Stravinsky and Gesualdo’s Mo(nu)ment[1]
Claudia Vincis and Paolo Dal Molin
Even at
the time of Rake’s Progress, little
was known of the works of Carlo Gesualdo. If the darkest and most mysterious
secrets of the murderer/madrigalist’s adventurous biography were the object of
centuries of constant attention, the rigorous study of his oeuvre came only
after 350 years of misunderstandings. In fact, numerous early twentieth century
revivals of composers and genres of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
depended notoriously on a fortuitous convergence of research, musical
production,
performance
and composition. Something similar can be seen with the “Prince of Venosa”. His
modern ‘cult’ goes back to the beginning of the ‘fifties, when collection of
documents began for the two musicological undertakings which disseminated it,
the edition of Sämtliche Werke (SW)[2]
and Gesualdo. The Man and his Music.[3] The first replaced the few existing
sporadic anthologies, and finally rivaled such initiatives as the monumenta of the Istituto Italiano per la Storia della Musica[4];
the second - the labor of one of the curators of the complete works - still
remains today the principal book of reference.
Igor Stravinsky culminated his own visitation
of Gesualdo - which will be the subject of this study - with the completion of
three motets of the Sacrarum cantionum
liber primus of six and seven voices, that is, the Illumina nos (1957), the Da
pacem Domine and Assumpta est Maria (1959),
and with the re-composition of three madrigals in the Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD Annum (1960) - Asciugate i begli occhi (book V, VIV), Ma tu, cagion di quella (second part of Poiché l’avida sete; book V, XVIII) and Beltà, poi che t’assenti (book VI,
II). It is convenient first of all to go
back to the occasions of his encounters with Gesualdo, and the sources and the
literature that engaged him. The writings, signed or co-signed by Robert Craft
and Stravinsky - both initiated readers of Gesualdo
(the High Fidelity edition of
September of 1961 did not exaggerate when it presented Craft as “our prime
authority on Carlo Gesualdo of Venosa”) - and the documents conserved in the
Igor Stravinsky Collection of the Paul Sacher Stiftung of Basel (PSS)[5]
allow us to confirm those facts that Erik
Walter White and Roman Vlad have spoken of in well researched listings.[6]
As others would tend to
conclude, it is easy to observe that Stravinsky’s thoughts on Gesualdo’s
original text became explicit in this re-elaboration. (By now however, such
correct and well-considered judgments are like a circulating form ready to be
filled out and signed.) We have therefore attempted to illustrate the
Stravinskian means and the ends, comparing its assumptions with the image of
Gesualdo in the American and imported German musicology of the ‘fifties and
‘sixties. It is therefore not expected for this examination of Monumentum and the Tres sacrae cantiones to (by means of catch-all categories) retrace Stravinsky’s interventions on the originals
back to a record of operations and so to refine their lack
of systematicality or enlighten the analytical naivety of our historical
approach. Neither is it our intention to pursue the umpteenth funambulesque comparison between the
Gesualdo-Stravinsky works and that postmodern
carousel which, despite the composer’s intentions, has become Pulcinella. It has seemed more urgent for
us to elucidate the passages in the writings and the conversations concerning
Gesualdo (indicated henceforth by the alphanumeric acronyms in Table 1) so that
finally the essentials would be placed in perspective.
A Robert Craft, preface to Don Carlo Gesualdo, Illumina nos. From the book of ‘Sacrae Cantiones’ for six and seven
voices. The missing parts composed by Igor Stravinsky, London, Boosey and
Hawkes, 1957. Implicit bibliography: see C (Einstein, Gray-Heseltine, Vatielli
and La Polifonia Cinquecentesca e i
Primordi del Secolo XVII commented by Pannain).
B Igor
Stravinsky, Robert Craft, “Gesualdo,” Conversations
with Igor Stravinsky, New York, Doubleday, London, Faber & Faber, 1959,
pp. 32-34. This text was clearly edited
before the summer of 1959.
C Robert Craft,
‘Gesualdo (Don) Carlo, principe di
Venosa,’ Encyclopédie Fasquelle de la Musique, vol. II, edited by François Michel with the
collaboration of François Lesure and Vladamir Fédorov, Paris, Fasquelle, 1959. Catalogue of the works in the entry (titles have
been standardized):
- Sacred
vocal music: Sacrarum cantionum liber
primus. 5vv (Naples, 1603); Sacrarum
cantionum liber primus, 6, 7vv (Naples,
1603); Responsoria et alia ad Officium
Hebdomadae Sanctae 6vv (Naples,
1611) including the Benedictus Dominus
Deus Israel and «1 messe» [mistaken for the Miserere mei, Deus]; In te, Domine,
speravi. 4vv (Salmi delle compiete de diversi musici
napoletani, Naples, 1620).
-
Secular vocal music beyond the six books of madrigals: All’ombra degl’allori, canzonetta, 5vv and Come vivi cor mio, canzonetta, 5vv (Pomponio Nenna, Ottavo Libro de’Madrigali a 5, Naples,
161811); «1 de madrigaux à 6v. (VII[XVIII],
1626) [Madrigali, 6vv, ed. M Effrem
(Napoli 1626)]; il ne reste que le quintus de ce volume, au Lic. Mus. de Bologne [1 of the six-voice
madrigals… ; only the quintus
remains of this volume, at the Lic. Mus. of Bologna]». - Instrumental: Canzon francese, in 4 voices, for keyboard
(GB-Lbl Add. 30491). Sources pointed
out in the entry: editions of the six books of madrigals (Ferrara, 1594a 1594b
1595 1596; Gesualdo 1611a 1611b; Genova 1613) and collection of letters of
Gesualdo, Alfonso Fonatanelli, Leonora d’Este conserved at the State Archives
of Modena. Modern Editions: SW i-VII. La Polifonia Cinquecentesca e i Primordi del Secolo XVII. Musica Sacra
e Spirituale di Gian Domenico Montella, Giov. Maria Trabaci, Carlo Gesualdo, edited
by Guido Pannain, Milan, Ricordi, 1934 (L’Oratorio
dei Filippini e la Scuola Musicale di Napoli Volume I; Istituzioni e Monumenti dell’Arte Musicale Italiana, Vol. V). Bibliography: Ferdinand Keiner, Die Madrigale Gesualdos von Venosa, Leipzig,
Breitkopf & Härtel, 1914. Cecil Gray, Philippe Heseltine, Carlo
Gesualdo: Prince of Venosa, Musician and Murderer, London, Paul Kegan
Trench Trubner, 1926. Francesco
Vatielli, Il principe di Venosa e Leonora
d’Este, Milan, F.lli Bocca, 1941. Alfred Einstein, The Italian
Madrigal, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1949, 3 vol, pp.
688-717. Remo Giazotto, ‘Poesia del Tasso in morte di Maria
Gesualdo,’ Rassegna Musicale, XVIII
(1948), pp.15-28. George Ruffin Marshall, The
Harmonic Laws in the Madrigals of Carlo Gesualdo, Ph.D. Dissertation, New
York University, December 1955 [dated in January of 1956; “Univ. of Michigan,
D Robert Craft, preface to Carlo
Gesualdo di Venosa (1560-1613), Tres
Sacrae Cantiones, Completed by Igor Stravinsky, London, Boosey & Hawkes,
1960. This text corresponds in large part, except for some revision, to writing
A.
E Igor Stravinsky,
Robert Craft, ‘Chromaticism’, Memories
and Commentaries, New York, Doubleday, London, Faber & Faber; 1960, pp.
115-17. Implicit bibliography: Edward E.
Lowinsky, Secret chromatic art in the
Netherlands motet, translated from the German by Carl Buchman, New York,
Columbia University Press, 1946 [PSS IS B 1157]. Edward E. Lowinsky, ‘Adrian
Willaert’s Chromatic Duo’ Re-Examined’, Tijdschrift
voor Muziekwetenschap, XVIII (1956-1959), pp. 1-36 [PSS IS A 27]. Edward E. Lowinsky, ‘Matthaeus Gretier’s
‘Fortuna’: An Experiment in Chromaticism and in Musical Iconography,’ The Musical Quarterly, XLII/4 (1956),
pp. 500-519 and XLIII/1 (1957), pp. 68-85.
F Igor
Stravinsky, preface to Edward E. Lowinsky, Tonality
and Atonality in Sixteenth-Century Music, Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1961 (H, 106-108). Dated Hollywood, January 27,1961. [PSS IS B
90]. Stravinsky’s text mentions many
passages of Lowinsky’s in the following
order: chapter 1 ‘Frottola and Villancico’ with reference to p. 14; chapter VI
‘Tonality in Dance Music’ citing from p. 66; chapter IV ‘Floating Tonality and
Atonality in Sixteenth-Century Music’ with reference to pp. 46-50; chapter VII
‘Tonality and Statistics’ citing from p. 74; chapter V ‘Consolidation of
Tonality in Balletto and Lute Ayre’ citing from p. 61; chapter II ‘From
Dunstable to Josquin and Palestrina’ with reference to p.15; chapter I citing
from p. 14; chapter II with reference to p. 26; chapter VI citing from p. 70.
G Robert Craft, ‘The Murderous Prince of
Madrigalists,’ High Fidelity, 11/9
(September 1961), pp. 54-56, 130-131.
H Igor Stravinsky, Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments, New York,
Doubleday, London, Faber & Faber, 1962, pp. 104-108. A previous version of the dialogue appeared
in the concert program of the world premiere of Monumentum (Venice, Festival Internazionale di Musica Contemporanea
della Biennale, September 27, 1960).
I Igor Stravinsky,
‘Gesualdo di Venosa: New Perspectives,’ preface to Glenn Watkins, Gesualdo The Man and His Music, London,
Oxford University Press, 1973, dated Hollywood, 7 March 1968 and already
published in Retrospectives and
Conclusions, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1969, pp.107-116.
Table 1: List of the writings and conversations of Igor
Stravinsky and Robert Craft entirely dedicated to, or with notable passages
about, Carlo Gesualdo, excluding the press releases signed by Craft for Sunset,
Columbia and Odyssey records (citation, [commentary], explicit or implicit
bibliography and call-numbers of the musicological literature archived in the
Igor Stravinsky Collection of the Paul Sacher Stiftung).
On the
West Coast
My own passion dates
from a chance view of a friend’s transcription of Aestimatus Sum. Seeking further examples, I learned that only
a few pieces existed in modern reprint and that these few were to be found
badly edited, defunct publications. The Library of Congress owned the 1613 complete
score edition, however, and this could be microfilmed and rewritten in a more
familiar notation. I did just that, and
during a period of about a year, “transcribing” Gesualdo became a
suspense-charged late-night diversion (R. Craft, G).
Beginning
in 1954 the Southern California Chamber Music
Society offered the city of Los Angeles its famous Monday Evening Concerts directed until 1971 by Lawrence Morton.[7]
Evolved from the Evenings on the Roof (1939-1954),
to which Stravinsky dedicated the Three
songs from William Shakespeare on the occasion of the sixteenth and final
series, the new Monday concerts re-proposed the well-worn formula of the
cross-section programs: contemporary music (with numerous premières), standard
repertoire (Bach cantatas above all) and ‘pre-classic’ literature (even better
if unknown).[8]
At least in the program of the first three seasons, the pioneering performances
of the Gesualdo Madrigalists by
Robert Craft[9]
(then transformed into a recording project,[10]
parallel initially to that of the complete works of Anton Webern[11])
figures, along with Machaut, Crecquillon, Obrect, Josquin, Tallis, Monteverdi,
and others.
September 20, 1954: Dylan Thomas Memorial
Program (authors and titles as in the concert program).
Andrea Gabrieli, Ricercare del
12° tono; Henry Purcell, Funeral Music
for Queen Mary (March, Anthem, Canzona); Adrian
Willaert, Ricercar for Instruments; Heinrich Schütz, Symphonia Sacra:
“Fili mi, Absalon”; Carlo Gesualdo, Six Madrigals for five voices (Moro
lasso, Itene o miei sospiri, Io tacero, Invan dunque o crudele,
Luci serene e chiare, Dolcissima mia vita); A word about Dylan
Thomas (1914-1953) [by] Aldous Huxley; Three Poems by Dylan Thomas, recorded by
himself (Poem in October, In My Craft or Sullen Art, Do not go
gentle into that good night); Igor Stravinsky, In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (Dirge-Canon
and Song, “Do not go gentle into that good night”), first
performance; Johann Sebastian Bach, Cantata no.106: “Gottes Zeit ist die allerbeste Zeit”.
October 17, 1955[12]
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Piano Trio in C major,
K 549; Carlo Gesualdo, Five Madrigals (Dolcissima mia vita, O
dolorosa gioia, Tu m’uccidi o crudele, Ecco moriro dunque, Moro
lasso); Some comments on the Court of Ferrara and Gesualdo [by] Aldous
Huxley; Carlo Gesualdo, Five Madrigals (Ardita zanzaretta, Tu piangi, Ardo per te, Meraviglia
d’amore, Itene o miei sospiri); Renaissance Instrumental Music (Josquin Des Pres, Royal Fanfare ; Luzzasco
Luzzaschi, Canzona ; Heinrich Isaac, Canonic song; Henry Purcell,
Funeral Music for the Queen Mary; Andra Gabrieli, Ricercar).
February 4,1957
Compere, Missa Alles Regrets ; Stockhausen, Music
for 5 Wind Instruments ; Verg, Canon on a Schoenberg Tone Row ;
Gagliano, Madrigals for 5 voices ; Gesualdo, Responses for 6 voices,
Bach, Cantata No 152:“Tritt auf die Glaubensbahn”.[13]
All
of the madrigals in the pageant in memory of Dylan Thomas (none of which were
repeated the following year) were published in a widely circulated edition by
Wilhelm Weismann (8 Madrigale für fünfstimmigen Chor, Leipzig, Peters,
1931), later the editor of the first six volumes of the Sämtliche Werke.[14]
For the second festival Craft and Morton prepared a transcription of books
four, five and six following the example of the Partitura delli sei libri
de’ madrigali a cinque voci (Genova, Pavoni, 1613) preserved at the Library
of Congress in Washington.[15]
Ruth Adams, a musician and student at the University of California -
photographed with Stravinsky in the control room of the Radio Recorders of Los
Angeles during a recording of the madrigal ensemble in May of 1955[16]
- was working on the Responsoria.
Some vague information on performance
practice is found in the preface to Glen Watkins’ Gesualdo where he took or molded the opinions of the gran notabili in clarification of the
adopted criteria, and thus in support of the validity of the result. The
madrigals were performed a cappella
and without embellishments, not with full but sotto voce, and with dynamic gradation searching for such perfect
intonation as would justify the bold dissonance - as Zarlino, Cerone, Mazzocchi
and Padre Martini (I, viii-ix) would
have reported, prescribed or deduced.
Even in the terminological confusion an ideal of clarity is expressed
here which few among the most talented singers throughout Los Angeles could
possibly pursue. Marilyn Horne - the diva to whom Stravinsky would later
dedicate his Two Sacred Songs of Hugo
Wolf (1968), and invited by Paul Hindemith to sing the most noted madrigal
of the Prince, at the Festival of Vienna with Christa Ludwig, Walter Berry and
others - wrote to Morton on February 24 of 1957: «Can’t you just hear all our vibrati swinging against each other when we
should be singing a heavenly well-tuned Gesualdo chord.»[17]
1952-1962
Stravinsky was excited about the
“Prince of Venosa” at least from 1952 (A),
one year earlier than the Gesualdo
Madrigalists began rehearsing in his residence in Hollywood.[18] The idea of recomposing some madrigals must
have occurred at the latest in 1954 (H,
104) on the evidently too restricted scale of the Peters’ 8 Madrigali. It was then
taken up again in 1959 when the Sämtliche Madrigale für fünf Stimmen (SW
I-VI) had been in circulation for two years, although the transcriptions of
the last three books of Morton and Craft’s work had already been in circulation
for four. In the meantime the composer and assistant entered into possession of
a considerable part, if not all, of the sacred opus of Gesualdo.(A) Fourteen of the nineteen Sacrae
cantiones for five voices (Naples,
Costantino Vitale, 1603) were found in a modern edition in the first volume of L’Oratorio
dei Filippini e la Scuola musicale di Napoli edited by Guido Pannain.[19]
In 1959 the photocopies arrived of the remaining five motets from Italy and of
the Responsoria et alia (Gesualdo, Gian Giacomo Carlino, 1611), and, in
the fall of the next year, of the Sacrae cantiones for 6 and 7 voices (Naples,
Costantino Vitali, 1603).[20]
(A) As Pannain had warned, the Filippini
copy of the Vitali printing was missing the books for the sextus and bass parts which were irretrievably lost.
For the occasion of the concert at
the Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice on September 13,1956 which was the premiere
of Canticum sacrum, Stravinsky thought of including the Illumina nos in six voices completed ex novo.[21]
Alessandro Piovesan, director of the
Festival Internazionale di Musica Contemporanea of the Biennale,[22]
was however, not
persuaded by the proposal. The work on the «Sacra Cantione» then
became delayed but not the visit to the «unpicturesquely squalid» town
of Gesualdo. (A)[23]
In June of the following year, the month of the inauguration of the Gesualdo
complete works, Boosey & Hawkes printed the Illumina nos (“the missing parts composed by Stravinsky” who had
completed them in Hollywood on May the 5th) with an invaluable introduction by
Craft.[24]
Preparing the ninth volume of the complete works the young and adventurous
musicologist Glenn Watkins noted in the compilation two single pieces: the
canonic motets Da pacem Domine and Assumpta est Maria.[25]
This must have been in the spring of 1959. The discovery (or, rather, the
confirmation) of Gesualdo’s attempt at the standard par excellence of
speculative music - i.e. the canon - was destined to erase any suspicions of
contrapuntal inexperience: the frontispiece of the seventeenth-century
printing, which Pannain had already edited in semi-diplomatic transcription, also
contained a significant clin d’oeil
(«singulari artificio compositae, summa aurium animorumque oblectatione
concinuntur»).[26]
Watkins wrote to Craft[27]
and the first response was a letter of congratulations which, without doubt,
met his expectations; having deduced the second part according to the
prescription, it remained to invent the bass.[28]
That Stravinsky could have burdened himself with this remained likely but not
certain for the next two months. Three weeks had not passed from sending the
transparencies with the transcribed parts and the resolved canons,[29]
to the 27th or 28th of September when in Venice, the two motets were completed.[30]
Shortly thereafter Stravinsky undertook the final pilgrimage to the sites
of the Prince’s dynasty, to the D’Este Library of Modena and to Ferrara (the
cities in which Gesualdo stayed between 1594 and 1597), then to Naples where he
conducted a concert at the Teatro San Carlo before returning to Venice. In that
autumn he ordered volumes IV, V and VI of the Weismann edition which were
delivered to him in November.[31]
Looking over to the two last of them again on February of 1960, the project of
the re-elaboration of the madrigals finally took form (H,104). By the 20th, writing to Mario Labroca,[32]
Stravinsky spoke of the Monumentum as
if it were complete and proposed its absolute premiere for the Biennale’s
Festival of the following autumn.[33]
The homage to Gesualdo was performed the 27th of September 1960 (four years
after the misunderstanding about the Neapolitan with the late Piovesan)
together with the Symphony of Psalms
as well as the Opus 6 of Anton Webern and Alban Berg which Craft conducted in
the first part of the concert. Two
months later George Balanchine presented a choreography of them at the New York
City Ballet.[34]
For the occasion of the four hundredth
anniversary of the birth of Gesualdo (1560)[35]
the Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD annum. Three madrigals
recomposed for instruments and the
set of the Tres sacrae cantiones. Completed by Igor Stravinsky[36]
were finally published by Boosey and Hawkes with a new preface by Craft.[37]
Stravinsky himself asked the London publisher to lay out the titles in new modern
printing in the same «luxury of engraved frontispieces and decorative frames»
which Gesualdo demanded from Vitale and Carlino to emulate «the splendor of the
ducal printer [of Ferrara]» (Figures 1-3).[38]
From the “Musician and Murderer” to the “Man and his
Music”.
The coincidence of the
Stravinsky-Gesualdo encounter, the programs of the Monday Evening Concerts, the Gesualdo records directed by Craft,
and the Sämtliche Werke has finally been cleared up: the works ‘d‘après
Gesualdo’ evidently originated at the heart of a manifold development. When Stravinsky
began the Monumentum, not only were
there two complete editions of the madrigals, but in particular the genre
counted a number of studies, some of indisputably authoritative quality. Without
doubt the most advanced of these until the ‘60s was the chapter on Gesualdo in The
Italian Madrigal by Alfred
Einstein (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1949, 3 vol.) and the
dissertation of George Ruffin Marshall, a pupil of Gustave Reese, entitled The
Harmonic Laws in the Madrigals of Carlo Gesualdo (New York University,
December 1955). Einstein’s monumental study was the source of many shared
beliefs about text setting, form and mannerism in the music of Gesualdo,
although Craft only explicitly cited one of its secondary comments on sacred
works.(A) Marshall’s thesis, listed in the bibliography
of the Encyclopédie Fasquelle’ entry
(C), pointed to the madrigal’s neglected counterpoint.
Figure 1: Frontispiece of the Printing of
the Sacrarum cantionum liber primus for six and seven voices
(Naples, Costantino Vitale, 1603)
Figure 2: Frontispiece of the Tres
sacrae cantiones (London, Boosey & Hawkes, 1960).
Figura 3: Frontispiece of the Monumentum
pro Gesualdo di Venosa (London, Boosey & Hawkes, 1960)
The research on the sacred output did not in fact make any progress
beyond the fifth volume of the Istituzioni e Monumenti dell’Arte Musicale
Italiana (see above). Since
Pannain certainly would have abstained
from transcribing an incomplete text and, in any case, turned to the subject
twenty years later, it was Stravinsky and his entourage who were the first to
lay hands on the Responsoria and the Sacrarum cantionum liber primus for six and seven voices.[39]
With the publication of the Illumina nos by Boosey & Hawkes (1957)
and the commission for the second of three volumes directed by François
Michel the opportunity presented itself to reveal the state of the art. In his
essentially biographical article for the Fasquelle
(C), Craft devoted a quite original
paragraph to the Responsoria. He was
not the first to write on the complete collection, seeing that Ruth Adams’s
thesis, The Responsoria of Carlo Gesualdo (University of California, Los
Angeles, 1957), dated from two years earlier; yet he would certainly have
reached a much broader public. After presenting some clues on the sources and
their delayed examination, the introduction to the seven-voice motet (A)[40]
dwelled on the circumstances which saw Stravinsky as a protagonist in the
exhumation of the Illumina nos (if
not simply of all the six- and seven-voice motets) and led to the Columbia
recording.[41] Needless to say that the role of Morton and
the catalysm of Craft himself were all obscured to the complete advantage of
the Maestro. In the ensuing writings the more anecdotal contents were dismissed
and the memorial value exalted (that is the homage of the great contemporary
figure to one of the great historic composers), while no echo remained of the
spirit of discovery and the atmosphere of renaissance.
(B and D)
Further to the editions by Pannain and Weismann,
Einstein and Marshall’s studies, and the consultation with Ruth Adams, Craft
and Stravinsky collected what was for the time, a relatively exhaustive corpus
of Gesualdian literature from Cecil Gray and Philippe Heseltine’s ambiguous
monograph Carlo Gesualdo: Prince of Venosa, Musician and Murderer (London,
Paul Kegan Trench Trubner, 1926[42])
to Francesco Vatielli’s booklet Il principe di Venosa e Leonora d’Este (Milano, F.lli
Bocca, 1941).[43] On the first of December 1955 Stravinsky
ordered a copy of the doctoral thesis of the Riemannian Ferdinand Keiner, Die
Madrigale Gesualdos von Venosa (Leipzig, Breitkopf & Härtel, 1914),[44] which was an essential reading for various generations
of scholars, with an impressive number of (rather questionable)
transcriptions. Books and specific
articles went side by side with numerous other musicological studies such as the famous Secret Chromatic Art in the Netherlands Motet
(New York, Columbia University Press, 1946)[45]
and Tonality and Atonality in Sixteenth-Century Music (Berkeley-Los
Angeles, University of California Press, 1961),[46]
both among the works of Edward Elias Lowinsky, one highly annotated by Craft,
the other prefaced by Stravinsky.
This sector of Stravinsky’s library appeared to be
always updated from constantly renewed attention or by generous recognition
from other scholars in sending complementary copies of their work. From the imposing article which Weismann
published at the conclusion of his editorial work, through to the influential Gesualdo
ovvero assassinio a cinque voci: storia tragica italiana del secolo XVI di
Alberto Consiglio (Napoli, Berisio, 1967), it reaches the monograph Gesualdo. The Man and His Music (London,
Oxford University Press, 1973). Stravinsky not only wrote the preface of
Watkins’ book, dated Hollywood, March 7, 1968, but had followed its genesis
from afar.[47]
It is worth noting that,
Aldous Huxley, Stravinsky’s «walking encyclopedia» in the American period/years
before 1963, and also himself an enthusiastic Gesualdian of the moment, was one
of the protagonists of the events of the 16th and 17th of October of 1955 and
translated the texts of the madrigals for the concerts and the records as well
as some paragraphs from Vatielli’s volume.[48] Charged with the reconstruction of the
contexts and the psychological profile of the musician, the writer delved into a
fairly extensive article in 1956 (“Gesualdo:
Variations on a Musical Theme”),[49]
a series of data and comments which he had already presented in the public
conferences and in some letters.[50]
Scholarship apart, the writing is strongly indebted to Gray-Heseltine, Vatielli
and Einstein. Moreover
it confirms the old prejudices on the art of a troubled man and contains
quite a grotesque and contemporizing preamble which
almost makes one long for the genuine meschalinic associations between Gesualdo
and late Schoenberg found in The Doors of Perception (1954).
«Composing Instrumental Translations»
In the list of Stravinsky’s works from
the new edition of the Grove, Monumentum appears with Pulcinella and the Greeting Prelude to Happy Birthday among the orchestral works
(along with the Concerto, Movements etc.) instead of the
‘arrangements’ such as the Choral-Variationen über das Weihnachtslied ‘Vom
Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her’, the Tres sacrae cantiones, the Two
Sacred Songs of the Spanisches Liederbuch of Hugo Wolf and the last unpublished Four Preludes and Fugues of
the Wohltemperiertes Clavier.[51] The catalographic distinction between the
three madrigals «recomposed for
instruments» and, for example, the Bachian Bearbeitung von Einige canonische
Veränderungen depends upon internal criteria.[52]
The level of elaboration of the original is in no way inferior In the latter
but the many readings of Weismann’s diplomatic transcription (the score, the
common time signature “C”, and the note values are those of the Molinaro
printing), which Stravinsky modernized in a coherent way, are re-barred,
re-metered, compressed, and cut or developed with new inserts.
Nevertheless, the
transcription for instruments is a salient aspect of the Monumentum and imposed certain criteria in the selection of the
originals from the last three books of madrigals. Since Stravinsky wanted to
work with a potentially “transliterative” model which would not require the
least modification whatever to render stylistically instrumental what was not
so, there was an absence of any type of specifically vocal rhythmic profile
(successions of sixteenths or combinations with rapid values) to limit the
number of suitable madrigals. The various combinations of the ensemble resources
were employed to individuate the parts of the form and the alternation of types
of writing. Except for certain
exceptions, the results, if still not the intentions, are plain to see, and not
at all unusual. Operating instead on lower formal levels, the orchestration
often brings the texture and voice leading into a new layering.
The transcription for winds and strings of
the madrigals omits the text, the basis and assurance of the formal logic, that
is, the
correlation between the poetic and
musical structure.[53]
A historical justification arose a
posteriori in Otto Kinkeldey, probably via Watkins:
I mentioned this quote from Kinkeldey to Mr. Stravinsky and promised to
send him a copy. The idea that contrasting fast-polyphonic, slow-homophonic
style implies instruments is perhaps a bit naive, but the quote from Doni, as
well as K[inkeldey]’s additional comments elicits interest – particularly to
the Gabrielian sound, which all of us must have been struck with in
Stravinsky’s Monumentum.[54]
In spite of
this, and in the light of the conviction of Gesualdo’s poetic selections and
techniques of text setting, Stravinsky would not have missed noticing the specific
articulation and exegesis in the music of the text provided in the originals.
The correspondence of poetry and music was summarily assumed in the ‘fifties,
as is proven in numerous inventories of musical-poetical oxymorons and
antitheses (which - even before distinguishing phases of Gesualdo’s madrigal
output, and if facile equations were not drawn between the constant sound
pictures and the joy or pain of the musicians -
contained a germ of awkwardly expressed truth). [55]
Stravinsky and Craft considered these parallels «conventional insipidities» (I,vi)
in the same way as Huxley, who in the 1956 article had detailed the reasons for
his own opinion. Taking out certain findings from previous musicology to add
others, similar points of incorrect but penetrating criticism - as some
sympathetic readers maintained - could have been written thirty years earlier.
The inspiring source was the second part of the 1926 monograph on Carlo
Gesualdo which was more ambiguously moderate than the first part in its neuro-psychiatric
account. Its author, Philippe Heseltine, was no less than the noted composer
under the pseudonym of Peter Warlock, a friend whom Huxley portrayed in the
youthful Antic Hay.[56]
The conciliatory digressions on the poetics of alienation, the consensual
catch-all of formalists and postmodernists, could, this time, be based on first
hand intuition and produced through the effort of listening for echoes of the Monday Evening Concerts repertoire among
the sonorities of Monumentum.[57]
The openings of the three movements are especially exemplary. In the first,
the distinction of the two homogeneous instrumental groups (the winds f against the strings p) covers the heptameter Asciugate i begli occhi [Dry your beautiful eyes] and its partial repetition
differently. Following the same principle Stravinsky crudely splits the second verse (Deh,
cor mio, non pian-/gete [come,
dear heart, weep not]) and its
repetition, which are orchestrated symmetrically, except for dynamics
and expression. The incipit of Ma tu, cagion di quella atroce pena [But you, the cause of that atrocious pain],
instead reunites some of the centrifugal motions (such as the redistribution of
the vocal lines in distinct octave registers, sometimes obsessively alternated)
which are clearly responsible for the departure from the model. The original
voice leading is placed below a typically Stravinskian diffraction in the same
instruments or in diverse timbres.[58]
It is therefore of little importance to know if Stravinsky saw in Ma tu,
cagion the application of a
specific type of harmonic progression.[59]
In fact, the re-composition tampers with the texture of the chords, i.e. the
movement of the major sixth to the octave (Ma tu, cagion)
and tenth to the octave (tu, cagion)
in oboe parts I and II and bassoon I, obtaining in the later an unlikely
Gesualdian line (see Example 1, mm. 1-2).
Finally in the transcription of the first four measures of the third
madrigal, Beltà, poi che t’assenti (see Example 2), the timbral contrast of the two homogeneous and
separated instrumental groups, as in Asciugate i begli occhi, seems to
especially illustrate the manner of reading of Gesualdo’s work circulated
throughout the ‘70s. In this way the last movement is properly selected as a
clear example of an age-old misunderstanding.[60]
Certainly the composer could not imagine that the original intonation of the
heptameter would imply the sequence g-E
Example 1: Monumentum; II, beginning, (Ma tu,
cagion)
Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD Annum – Igor Stravinsky © 1960 by Hawkes & Son (London) Ltd. US copyright renewed Reproduced by
permission of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd.
Example 2: Monumentum, III,
beginning, (Beltà, poi
che t’assenti)
Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD Annum – Igor Stravinsky © 1960 by Hawkes & Son (London) Ltd. US copyright renewed Reproduced by
permission of Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd.
Asciugate i begli occhi [Dry your beautiful
eyes]
As early as the last issue
of 1960 of Boosey & Hawkes’ Tempo,
its future director, Colin Mason, noted that the first madrigal was the most
markedly recomposed of the three.[64] The second was translated ‘solely’ for the woodwinds
and the brass without strings and with the addition of an echo effect at
measures 23-25, this was a pseudo-Gabriellian gesture evoking instrumental
canzonas and their «sonorités rutilantes» [sparkling sonorities].[65] Not even the last movement of the Monumentum is close in number and range
of modifications to the first, although the surface appears noticeably changed.[66]
Octave transpositions,
exchanges of parts, harmonic doublings, occasional completions of the implied harmony,
and one or two inserted passing-notes, but the substance of the two pieces
remains essentially as it was […] (the beginning of the second madrigal and
Stravinsky’s version of it) illustrate his method of re-spacing the harmony
without introducing anything new.[67]
Mason however was not going on
intuition: he wrote before the publication of the Developments but after the world premiere of Monumentum. If he had not benefited from first hand indications, he
certainly read the concert program of the world premiere where the writing
which was included two years later in
Developments (H) appeared for the first time.
Se lontano da voi gir mi vedete [Though I go far away]
The re-elaboration of
segments a (SW mm. 10-12), b (mm.13-15), and c (mm.
16-17), now rebarred by Stravinsky in 4/2 (mm. 12-131, 142-15 and 18) analyzes the rhythmic and melodic
contour, in particular the head of the alto and bass entries and of the other
voices, the one in response to the other (see Example 3). On this basis Stravinsky grafts into the
original texture a chain of imitations and canons.[68]
The strings anticipate with some variation (mm. 11 and 132-14) the complete presentation of a and b in the woodwinds (a fragment from motive a occurs later, forming a rhythmic mirror with what follows). A
two-beat diversion on c sounds next
in the horns (mm. 16-17).
Finally a varied repetition of the three segments closes the episode (mm. 19-22). This sample of Gesualdo’s «mastery of phrase-building» (H, 105) could undoubtedly have figured
among the examples in the fifth chapter of Marshall’s thesis “The Construction of Single Melodic Lines and
Their Contrapuntal Use,” where it would have proved «his unusually high degree of technical skill
in the traditional medium.»[69] Conscious of Gesualdo’s command of canonic
writing, Stravinsky supplied the appropriate reflections of this; that the
so-called experimentalism was based on conservatism was by now clarified and
added to other certainties.[70]