Note on the New “Petrouchka”

In his book on Strawinsky published in 1929, Boris de Schloezer pointed out that, contrary to the general opinion, Petrouchka rather than Le Sacre du Printemps was to be considered the really revolutionary work. His reason was that Strawinsky's attitude towards style and technique in Petrouchka was utterly different from that of the composers who “played the organ.” Scriabin had summed up in the most extreme form what Strawinsky meant by playing the organ when he had remarked that good orchestration should be like a good sauce—one should not be able to distinguish the ingredients. Beautiful sonorities for their own sake, blending of colours, filling up of holes, in a word all the magic by which any listener's musical attention can be put to sleep—The Firebird, maybe, had its share of these things, but Le Sacre? Yet in Le Sacre there is as much autonomy of rhythm as there is autonomy of sonority in Firebird; indeed, in some parts there is autonomy of sonority as well, and it is just this that makes the magic. “Playing the organ” was not a happy phrase, for the baroque way of playing the organ has much in common with Strawinsky's ideals. Nevertheless, Le Sacre, however differently, still played the 19th century organ.