The Times/1921/News/The Genius of Tchaikovsky

by Igor Stravinsky

Layout 2

The Genius of Tchaikovsky
Stravinsky's Views
"The Sleeping Beauty"

In view of the fact that Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, is to be produced shortly by the Russian Ballet, considerable interest attaches to the following letter addressed to M. Diaghilev by M. Stravinsky. It has translated and forwarded to us by Mr. Edwin Evans:—

It gives me great happiness to know that you are producing that masterpiece The Sleeping Beauty, by our great and beloved Tchaikovsky. It makes me doubly happy. In the first place, it is a personal joy, for this work appears to me as the most authentic expression of that period of our Russian life which we call the "Petersburg Period." and which is stamped upon my memory with the morning vision of the Imperial sleighs of Alexander III., the giant Emperor, and his giant coachman, and the immense joy that awaited me in the evening, the performance of The Sleeping Beauty.

It is, further, a great satisfaction to me as a musician to see produced a work of so direct a character at a time when so many people, who are neither simple, nor naive, nor spontaneous, seek in their art simplicity, "poverty," and spontaneity. Tchaikovsky in his very nature possessed these three gifts to the fullest extent. That is why he never feared to let himself go, whereas the prudes, whether raffinés or academic, were shocked by the frank speech, free from artifice, of his music.

Tchaikovsky possessed the power of melody, centre of gravity in every symphony, opera, or ballet composed by him. It is absolutely indifferent to me that the quality of his melody was sometimes unequal. The fact is that he was a creator of melody, which is an extremely rare and previous gift. Among us, Glinka, too possessed it; and not to the same degree those others . . .

And that is something which is not German. The Germans manufactured and manufactured music with themes and leitmotive which they substituted for melodies.

Tchaikovsky's music, which does not appear specifically Russian to everybody, is often more profoundly Russian than music which has long since been awarded the facile label of Muscovite picturesqueness. The music of quite as Russian as Pushkin's verse or Glinka's song. While not specially cultivating in his art the "soul of the Russian peasant," Tchaikovsky drew unconsciously from the true, popular sources of our race.

And how characteristic were his predilections in the music of the past and of his own day! He worshipped Mozart, Couperin, Glinka, Bizet: that leaves doubt of the quality of his taste. How strange it is! Every time that a Russian musician has come under the influence of this Latino-Slav culture, and seen clearly the frontier between the Austrian Catholic Mozart turned towards Beaumarchais, and the German-Protestant Beethoven include towards Goethe, the result has been striking. . . .

The convincing example of Tchaikovsky's great creative power is beyond all doubt the ballet of The Sleeping Beauty. This cultured man, with his knowledge of folksong and of old French music, had no need to engaged in archaeological research in order to present the age of Louis XIV.; he created the character of the period by his musical language, preferring involuntary but living anachronisms to conscious and laboured pasticcio: a virtue that appertains only to great creative minds.

I have just read again the score of this ballet. I have instrumented some numbers of it which had remained unorchestrated and unperformed. I have spent some days of intense pleasure in finding therein again and again the same feeling of freshness, inventiveness, ingenuity, and vigor. And I warmly desire that your audiences of all countries may feel this work as it is felt by me, a Russian musician.

Yours ever.

IGOR STRAVINSKY

Paris, Oct. 10, 1921.