Three Pieces for Clarinet

Each of Igor Stravinsky’s Three Pieces for Clarinet features very different characteristics. The first is slow and lyrical; the second athletic; the third fast and full of jazz rhythms. He wrote the set in 1919 while living in Switzerland, where he had previously composed the scores for his groundbreaking ballets Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. Between the bold primitivism and lush orchestrations of those masterworks and the spare textures of the Three Pieces for Clarinet, of course, lay the global tragedy of World War I. Stravinsky was in Russia briefly before war erupted, though he managed to be back in neutral Switzerland when the fighting started. It may sound metaphorical to say but it is nevertheless true: from the heights of that mountainous country, he could survey the changes in European culture and carefully select the trends and influences that seemed most fruitful for his own artistic future. He went on to live for many years in Paris and southern France, but the eventual outbreak of World War II drove him to settle permanently in the United States. Hollywood was a world away from the northwestern corner of Tsarist Russia where Stravinsky was born, though the roots of his early musical education never left him.
Piece No. 1 opens with a distinctive Russian melodic gesture reminiscent of themes used in Borodin or Boris Godunov. Stravinsky, like others in the early 20th century, sought new strategies of pitch organization to replace the weary tonality of the Romantic generation. The majority of piece No. 1 sticks to an eight-tone (or octatonic) pitch set—not the conventional octatonicism familiar in Debussy or Dukas, with its careful alternation of whole and half steps, but still consistent enough to bear witness to the composer’s intent. Yet Stravinsky is much more interested in lyricism and affect than atonal theory. To that end he repeats critical motives and pitches to give a sense of melodic structure. He was always influenced by Russian folksong, and piece No. 1 sounds only slightly more avant-garde than a traditional Slavic ballad.
The second piece only lasts just over one minute, but it is packed with musical personae. Evocations of bird calls, rapid atonal explosions, and a limping Petrushka-like motive all occur in this brief survey of the clarinet’s potential. Pitch collections, defined by Stravinsky’s carefully indicated phrasing marks, usually include nine or ten different pitches. But once again, what matters from an aesthetic standpoint is the composer’s gestural use of pitch and rhythm to animate a world of characters.
The third piece shares certain features with the second, principally a fast tempo, diversity of articulation, and use of grace notes that skip up or down to the main note (this last feature was also prominent in piece No. 1). Here the comic element comes to the foreground, especially encapsulated in the final witty octave leap. Rhythm is crucial, and Stravinsky excels at merging jazz with neo-classical composition circa 1920. If the first piece suggested central Russia, this last piece feels more at home in Paris’ Latin Quarter or under the spotlights at New York’s Cotton Club. In a way, such a journey from the steppes to city streets was exactly the path taken by the émigré Russian composer himself.

(c) Jason Stell