Renard (Stravinsky)
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Renard, Histoire burlesque chantée et jouée (The Fox: burlesque tale sung and played) is a one-act chamber opera-ballet by Igor Stravinsky, written in 1916. The Russian text by the composer was based on Russian folk tales from the collection by Alexander Afanasyev.
The full Russian name of the piece is: Ба́йка про лису́, петуха́, кота́, да барана́. Весё́лое представле́ние с пе́нием и му́зыкой – (Bayka pro lisu, petukha, kota da barana. Vesyoloe predstavlenie s peniem i muzykoi – The Fable of the Vixen, the Cock, the Cat and the Ram. A burlesque for the stage with singing and music).
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[edit] Details about the score
Publication: Geneve, Ad. Hen, c1917; London, J. & W. Chester, c1921
French translation by C.F.Ramuz. German translation by Rupert Koller. English translation by H. Myers.
Duration 20 minutes.
Dedication: “Très respectueusement dédié a Madame la Princesse Edmond de Polignac”
[edit] History of creation
In April 1915 Winnaretta Singer, aka la Princesse Edmond de Polignac, commissioned Stravinsky a piece that could be played in her salon. She paid the composer 2,500 Swiss francs. The work was completed in Morges (Switzerland)in 1916, and Stravinsky himself made a staging plan, trying to avoid any resemblance to the operatic staging or conventions. He created rather a new form of theatre in which the acrobatic dance is connected with singing, and the declamation comments on the musical action. However the piece was never performed in the salon of the princess. It was not staged until 1922.
[edit] Scoring
Singers: 2 tenors, 2 basses
Ensemble: flute (doubling piccolo), oboe (doubling cor anglais), clarinet (doubling Eb clarinet), bassoon, 2 horns, trumpet, percussion (timpani, triangle, tambourine with bells, tambourine without bells, cylindrical drum, cymbals, bass drum), cimbalom (or piano), 2 violins, viola, cello and double-bass.
[edit] Premiere
May 18, 1922. Ballets Russes, Théâtre de l’Opéra, Paris. Conductor: Ernest Ansermet. Choreography: Bronislava Nijinska. Decorations and costumes: Mikhail Larionov.
Other sources indicate 2 June as the date of the premiere.[1]
[edit] Plot
This is a moralizing story, a farmyard fairy tale about Reynard the Fox who deceives the Cock, the Cat and the Ram, but at the end they catch and punish her. The Cock is twice tricked and captured by the Fox, only to be rescued each time by the Cat and the Ram. After the Cock's second rescue, the Cat and the Ram strangle the Fox, and the three friends dance and sing. It also contains a slight irony relating to religion and the church – to be invulnerable the Fox wears the black gown of the nun (nuns used the privilege of inviolability in Russia).
As later in his Les noces (or Russian:Свадебка, 1914-17) Stravinsky employs here the singers as part of the orchestra, and the vocal parts are not identified with specific characters.
[edit] Score and music sample
Stravinsky developed here the original technique of composition that was almost unknown in the European classical tradition, however was always typical for the folk music. The main features of this are the stubborn repetition of small and simple melodic phrases (called in Russian «попевки» – popevki), played in a syncopated rhythm, with an irregular meter (changing the time signature almost in every bar); the multi-voiced texture is not a real polyphony, but rather a heterophony, that represents monophony or so to say “ragged unison”, where the melody of one instrument is accompanied and embellished with the fragments of the same melody. Here is the most telling example:
- Sound sample of the first bars of the opening "March" (file info) — play in browser (beta)
- Problems listening to the file? See media help.
[edit] Recordings
- Stravinsky, Igor. The Complete Edition, Volume 1, Sony Classical SM3K46291
- Stravinsky, Igor. Orchestral music. Ballets ; Stage works ; Orchestral works/ Stravinsky. London : Decca
- Stravinsky the Composer. Two Suites, Four Etudes, etc./Robert Craft. Music Masters 67110-2
[edit] Notes
[edit] Bibliography
- Stravinsky, Igor. Renard: Histoire burlesque chantee et jouee / The Fox: A burlesque in song and dance / Reinecke: Gesungene und Gespielte Burleske. J. & W. Chester Ltd. Paperback pocket score. In Russian, French, & German.
- Igor Stravinsky. Poetics of Music in the form of six lessons (from the Charles Eliot Norton lectures delivered in 1939-1940). Harvard College, 1942. English translation by Arthur Knodell and Ingolf Dahl, preface by George Seferis: Harvard University Press, 1970, ISBN 0-674-67855-9.
- Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Conversations with Stravinsky, ISBN 0-520-04040-6
- Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography, ISBN 0-393-31856-7. Ghostwritten by Walter Nouvel
