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Stravinsky seated at the Pleyela in his Paris studio - August 1923
The Russian composer, Igor Stravinsky, spent some fifteen years, one-sixth of his very long life, in close contact with pianolas of different kinds. He composed an original study for the instrument, planned it as part of the accompaniment to his ballet, "Les Noces", and actually rewrote most of his major early works especially for piano roll.
Stravinsky's ballet - Petrushka Pianolas were well-known in Russia before the revolution, but it seems likely that Stravinsky first became aware of their real musical potential in Berlin in late 1912, where he joined Diaghilev's Ballets Russes on tour, for the opening of "Petrushka" on 4 December. Arnold Schoenberg was in the audience that night, and was impressed, and four days later he invited Stravinsky to a performance of "Pierrot Lunaire" in the Choralion Saal at Bellevuestrasse 4, nowadays a mere lamppost at the back of the Sony Centre! The Choralion Company was the Aeolian Company's subsidiary in Germany, and its showrooms were full of pianolas, orchestrelles (a sophisticated development of the American organ) and even pipe organs, all operated by perforated music roll. This visit clearly caused Stravinsky to think of using roll-operated instruments for his own music, because within a few days he had received a telegram from Diaghilev, reassuring him that pianola arrangements were not necessary for the rehearsals of the Rite of Spring, and a tart reply from the Parisian agency that supplied repetiteurs for the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées, that its pianists were quite capable of mastering the complexities of his music.
A few years later, with his thoughts turning to "Les Noces", he enquired of the Aeolian Company in London whether it would be possible to perforate pianola rolls for the accompaniment, and as a result of this contact, he decided to write a series of studies for the Pianola. In fact, he only completed one study, known nowadays as the "Etude pour Pianola", written in 1917, but published and first performed in 1921. The pianolist who gave the première, at Aeolian Hall in London, was Reginald Reynolds, who can be seen on the Pianola Institute's website.
The opening of the "Etude pour Pianola" A study score of the Etude is published in Pianola Journal no. 5, by kind permission of Boosey & Hawkes - see the Institute's Pianola Journal page for more details. Recent recordings of the work have been made by Rex Lawson, and one of these is currently available, together with Petrushka and the Rite of Spring, from Other Minds in San Francisco. Click here to be linked to the Other Minds webstore. Another recording is included in a 3 CD set of Stravinsky conducted by Pierre Boulez, available from Amazon in Germany. You can click to hear an excerpt from the Etude pour Pianola in Real Player, from the Amazon website.
"Les Noces" was one of the central works of Stravinsky's life. It combined his feelings towards the Russia that he had left, and that had changed for ever, his religious beliefs, the musical discoveries that he had made as he travelled Europe, and not least his sense of humour. Initially he thought of arranging it for large orchestra and chorus, but he discarded this version in favour of a much more unusual orchestration. The full title of the work is actually "Svadebka" in Russian, "Les Noces Villageoises" in French, and is best translated as "The Village Wedding" in English. It is a wedding, not of the rich bourgeoisie, but of peasant folk, with all the excitement and mishaps that this entails.
Rex Lawson's CD of Les Noces and other works So in trying to represent this peasant quality in music, Stravinsky combined a pianola, played in a deliberately mechanical way, two Hungarian cimbaloms, a harmonium, and a great deal of percussion. These two Russian cimbalom players, found amidst the bustle of the Brussels flea market in March 2005, are the contemporary equivalent of Stravinsky's peasants: a far cry from the tail-coated world of the orchestra pit.
Gypsy cimbaloms in Brussels, March 2005 However, in the aftermath of the First World War, it was not easy to find virtuoso cimbalom players who could perform contemporary Western music, and so the Parisian firm of Pleyel decided to construct two keyboard cimbaloms, that could be played by music roll if necessary. The design was undertaken by a Belgian organ-builder, Georges Cloetens. Unfortunately, the project was not a simple one, and although the new instruments, known as "luthéals", were designed and patented in 1919, they were not finally ready until 1924. Since Stravinsky had sold the exclusive rights of "Les Noces" to Diaghilev for a three-year period beginning in 1920, he had to abandon his ideal instrumentation in favour of the final version for four pianos and percussion.
Georges Cloetens' Luthéal, manufactured by Pleyel Some accounts of "Les Noces" even claim that Stravinsky at one time intended the work to be accompanied by four pianolas. However, it's clear enough that he viewed the word "pianola" as a useful epithet for any keyboard instrument that played by means of music roll. Whether a cimbalom/luthéal, a harmonium/orchestrelle, or a normal player-piano, it was easier for him to refer to this plurality by the one simple term. Pianola, two cimbaloms and harmonium were for him the selfsame thing as four pianolas.
During the 1920s, the firm of Pleyel, which was the major musical establishment in Paris, furnished Stravinsky with a studio in its headquarters in the rue Rochechouart. He was able to use this as an office, a studio for composition, a workshop for creating new piano roll versions of most of his early works, and as a pied-à-terre for entertaining guests, not least his future wife, Vera Soudeikina. In close co-operation with Jacques Larmanjat, Pleyel's head of music rolls, he made new arrangements of Firebird, Petrushka, the Rite of Spring, the Song of the Nightingale, Pulcinella, Les Noces, and a host of smaller works.
Advertising the Pleyela in December 1921 Pleyel cannot have made much money from the sale of Stravinsky's rolls, for they paid the composer on five counts for each and every roll of his that they manufactured, whether or not it was subsequently sold. These payments were for the mechanical copyright, for exclusivity (since the rolls represented the very first "recordings" of the works concerned), for the arrangement of the work for music roll, for the performance of the work (even though Stravinsky did not actually record any of the rolls at a keyboard), and for the musical copyright of the original work. A special roll leader was commissioned, which can be seen here, as adapted for use in a Pianola Institute concert in 1985.
A Pianola Institute concert flyer, based on the design of Stravinsky's Pleyela rolls Three of these arrangements, the Rite of Spring, Petrushka and Les Noces, are currently available on CD, in recordings made by Rex Lawson during the 1990s. The first recording combines the piano roll Rite with the orchestral version, played by the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, and this can be ordered through the orchestra's website, at www.bostonphil.org . This CD used to be available from www.gohastings.com, where several audio excerpts can still be heard. The links to the different tracks are as follows:
Rex Lawson's second recording of the Rite is coupled with Petrushka and the Etude pour Pianola. The CD can be obtained via the Internet, from Other Minds in San Francisco, and there are also two audio excerpts from Petrushka, Tableau 1 and Tableau 2. Both take a little while to download. Click here to be linked to the Other Minds webstore. Les Noces is also currently available on the Pianola Institute's own CD label. Click here for details of Aeolia 1001.
In 1924, Stravinsky's contract with Pleyel was acquired by the Aeolian Company in New York, and in January 1925 the composer travelled to America for a concert tour, and to record some piano rolls for the Duo-Art system. The Sonata for Piano was actually published on roll before the sheet music appeared, and the first movement of the Concerto for Piano was also issued.
Stravinsky at the Duo-Art recording piano in New York - January 1925 The Aeolian Company was keen to publish many of Stravinsky's works in its new "AudioGraphic" series of rolls, on which copious programme notes and illustrations could be printed, so in addition to his actual keyboard recordings, Stravinsky worked on preparing Firebird, Petrushka, Apollon Musagète, Baiser de le Fée and other works for the new system. Unfortunately, the Depression of the late 1920s caused the abandonment of this project, and much of the work was destroyed. However, a series of six rolls of the Firebird was published.
The illustrated title from one of Stravinsky's AudioGraphic Firebird rolls - January 1929 For further information about Stravinsky's pianola works, you can read Rex Lawson's article, 'Stravinsky and the Pianola', spread over issues 1 and 2 of the Pianola Journal. See the Pianola Institute's Pianola Journal pages for more details. |
