Musical Backstories In Honor of John Rahn

Abstract

MUSICAL BACKSTORIES IN HONOR OF JOHN RAHN LYNNE ROGERS STILL REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME I saw the sketch page shown as Example 1. I was a graduate student at the University of Washington working on my M.A. thesis under the supervision of Professor John Rahn. The thesis presented an analysis of the first movement of Igor Stravinsky’s Dumbarton Oaks Concerto (1937–38) and emphasized my modest—but, to me, exhilarating—discovery: a contrapuntal technique on which I bestowed the unfortunate name “phrase-staggering.” Upon first hearing the term, John remarked dryly that it brought to mind images of drunks lurching down a street; however, I persisted in using the label and he kindly refrained from describing other similarly entertaining scenes. Phrase-staggering can occur in passages in which the texture is organized into two or more instrumental layers that express relative independence from each other through their pitch organizations and other features, including rhythm, motivic content, and register. Such textures of superimposed, independent layers constitute a hallmark of Stravinsky’s compositional practice throughout his career and often yield passages of complexity and tension. Phrase-staggering is a specific relationship among such superimposed layers. It occurs when two or I 138 Perspectives of New Music more independent layers with intersecting time spans proceed from the same centric pitch class or pitch-class set to a different centric pitch class or pitch-class set that serves as the goal for all layers, and when at least one such layer does not reach the new goal simultaneously with the others. One such passage occurs early in the first movement of Dumbarton Oaks and produces in three bars after rehearsal 2 (R2+3) what is perhaps the Concerto’s first shocking pitch conflict between Ab (in clarinet in Bb) and An (in horns, violins, and violas).1 To someone who had studied tonal counterpoint and four-part writing, composing harmonically separate layers with skewed arrivals at their goals seemed counterintuitive. I wondered how Stravinsky had created the phrase-staggered passages in Dumbarton Oaks. Thus, I contacted the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection to purchase a microfilm of Stravinsky’s sketches and a draft of the work, which are housed at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Washington, D.C. When the microfilm arrived, I notified John and we went with great anticipation to a microfilm reader in the music library. As we spooled through the film, John suddenly pointed to an area on one of the pages of sketches. That’s when I saw my theory of phrase-staggering come to life not only as an analytical conception of the sounds of the published score but also as part of Stravinsky’s compositional process. I included a photograph of this sketch page in my M.A. thesis; however, because the thesis is unpublished and not generally available, the sketch page is reproduced here as Example 1.2 EXAMPLE 1 (FACING PAGE): SKETCH PAGE IN STRAVINSKY’S HAND FROM SIXTEEN PAGES OF SKETCHES FOR HIS DUMBARTON OAKS CONCERTO HELD AT THE DUMBARTON OAKS RESEARCH LIBRARY AND COLLECTION. THE TWO SKETCHES FOR THE PASSAGE AT R28 OF THE PUBLISHED SCORE APPEAR ON THE SECOND THROUGH NINTH STAVES FROM THE TOP© Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, Rare Book Collection, Washington, D.C. EXAMPLE 2: TRANSCRIPTION OF STRAVINSKY’S TWO SKETCHES FOR THE PASSAGE AT R28 OF HIS DUMBARTON OAKS CONCERTO. NOTATIONS IN BRACKETS ARE THE AUTHOR’S, ADDED FOR EASE OF READING Musical Backstories: In Honor of John Rahn 141 A TALE OF TWO SKETCHES The area to which John drew my attention on the sketch page is located on the second through ninth staves from the top and traverses most of the page’s width, excluding the fragments primarily in sixteenth notes to the far right on staves one through four. The region of focus comprises two sketches, one directly below the other, which are likely the earliest notated versions of the passage at R28 in the published score. The fourvoice , chorale-style passage serves as a transition from the first movement, with its established Eb centricity, to the Bb-centric second movement.3 COUNTERPOINT IN THE OUTER VOICES What John and I...