l'Histoire du soldat

The Soldier's Tale
Igor Stravinsky, 1918

This is one of my favorite Stravinsky works, probably the first piece of chamber music of his that I'd ever heard. I remember studying it as an undergrad and getting so caught up in its rhythmic world. It's a piece of music that combines several of my favorite things: a drama expressed in musical rhetoric, a non-standard instrumental ensemble, integration of the spoken word into music, meticulously crafted overlapping ostinati, interpretations of popular music styles, etc. There's the sense of a finely-wrought mathematical jigsaw puzzle, and simultaneously a very organic instinctual feeling for cadence and rhythm which is uniquely beautiful to me. Stravinsky's sense of pacing, both on the small scale and the large, are so precisely right that it makes my hair stand on end.

So there's a story (hence the word "Tale" in the title). It's a little parable about a soldier matching wits with the Devil. The three voices (the soldier, the devil, and a narrator) don't sing, but speak their words, sometimes in an exacting rhythm, and sometimes in ordinary speech, always over musical accompaniment. With good actors who also have a fairly sophisticated musical sense, it can be very compelling. There are long stretches of purely instrumental music as well, some of it angular and deliberate, some of it lush and fluid, all of it engaging. Stravinsky writes idiosyncratically for the instruments in the ensemble (2 brass instruments, 2 woodwinds, 2 strings, plus 1 percussionist = brilliant concept), teasing out combinations and sonorities that seem ludicrous in theory, yet are beautiful in actuality.

The recording that I enjoy is one that has big-name actors preforming the spoken roles: Ian McKellen as the narrator, Sting (yep, that one) as the soldier, and Vanessa Redgrave in a bit of excellent casting, as the devil. They all chew up the auditory scenery, overacting and emoting up a storm. Redgrave in particular seems to be having a ball. But this is a melodrama after all, and for me it's infectious - I have fun right along with them. But despite the star-power of the actors, to me the real gem is the conductor, Kent Nagano. He's one of my favorite conductors overall, and probably my all-time favorite conductor of Stravinsky's works. Not many can make the adjustments necessary to direct a smaller ensemble like this, but he is right there in it, making the music breathe and sparkle and meditate and gallop. It's quite an accomplishment in itself, and of course it helps that he's got some amazing instrumentalists too.

So this recording is a treat, and the piece of music an essential one. You really feel like you've been brought into a special universe of musical and dramatic relationships that can only exist in this defined space - perfect for what is after all an allegorical tale.

Sadly, itunes doesn't have this recording!
but here's a link to another that looks good:

Tehillim

Tehillim
Steve Reich, 1981

So I've described this piece as "stunning" before, and really there's no better term. I really am just stunned by its beauty and its rhetorical power every time I listen to it.

This is a piece of music for a large chamber ensemble and small chorus of amplified singers. My first encounter with it was at a student concert, where there was the ensemble had some trouble with the score, but its wonderfulness still shined through.I bought the CD soon after, and it quickly became a favorite.

I can't get into everything that makes it so great, but I can review a few of the aspects that stand out for me. Certainly the rhythmic structures really draw me in ... all these overlapping tiny cells, most of them derived from the rhythms of the text, drawing focus down on the motion of each pulsing eighth note, and at the same time opening up larger vistas - timespans that mimic on a larger scale what's going on at the microscopic level. It's one of those pieces of music that lets you experience multiple timescales unfolding at once, which is at once invigorating and meditative.

There's the counterpoint, too, which is just gorgeous in places. Strict vocal canons skitter and swerve as the winds and strings hold long sustained tones. And some of the melodic contours have that brilliant mathematical gorgeousness that's such a rare treat in contemporary composers' work.

There are quite a few stand-out moments for me, one of them being the change end of part 2 and the opening of part 3. That change in tempo and pitch and intrumentation just is so right. I could write a whole essay on just that change (I'm sure you'd all just adore reading that). And there's the ending, which is laserbeam tight to the point of being shrill, but at the same time is precisely what is needed there. The word "alleluia" is sung over and over (did I mention that these are settings of psalms in Hebrew?), in different melodic shapes, finally resolving to a relentlessly repeated tone. Great stuff.

Besides, you gotta love any music that features the tambourine in a heroic starring role in the ensemble.

itunes link: