Pulcinella Suite

Tarantella -

Toccata

Gavotta con due variazioni

Vivo

Minuetto: molto moderato -

Finale: allegro assai

Stravinsky would never have thought of creating a ballet score from music by the eigtheenth-century Neapolitan composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi if Sergei Diaghilev hadn’t asked him. The director of the Ballets russes provided the composer with the original scores - not all of them by Pergolesi, incidentally - and with an appropriately early eighteenth-century comic scenario, based on the commedia dell’arte character of Pulcinella. 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.” It was also, not least because of Massine’s choroegraphy and Picasso’s designs, the effective beginning of the neo-classical revival.

The Sinfonia (the overture to both the ballet and the suite) 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. In the ballet the curtain rises on a Neapolitan Serenata, the vocal line of which is awarded in the suite to solo oboe and violin. 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, attracting the two ladies out into the street where, in the Andantino, they make amorous advances to him.

The middle part of the ballet, in which Pulcinella is apparently killed by his two rivals, is omitted from the suite. He is brought back to life in the Tarantella. After the similarly vigorous Toccata, there is a graceful Gavotta, with two variations, in which the two ladies dance with the two lovers disguised as Pulcinella. He gets his own back in the Vivo (from a Sinfonia for cello and double bass) by ducking his rivals in the fountain. All problems are settled in the melodious Minuetto and the happy ending celebrated by general rejoicing in the Finale.

Tarantella -

Toccata

Gavotta con due variazioni

Vivo

Minuetto: molto moderato -

Finale: allegro assai

Stravinsky would never have thought of creating a ballet score from music by Pergolesi if Sergei Diaghilev hadn’t asked him. He provided the composer with the original scores - not all of them by Pergolesi, incidentally - and with an appropriately early eighteenth-century comic scenario, based on the commedia dell’arte character of Pulcinella. 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.” It was also, not least because of Massine’s choroegraphy and Picasso’s designs, the effective beginning of the neo-classical revival - in spite of significant anticipations by two other Ballets russes composers, Tommasini and Respighi, and Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony.

The Sinfonia (which acts as the overture to both the ballet and the suite) 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. In the ballet the curtain rises on a Neapolitan Serenata, the vocal line of which is awarded in the suite to solo oboe and violin. 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, attracting the two ladies out into the street where, in the Andantino, they make amorous advances to him.

The middle part of the ballet, in which Pulcinella is apparently killed by his two rivals, is omitted from the suite. He is brought back to life in the Tarantella. After the similarly vigorous Toccata, there is a graceful Gavotta, with two variations, in which the two ladies dance with the two lovers disguised as Pulcinella. He gets his own back in the Vivo (from a Sinfonia for cello and double bass) by ducking his rivals in the fountain. All problems are settled in the melodious Minuetto and the happy ending celebrated by general rejoicing in the Finale.

Tarantella -

Toccata

Gavotta con due variazioni

Vivo

Minuetto: molto moderato -

Finale: allegro assai

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 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 hadn’t asked him. He provided the composer with the Pergolesi scores and with 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. Neither Stravinsky nor Pergolesi but a combination of the two, it was a new sound which has proved to be as effective in the concert hall - by way of the orchestral suite Stravinsky compiled from the ballet in 1922 - as in the theatre.

The Sinfonia (the overture to both the ballet and the suite) 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. In the ballet the curtain rises on a Neapolitan Serenata (serenade) from Pergolesi’s Il Flamino sung by a tenor in the orchestra pit. In the Suite the principal vocalists are solo oboe and violin set 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.

The middle part of the ballet, in which Pulcinella is apparently killed by his two rivals, is omitted from the suite. The next movement, the Tarantella, in which the apparently dead Pulcinella is brought back to life, must have been comparatively easy for Stravinsky to arrange, since it comes from a work for string orchestra. The Toccata, on the other hand, is a brilliant realisation of a harpsichord piece. Similarly, the Gavotta and Two Variations, in which the two ladies dance with the two lovers disguised as Pulcinella, is a highly imaginative rescoring for wind instruments of what was originally harpsichord music. 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, for 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 Minuetto, which comes from the opera Lo Frate ‘nnamorate and is obviously a song rather than a dance: the two ladies are reunited with their lovers and Pulcinella is reunited with his own Pimpinella - to the general rejoicing indicated in the Finale.

Gerald Larner©2003