jan 1, 1923 - Octet

Description:

The Octet for wind instruments is a chamber music composition by Igor Stravinsky, completed in 1923.

The Music of Stravinsky’s Octet
1. Stravinsky once described the Octet as a revival of “contructive principles” as found in
Classicism (late eighteenth century music), but this is only partly accurate, for elements of his
earlier style remain as well, including ostinatos, stable dissonances, and abrupt disjunctures.
a. The opening trills sounds like music from the eighteenth century, but everything is obviously twentieth century.
b. The figuration sounds like Bach, but the harmony isn’t.
c. The title suggests pre-sonata form opera (but from whence the form derives), and it is in sonata form.
d. The classically regular eight-bar theme is octatonic.
E. Some Ideas about the Octet
1. Stravinsky sought to control how the public received the Octet by printing his thoughts
on the work.
2. He originally intended the essay as irony, but eventually came to believe in its ideas.
3. He describes the Octet as a “musical object.”
4. In his piano works from the 1920s, Stravinsky attempted to make nonflamboyance a virtue.
5. Other pieces belonging to this style include the Symphony of Psalms (1930), Symphony in C (1938–40), and Symphony in Three Movements (1945).
6. The culminating work in this period is his opera The Rake’s Progress (1951)

Added to timeline:

Date:

YouTube: