Notes on Stravinsky's Variations

Abstract

H I FI R S T P U R E L Y, and exclusively, orchestral composition since Agon (1957), Stravinsky's new Variations were written between July 1963 and October 1964 and were first performed on April 17, 1965 by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Robert Craft. The score calls for woodwinds by twos (plus alto flute, English horn, bass clarinet); 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones; no percussion; piano, harp; strings in four (i.e., not five) groups of equal weight: 12 violins, 10 violas, 8 cellos, 6 contrabasses. The Variations take a little more than five minutes to play, but one would hesitate to explain away this duration merely by calling the piece short. It is, in fact, the chronometrical dimension of this music that is astounding in the first place, for this is no small composition either in regard to its content or with respect to the premises which it sets out to fulfil during its brief unfolding. The score gives evidence on its 25 pages of Stravinsky's conscious awareness of a new scale of timing, a new apportionment of time among various elements of the total design, as well as a new balancing and pacing in the constituent parts of interior, smaller structures. This is not to say that a concern with concentrated aspects of timing in the Variations is a reflection of the similar aims revealed in Abraham and Isaac and The Flood: in those works a narrative text and dramatic action or stress were