Experiencing Stravinsky: A Listener’s Companion by Robin Maconie (review)

In 1972, a new writer specializing in the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen and the European avant-garde published a still-valuable article on the last music published by Igor Stravinsky. Robin Maconie made a number of tantalizing critical observations therein, at once analytically grounded, emotionally tinged, and interpretively suggestive, as evident in the following quotation: “More than the text, more than the period nostalgia, it is the music’s sense of finality that moves the listener. . . . It is an effect due entirely to cadential movement, and one realises with a shock how much Stravinsky’s music had always resisted the ultimate inevitability of a final resolution. Even in his own elegiac works the cadence is always harmonically inconclusive and rhythmically compromised, so that the listener is left with the impression that the decision to end is open and voluntary” (Robin Maconie, “Stravinsky’s Final Cadence,” Tempo no. 103 [1972]: 19). This richness of perspective survives intact into Maconie’s recent venture on Stravinsky, which like the above, showcases writing of the same fine essay-review variety.

Experiencing Stravinsky marks the inaugural monograph of Scarecrow’s new series of companions for listeners aimed toward general readers. According to the series editor, Gregg Akkerman, “The Listener’s Companion is a series devoted to giving readers a deeper understanding of key musical genres and the work of major artists and composers. It does so by describing in lay terms the structures and historical contexts that serve as the ground for our experience when we listen to representative examples” (p. ix). This first book in the series, however, falls short of forcefully demonstrating the joint aim of “giving readers a deeper understanding of music by teaching them how to listen to key works by major musical artists and composers from recognized musical genres” (p. i). The book’s preoccupation leans more toward how to think about Stravinsky’s music than toward specifics of how to listen.

Perhaps for any writer in this series, the most daunting challenge involves sheer methodology: the question of how to write a book for a general, intellectual, musically-interested body of readers wishing to engage directly with a super-mediated body of music. With Stravinsky the problem reaches staggering proportions, given the ever-increasing pile of scholarly commentary about him. A related colossal problem of how to write engagingly about a master composer’s complete oeuvre, without deteriorating into collections of program notes and superficial observations, and which rewards reading by music specialists and the musically illiterate alike, clearly remains one each contributor to this series of listener’s companions must face anew. In the present volume, Maconie succeeds admirably in bravely heading the way toward reconciling these irreconcilables. Such a tricky enterprise permits only partial success.

If the quotation in the first paragraph above offers a litmus test for those likely to appreciate Maconie’s critical style, then a broad audience of readers indeed should welcome this author’s book on Stravinsky’s music. The book best serves as a companion, though, versus a genuine guide. Readers uninitiated into the rudiments of music theory and history stand about as much to gain from this book as they would from Maconie’s writing in 1972 on the temporal linearity associated with German romantic tradition as holding greater attraction for the elder Stravinsky than tonal stasis. Meanwhile, readers already familiar with Stravinsky’s music surely can have perceptions sharpened from reading this text.

Bibliographic data on the verso of the title page specifies the subject classification “criticism and interpretation,” not “music appreciation.” The book’s design also foregoes the usual trappings of texts on music appreciation, dispensing completely with charts, diagrams, music examples, tables, and figures. At best, the book bears on “experiencing” Stravinsky mainly through advancing aesthetic and philosophic perspectives from which to listen, all of which affirm the composer’s utmost historical significance, staying power, contemporary relevance...