Symphonies of Wind Instruments

Shortly after Stravinsky first met Debussy in 1910 the young Russian composer asked his distinguished French colleague what he really thought of his Firebird ballet music. “Well, you had to start somewhere,” said Debussy. This remark, which Stravinsky accepted as “sincere but not very flattering,” diminished neither his respect nor his affection for Debussy, whose death eight years later moved him deeply. So when he was asked to provide a short piece of music to be published, alongside similar contributions by several other composers, in a Debussy memorial edition of the Revue musicale in 1920 he was very willing to accede to the request.

What he eventually sent to the Revue musicale was a chorale which, though it is neither sentimental nor ceremonial, has an appropriately decorous ritualistic element in it. Though written out so that it could be played on a piano, as the editor had asked, it is clearly not piano music. Stravinsky realised that it would make more sense if it were scored for wind instruments and still more if it were extended to make an item long enough for a concert programme. Far from beginning with the chorale and adding material to it, however, he worked backwards and devised three new episodes with tiny interludes and a brief introduction - most of them derived from Russian folk sources and all of them scored for wind instruments to preserve the ritualistic element of the chorale. So, while the ten-minute structure makes a coherent pattern - held together most clearly by the striking bell-like motif that begins it on flute and clarinets and by regular anticipations of the chorale that ends the work - it is not by any means a symphony in the usual sense of the term. The use of the plural in the title is intended to suggest that “symphony” should be understood in its original meaning of “sounding together.”

The Symphonies of Wind Instruments were first performed under the direction of Serge Koussevitsky in the Queen’s Hall, London, in 1921. In 1947 Stravinsky issued a revised version of the score, reducing the original ensemble of twenty-two wind instruments to slightly more economical proportions but without seriously reducing the effect of the piece.

Gerald Larner©