25172884

7/26/2019 25172884

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/25172884 1/4

Still More on Displacement

Author(s): Pieter C. van den Toorn

Source: The Musical Quarterly , Vol. 90, No. 3/4 (Fall - Winter, 2007), pp. 536-538

Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25172884

Accessed: 06-04-2016 15:08 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

http://about.jstor.org/terms

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted

digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about

JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Musical Quarterly

This content downloaded from 161.53.226.35 on Wed, 06 Apr 2016 15:08:20 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

7/26/2019 25172884


Still More on Displacement

Pieter C. van den Toorn

My thanks to Don Traut for his very intriguing comments on the larger

role of displacement in Stravinsky's music. A strong parallel does indeed

seem to exist between the metrical displacement of repeated motives

and chords and the displacement of "contrapuntal lines." Especially

revealing is Traut's account of a passage from Stravinsky's Piano

Concerto (Ex. 3). Schenker's earlier commentary on this passage (Ex. 4)

is shown to have been a good deal more savvy about the nature of

Stravinsky's art than his outright rejection of it would have led one to

believe

The "overlapping" of tonic and dominant harmony, pervasive in

the composer's neoclassical works from the time of Pulcinella (1919), has

frequently been remarked upon, of course, as have the static, non

developmental implications of the practice. By way of the Piano Sonata

(Ex. 8), Traut includes it as a form of displacement. The sense of

motion associated with the actual progression of these chord functions

is more or less cancelled out by their superimposition. Harmony is

flattened out in the process.

My view of the Piano Concerto is that, at least on a local scale in

the first movement, many of the techniques cited by Traut derive from

Bach's use of the non-harmonic, metrically accented passing tone

(another from of displacement, of course). Bach's keyboard music served

as a constant point of reference for Stravinsky during the 1920s, even as

a kind of daily staple for a while. The anti-modernist slogan "back to

Bach" dates from this era.

Underscored by Traut as well is the governing role that displace

ment assumes in Stravinsky's music, whatever the stylistic orientation,

presumably Russian, neoclassical, or serial. Overlooked by him, however,

are the "contrapuntal shifts" that result as a matter of course from strati

fication. In Stravinsky's layered structures, superimposed fragments,

registrally and often instrumental / fixed, repeat according to spans or

cycles that vary independently of one another. The result is an

doi:10.1093/musqtl/gdn013 90:536-538

Advance Access publication September 23, 2008.

? The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions,

please e-mail: [email protected]


7/26/2019 25172884


Still More on Displacement 537

alignment that shifts not only in relation to meter but between the

superimposed fragments as well.

In turn, metrical displacement can be shown to underlie much of

what we regularly tend to identify with Stravinsky's style. It can account

for the literal nature of the repetition, for example, the lack of variation

and development along traditional lines; and it can account for much of

the articulation as well, such as the beams, staccato, and non-espressivo

markings in his scores.

In fact, the strict performance style on which the composer placed

such emphasis can also be traced to the displacement process. Among

Stravinsky's critics, the tendency has been to look to the outside, to

attribute this and other features of the idiom to extraneous forces.

Modernist fashion in the world of conducting has been cited in this

connection, as has the notorious bluntness of the composer's formalist

convictions. The specter of an anti-humanistic, autocratic personality

has been invoked. Yet there is a better way of explaining the strict style

and its rationale, and it lies with the materials themselves. It can be

found by starting with the music and fanning out from there, as it were,

allowing the music itself to stand as the catalyst that set (and that con

tinues to set) these other ideas and practices in motion. Seen from this

perspective, neither the strict style nor the bare-knuckled formalism can

be viewed as a starting point. Far more readily, both fall into place as

effects and consequences of musical processes such as displacement and

stratification

To condense but one small segment of this line of reasoning?if

the metrical displacement of a fragment, configuration, or block of

material is to have its effect, then (1) the repetition must be kept

fairly literal, and (2) the beat must be maintained fairly strictly. This

sounds innocent enough, yet the implications are far-reaching. While

a strict beat will lack much in the way of expressive timing and

nuance, it will make up for this by its ability to project a clear sense

of metrical placement and displacement; and the latter is essential in

a performance of Stravinsky's music. Without it, much of the point of

the invention is lost; so there is little reason why listeners and perfor

mers should feel themselves put out by a beat of this kind, unable to

come to grips with an underlying rationale, and at the mercy therefore

of a conductor's or composer's "ethic of scrupulous submission," as

one critic has phrased it. On the contrary, a relatively strict beat is

likely to leave that much more of the rhythmic play exposed to the

ear. Timing and the element of surprise are apt to be felt that much

7/26/2019 25172884


538 The Musical Quarterly

Much of this needs to be fleshed out analytic-theoretically, of

course; yet the idea of addressing issues of style, performance practice,

criticism, and aesthetic belief by way of the materials themselves (pro

cesses of displacement, for example) is surely an appealing one at times.

I am grateful to Don Traut for his response.

Notes

Pieter van den Toorn teaches music theory at the University of California at Santa

Barbara. His books include The Music of Igor Stravinsky (1983), Stravinsky and the Rite

of Spring (1987), and Music, Politics and the Academy (1995). Articles on a variety of

subjects ranging from Beethoven to Stravinsky and atonal music have appeared in the

Journal of Music Theory, Music Analysis, Perspectives of New Music, The Musical

Quarterly, and the Journal of Musicology. Email: [email protected]

1. See Scott Messing, Neoclassicism in Music from the Genesis of the Concept Through

the Schoenberg Stravinsky Polemic (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1988). Or see

Richard Taruskin, "Back to Whom? Neoclassicism as Ideology," Nineteenth-Century

Music 16, no. 3 (1993): 286-302.

2. Richard Taruskin, "Stravinsky and Us," in The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky,

ed. Jonathan Cross (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 283.


25172884

Documents

Transcript of 25172884