The Soldier’s Tale: concert suite

The Soldier’s March

The Soldier’s Violin

Royal March

The Little Concert

Three Dances

Chorale

The Devil’s Triumphal March

The Soldier’s Tale, which was written as the First World War was ending, has been as influential in its way as The Rite of Spring, which was written just before it began. Obviously, the first performance of The Soldier’s Tale at the Théâtre Municipal de Lausanne in September 1918 made nothing like the impact of the notoriously disorderly first night of The Rite of Spring at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris five years earlier. A realistically modest entertainment requiring no more than seven instrumentalists, a narrator, two actors and a dancer, The Soldier’s Tale was devised by Stravinsky and his Swiss literary collaborator, C.F. Ramuz, in such a way that it could be “read played and danced” in any kind of hall or theatre or even out of doors. So, clearly, even if the projected tour to Geneva and other Swiss towns had not been cut short by the Spanish flu epidemic, it was scarcely likely to have made a big splash in the musical world.

As the first example of music theatre, however, its influence, though slow to take effect, has been far-reaching – not least because of a sound liberated from all opera-house and concert-hall associations and derived instead from a variety of folk, church, jazz and dance-hall sources. The violin, the instrument representing the soul the Soldier sells to the Devil, plays a prominent part but in an unschooled style peculiar to this particular fiddler. It has a corrspondingly prominent role in the concert suite for the same seven instruments – clarinet and bassoon, cornet and trombone, violin and double bass, percussion – that the composer drew from the score in 1920.

The opening Soldier’s March also opens the stage piece, defining its dry sound and, with its bars of 3/4 and 3/8 thrown into the prevailing 2/4, giving an early hint of its rhythmic irony. The Soldier is treated with more affection when he stops by a stream to plays his fiddle in The Soldier’s Violin. “It didn’t cost much,” the Soldier says in Ramuz’s text, “the tone’s not rich, you have to keep screwing it up to pitch” – which is precisely the impression Stravinsky gives in a violin part written nearly always in double stops but with little respect for conventional harmony. The entry of the clarinet coincides, incidentally, with the first appearance of the Devil in the stage piece.

The Royal March comes from the point in the story where, having sold his violin to the Devil, the now disillusioned Soldier has discarded the wealth the pact brought him. He has come to seek a different kind of fortune at the royal palace: the Princess is ill and the King has promised her hand in marriage to anyone who can cure her. Based on a paso doble the composer once heard in a street in Seville, the march makes a special feature of the cornet, trombone and bassoon prominent in the bullfight band while, with characteristic irony, it distorts the duple-time rhythms with odd bars of 5/8 and 3/4 or 3/8. In The Little Concert, having recovered his violin, the Soldier revives the ailing Princess with his playing, though not without some help from the others, cornet and clarinet in particular. To his inspired accompaniment she then performs Three Dances – tango, waltz, ragtime – each one of which is vividly caricatured while retaining his fiddle sound and thematic identity.

The King has been true to his word and, the Lutheran-style Chorale seems to suggest, the Devil has been defeated. Unlike Goethe’s Faust, however, his Stravinsky-Ramuz counterpart is not destined for redemption. He and his Princess make one mistake and the Devil is back in business. In The Devils’s Triumphal March the violin is defeated by virtuoso percussion, which has the concluding bars entirely to itself.

The Soldier’s March

Little Tune by a Stream

Pastorale

Royal March

The Little Concert

Three Dances: tango, waltz, ragtime

Devil’s Dance

Chorale

The Devil’s Triumphal March

The Soldier’s Tale, which was written as the First World War was ending, has been as influential in its way as The Rite of Spring, which was written just before it began. Obviously, the first performance of The Soldier’s Tale at the Théâtre Municipal de Lausanne in September 1918 made nothing like the impact of the notoriously disorderly first night of The Rite of Spring at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in Paris five years earlier. A realistically modest entertainment requiring no more than seven instrumentalists, a narrator, two actors and a dancer, The Soldier’s Tale was devised by Stravinsky and his Swiss literary collaborator, C.F. Ramuz, in such a way that it could be “read played and danced” in any kind of hall or theatre or even out of doors. So, clearly, even if the projected tour to Geneva and other Swiss towns had not been cut short by the Spanish flu epidemic, it was scarcely likely to have made a big splash in the musical world.

As an early and inspired example of what we now call music theatre, however, its influence, though slow to take effect, has been far-reaching – not least because of an instrumental sound liberated from all opera-house and concert-hall associations and derived instead from a variety of folk, church, jazz and dance-hall sources. The violin, the instrument representing the soul the Soldier sells to the Devil, plays a prominent part but in an unschooled style peculiar to this particular fiddler. It has a corrspondingly prominent role in the concert suite for the same seven instruments – clarinet and bassoon, cornet and trombone, violin and double bass, percussion – that the composer drew from the score in 1920.

The opening Soldier’s March also opens the stage piece, defining its dry sound and, with its bars of 3/4 and 3/8 thrown into the prevailing 2/4, giving an early hint of its rhythmic irony. The Soldier is treated with more affection when he takes a rest on his march home to play his fiddle in Tune by a Stream. “It didn’t cost much,” the Soldier says in Ramuz’s text, “the tone’s not rich, you have to keep screwing it up to pitch” – which is precisely the impression Stravinsky gives in a violin part written nearly always in gruff double stops with little respect for conventional harmony. The entry of the clarinet coincides, incidentally, with the first appearance of the Devil in the stage piece.

In Pastorale, feeling cheated and so far unaware of the powers of the magic book the Devil has given him in return for his violin, the Soldier falls into despair outside the village where no one, not even his mother, recognises him. One of the few episodes written without irony, it is a lament of interweaving lines for clarinet and bassoon with an almost sentimental comment from cornet in the middle.

The Royal March comes from the point in the story where, having made a fortune from the magic book, the soldier has discarded both the wealth and the book in disillusion. He has come to seek a different kind of fortune at the royal palace: the Princess is ill and the King has promised her hand in marriage to anyone who can cure her. Based on a paso doble the composer once heard in a street in Seville, the march makes a special feature of the cornet, trombone and bassoon prominent in the bullfight band while, with the usual irony, it distorts the duple-time rhythms with odd bars of 5/8 and 3/4 or 3/8.

The Devil is at the royal palace too but the Soldier gets him drunk, recovers his violin and celebrates their reunion in the Little Concert, which requires virtuoso contributions from clarinet and cornet as well as violin. The ailing Princes is not only revived by the Soldier’s inspired violin playing in Three Dances but also moved to get up and dance. Trendy tango, waltz and ragtime rhythms are all presented in vivid caricatures which, even so, retain the Soldier’s characteristic fiddle sound and thematic identity. The Devil is obviously not best pleased by the situation but, in spite of his efforts, can do nothing about it when the Soldier takes up his violin again and, in The Devil’s Dance, improvises music of such compelling rhythmic intensity that the Devil cannot resist it and dances himself into exhaustion.

The King has been true to his word and, the Lutheran certainties of Chorale seem to suggest, the Devil has been defeated. Unlike Goethe’s Faust, however, his Stravinsky-Ramuz counterpart is not destined for redemption. He and his Princess make one mistake and the Devil is back in business. In The Devils’s Triumphal March the violin is overwhelmed by demonic percussion, which has the concluding bars entirely to itself.

Gerald Larner ©2007