 2006, p.57-8.

17

function: to understand the music, the composer, and his intentions, and to form an

aesthetic judgement. The audience now actively wanted to embrace the composer’s

musical outlook and culture.

Stravinsky, like Prokofiev, was extensively caricatured, though benefitted from the

Americans understanding his music more than Prokofiev’s, thanks to Diaghilev

some years before. When touring his Ballet Russes in 1916 Diaghilev introduced the

American audiences to some of Stravinsky’s ballets. The critics noted that there were

pages of Stravinsky’s scores which ‘baffled the ear’, yet unanimously praised for the

visual aspects of the productions.34 This holds the key to illuminating the difference

between Stravinsky and Prokofiev’s experiences after their emigrations.

American audiences first encountered Stravinsky in the context of ballet. His music

was always going to be understood more than Prokofiev’s; instead of watching a

man play the piano, the audiences and critics were presented with a theatrical

display. It was easier to interpret Stravinsky’s scores because the visual stimuli

encouraged the audiences to give his music a narrative (regardless of whether one

was intended). This risked misinterpreting Stravinsky’s intentions – though,

compared to Prokofiev, this was still an advantageous situation. The visual narrative

accompanying Stravinsky’s music would at least ensure that musical intentions

were understood. Indeed, adjectives such as inaccessible or ‘cerebral’ do not appear

in critiques on Stravinsky’s music. It also risked the audiences assuming that such

narratives were always to be found in Stravinsky’s future works.

Stravinsky’s ballets were already gaining popularity more than twenty years before

his emigration in 1939. The primitivist aspects of The Rite of Spring not only captured

the American’s imagination, but gave validity and justification to the dissonance

and rhythmic drive in Stravinsky’s score which generated such criticism in

Prokofiev’s compositions. That’s not to say that Stravinsky and Prokofiev’s musical

styles were the same; there are similarities in unifying rhythmic drive with striking

harmony, but each has an individual compositional voice. Yet it is strange that when

accompanied by a visual narrative, one escapes accusations of his music being

inaccessible; the other, despite his music sharing many traits, was criticised for being

incomprehensible. And since Stravinsky’s music reached America before

Prokofiev’s, positing that the American tastes had changed since Prokofiev’s music

was introduced is not credible. Stravinsky did not have to compromise

compositionally or ‘sell his soul to the devil’; he had already established a reputation

34

van Norman Baer: The Art of Enchantment: Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes 1909-1929, St. Martin’s Press,

1988, p.127.

18

with an American audience before he started composing in the United States after

his emigration.

Parallels between Stravinsky and Prokofiev’s experiences and compositional

practices are few and far between. Vlad argues that despite America having a less

progressive outlook than Paris:

…Stravinsky’s musical personality was by now substantially formed and

was therefore less likely to be influenced by his new environment. But his

natural adaptability, indeed his imperious ‘urge’ to adapt himself to his

surroundings, had lost none of its force. America may not have had any

profound influence on his style, but it certainly had a superficial influence,

and gave a characteristically American slant to several of his works. This

is evident in the very first work he wrote in the United States, a short

Tango for piano… The distinguishing feature of the new work is an

almost Gershwin-like light-heartedness, totally at variance with the inner

meaning implicit in the earlier pieces.35

Stravinsky’s compositional practice certainly did not abate. He became interested in

jazz musician Woody Herman and agreed to write a composition for him and his

band. After heavily researching jazz techniques he produced the Ebony Concerto in

1945. The work is a landmark in Stravinsky’s oeuvre in that, as Rachmaninov had

done years before, he successfully mixed his own musical voice with influences from

the surrounding musical environment. The first seven bars are shown on the next

page.

35 R. Vlad: Stravinsky, Oxford University Press, 1978, p.124.

19

The rhythms and exchanges across the horn section mark the music out as being

distinctly tinted with jazz elements, and in later bars Stravinsky calls for Harmon

mutes and plungers for the brass. The sound Stravinsky creates is similar to that of

Glen Miller’s band, who had toured New York a few years before. Yet the melodic

shape of the second tenor saxophone is not unlike those found in the Octet for Wind

Instruments composed over twenty years earlier; and as we saw with Prokofiev, the

harmonic vocabulary still marks the music out as being Stravinsky’s (A, Db, C, E on

the second quaver beat of the saxophones’ entry, for instance).

Vlad, commenting on the Ebony Concerto, believes Stravinsky goes further than

merely mixing elements of his own style with that of jazz:

…it is a genuine jazz work, while at the same time it is authentic

Stravinsky. He does not adapt himself to jazz; rather he takes it over and

gives it his own cachet, inventing it afresh without straining its

resources.36

If one agrees with Vlad that Stravinsky reinvented jazz, then parallels with

Rachmaninov’s compositional experience begin to wane. Rachmaninov did not

reinvent an American style – he retained his own voice but incorporated elements of

36 R. Vlad: ibid.,p.128.

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jazz. It is easy to see why Vlad would propose that Stravinsky ‘invented [jazz]

afresh’; Stravinsky’s research into the genre, as well as the new performing forces he

was writing for would support Vlad’s proposal. Stravinsky combined elements of

his style with jazz more than Rachmaninov had done – partly due to the performing

forces. Stravinsky was presented with an ensemble of musicians already established

in the jazz world (both as an ensemble and individuals), so the elision of a personal

style with the jazz idiom would prove more successful. He stated that

…the Ebony Concerto is my contribution to the blues, and the flute, harp,

and clarinet music of the slow movement of my Symphony in Three

Movements is my gift to boogie-woogie.37

The blues influence is certainly evident in the Ebony Concerto – the frequent solo

breaks for the clarinet, drone accompaniments, and writing such as this:

The ‘boogie-woogie’ influence on the Symphony in Three Movements is also vivid.

Below are four bars of the piano, cello, and double bass part, showing the ‘walking

bassline’ for which ‘boogie-woogie’ was famed:

37 R. Craft: Conversations with Igor Stravinsky, Faber, 1959, p.356.

21

In both Stravinsky and Prokofiev’s American experiences, we see a progressive

simplification towards less dissonant and more approachable music.

Stravinsky appeared to stress his archaic neo-classical trend very

strongly… Over these ten years he was steadily simplifying his music,

stripping away the trappings and ornaments, and giving up not only the

frequent use of polytonality but in many instances even the polyharmonic

devices he had begun to use in his early masterpieces. This particular

phase of diatonic simplification – and indeed his neoclassicism generally –

reached its climax in the three-act opera The Rake’s Progress.38

The Prelude to The Rake’s Progress is below. It is almost unrecognisable as

Stravinsky’s work, since there are few glimpses of the striking harmonies that

defined his music years earlier.

38 Vlad, ibid., p.165.

22

Both Prokofiev and Stravinsky’s continued simplification culminated in an opera:

The Love for Three Oranges for Prokofiev and The Rake’s Progress with Stravinsky.

Although each composer’s music became less dissonant, less polyrhythmic, and less

aggressive, it was for different reasons. With Prokofiev it was in order to be

understood more by the American audience and critics. He wanted to be recognised

as a serious composer and so (to a certain extent) reduced the elements of his music

which attracted the most criticism. Stravinsky already had a reputation upon his

emigration – his process of reducing the dissonance in his music was because of a

need to be continually coming up with something different. Throughout his career

he had been at the forefront of the musical and social scenes. Always reassessing his

compositional aesthetic and publicising his views in journals and newspapers was a

way of maintaining this position. The Americans would always associate him with

The Rite of Spring, Petrouchka, and the Symphony of Psalms; going against his earlier

works by stripping down his music, eschewing polytonal and polyharmonic

devices, and simplifying his harmony was a way of staying fresh in the American

musical environment.

Like Prokofiev and Rachmaninov, Stravinsky, too, had experienced isolation.

Strauss commented that Stravinsky was ‘isolated from Europe by living in America,

and isolated from America by living within a small European émigré community.’39

Strauss also posits that it was this isolation which led to ‘a radical reorientation of

his music.’40 This, however, is more problematic. There were many factors which

altered Stravinsky’s compositional style, not least the exposure to a different culture.

Indeed, Strauss’s hypothesis that it was isolation which led to the change in his

compositional style is perhaps somewhat misguided given that Stravinsky spent

much of his time in the United States in prominent musical and social circles,

particularly after moving near to Hollywood. Rather, it would be more accurate to

propose that Stravinsky’s compositional style altered regularly in order to remain

fresh, in order to stay at the forefront of the musical scene in America, and in order

to satisfy his need to be continually viewed as breaking (and challenging)

conventions. His early success relied upon playing with audiences’ expectations –to

continually replicate that success he had to regularly break conventions, and remain

in the prominent musical and social circles to understand precisely what those

expectations were, so he could play upon them in his works.

There is one final aspect to Stravinsky’s emigration markedly different from the

experiences of his fellow Russians. Stravinsky gained American citizenship in 1945.

39 J. Strauss: Stravinsky’s Late Music, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p.2. 40 J. Strauss: ibid., p.1.

23

Shortly after he agreed a publishing deal with Boosey and Hawkes – a deal which

was to prove important financially:

[It] allowed Stravinsky to make new versions of his earlier scores where

he wanted to use his newly acquired American nationality to safeguard

his copyright position.41

This ensured a more reliable income, and allowed revised editions of his works to be

published, often with few alterations. Stravinsky had been clever: the increased

circulation of his works throughout America was another way of ensuring that he

was always a prominent individual in the American music scene.

_______________________________________________

CONCLUSIONS

_______________________________________________

Prokofiev and Rachmaninov both arrived into an American musical environment

with a problem: the political situation had triggered a mass rejection of German

musicians and the hitherto popular German instrumental music of Beethoven and

Brahms. Lacking a musical identity to compete with French, German, Italian, and

Russian music led American critics to categorise the music they heard, often

assessing it against the idiosyncratic view of the composer’s homeland. Prokofiev

suffered from this need for categorisation (in the hope of distilling the

uncategorisable elements into something which the Americans could call their own).

Prokofiev music, not falling into a particular category was labelled as inaccessible

and ‘cerebral’, and he was labelled ‘the Bolshevik pianist’; a label he had left Russia

to avoid, and one which would prove detrimental to his efforts to become

recognised as a serious composer in America. This led to Prokofiev labelling the

American musical scene as ‘conservative and narrow minded’. Rachmaninov,

having to undertake a heavy performing schedule to support his family, played the

music which the Americans wanted, much to Prokofiev’s disgust. Prokofiev refused

to play the popular works, instead choosing his own works, which had often drawn

criticism for their dissonance and incessant rhythmic drive.

41 E. Walter-White: Stravinsky: The Composer and his Works, Faber Press, 1966, p.99.

24

As a composer Prokofiev had to compromise and make his music more accessible

for the American audience, in order to continue playing his works. Rachmaninov,

who had compromised as a performer, still unashamedly retained his compositional

style in the few works he composed in America, choosing to elide elements of jazz

and other American styles into his works. Yet neither Prokofiev nor Rachmaninov

experienced an overwhelming reaction as a result – the reactions of both composer’s

works suffered from the expectations the audiences had. Arriving some years later,

Stravinsky’s experience post-emigration is markedly different, not least because he

had already gained a reputation in America thanks to Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes tour

in 1916. His music escaped being labelled as inaccessible because it had been

accompanied by a visual narrative in the ballets which, by the nature of their stories,

had given justification and validity to the dissonance and rhythmic drive which was

to elicit such criticism in Prokofiev’s works.

As Rachmaninov had done, Stravinsky chose to elide aspects of American music

(particularly jazz) into his own compositional voice. His attempts were more

successful than Rachmaninov’s, though only because he was writing for specific jazz

ensembles rather than traditional instrumental combinations as Rachmaninov had.

Whilst on the surface Stravinsky and Prokofiev’s emigration experiences exhibit a

number of differences, both composers underwent a period of continually

simplifying their music by using less dissonance and reducing their use of

polyrhythms, although for different reasons. With Prokofiev it was necessary in

order to eschew the criticism of his music being too complex and inaccessible. By

making his works simpler it was more likely that he would be acknowledged as a

serious composer. With Stravinsky it was a more personal need: it was necessary to

be constantly reinventing and challenging expectations so that he remained a

prominent figure in the American musical world. He did not have to simplify his

music to become recognised as Prokofiev had to, since he had already gained his

reputation from Diaghilev’s tour some years before.

The final conclusion, then, is that the American musical environment had a

multifarious effect upon Prokofiev, Rachmaninov, and Stravinsky. Despite the many

differences between the three men’s émigré experiences, the many parallels link to

one central idea: a need to be understood.