Pulcinella, ballet with song in one act

It was Sergei Diaghilev who in 1917 commissioned Vincenzo Tommasini to arrange music by Scarlatti for a ballet called The Good-Humoured Ladies, who in 1919 commissioned Ottorino Respighi to arrange Rossini for La Boutique Fantasque, and who in 1920 commissioned Igor Stravinsky in to arrange Pergolesi for Pulcinella. With choreography by Massine for all three of those ballets and designs by (respectively) Bakst, Derain and Picasso these Ballets russes productions could scarcely fail to arouse considerable interest. In other words, it was Digahilev who, sensing how public taste would change after the First World War, more or less originated and vigorously promoted the neo-classical style which was to remain a dominant influence in European music for twenty years or more.

As for Stravinsky, he would surely not have thought of creating a ballet score from music by (or attributed to) Pergolesi if Diaghilev had not asked him. The impresario provided the composer with the Pergolesi scores and an early eighteenth-century comic libretto, based on the commedia dell’arte character of Pulcinella, to go with them. The several months of concentrated work on Pergolesi in 1919 and 1920 had a profound influence on Stravinsky and on the development of his music up to The Rake’s Progress and even beyond. Pulcinella was, he said, “my discovery of the past.” The instrumentation of the score is an indication of how much he had absorbed even at this stage - no clarinets, not one of the percussion instruments so prominent in his war-time works, the strings divided in concerto grosso style into concertino and ripieno groups. The soprano, tenor and bass soloists, incidentally, are virtually part of the orchestra: although the arias and ensembles they sing from the pit are more or less relevant to the action on the stage, none of them represents any particular character.

The Overture to the ballet is a particularly delightful example of Stravinsky’s use of the neo-classical orchestra, blocks of tutti sound alternating with a series of differently coloured solo groups. The curtain rises on a Neapolitan Serenata from Pergolesi’s Il Flamino sung by a tenor against a remarkably delicate and nocturnal texture of strings and wind harmonics, trills, and repeated notes. The Scherzino accompanies a scuffle on the stage between two unwelcome serenaders and the father of one of the ladies they hope to seduce. It leads directly into the Allegro, to which Pulcinella enters playing a virtuoso violin. The violin solo, which is Stravinsky’s addition to the Pergolesi original, succeeds where the serenade failed and attracts the two ladies out into the street where, in the Andantino, they make amorous advances to Pulcinella.

All the music heard so far is familiar from the orchestral suite (with solo instruments replacing the voices) that Stravinsky compiled from the ballet in 1922. The middle part of the ballet, however, in which Pulcinella falls out with his mistress Pimpinella and is apparently killed by his two rivals, is omitted from the suite. Comprising Nos.6 to 11, it includes a dramatic Allegro assai (No.8), the centrally placed and seriously beautiful trio Sento dire no’ncè pace (No.10a) and a firmly contrapuntal Allegro alla breve (No.11).

The Allegro moderato, familiar from the suite as a tarantella, is the dance where the apparently dead Pulcinella springs back into life. It is followed by an expressive soprano canzona Se tu m’ami and two imaginatively rescored harpsichord pieces, a brilliant Allegro and a Gavotta with variations in which the two ladies dance with the two lovers disguised as Pulcinella The section marked Vivo is from a Sinfonia for cello and double bass: Stravinsky retains the double bass but pairs it with a loud trombone, which is both witty and dramatically effective, since this is the scene in which Pulcinella gets his own back by ducking his rivals in the fountain.

All the problems are settled in the Tempo di minué, a trio arrangement of an aria from the opera Lo Frate ‘nnamorate: the two ladies are united with their lovers and Pulcinella is reunited with Pimpinella - to the general rejoicing indicated in the final Allegro assai.