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  • Stravinsky's "Great Passacaglia": Recurring Elements in the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments by Donald G. Traut
  • Scott C. Schumann
Stravinsky's "Great Passacaglia": Recurring Elements in the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments. By Donald G. Traut. (Eastman Studies in Music.) Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2016. [x, 161 p. ISBN 9781580465137 (hardcover), $70; ISBN 9781782048480 (e-book), $45.] Music examples, tables, facsimiles, appendix, bibliography, index.

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Igor Stravinsky's music has been studied from a variety of perspectives over the past century. One particular time period in the composer's life that has to this day left a number of unanswered questions, however, is the beginning of his neoclassical compositional period in the early 1920s. As Donald G. Traut argues convincingly in this book, the composition of the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (1924) in particular serves as a nexus between several new and old facets of the composer's life and career. Of the several important studies concerning the composer's transition to his neoclassical style, one recent and notable example is Maureen A. Carr's After the Rite: Stravinsky's Path to Neoclassicism (1914–25) (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). Traut's book, however, is unique in that it presents a focused, detailed study of one specific work from that transitional period rather than a broad examination of Stravinsky's neoclassical style through an examination of several compositions.

Traut acknowledges that focusing on this particular work might seem odd given that "it is neither his most famous neoclassic piece nor his most critically acclaimed" (p. 1). Stravinsky's concerto contains many features common to his other neoclassical works, however, such as its use of Baroque gestures, tonal centricity, rhythmic energy and variety (reminiscent of both George Frideric Handel and Scott Joplin), and clear formal divisions (rather than block textures more common in his earlier compositions). Thus, the concerto can be said to represent his process of establishing a new style after achieving fame from works composed in his Russian phase. The concerto also corresponds to the beginning of the composer's evolution as a performer, in that he wrote several other works for the keyboard around this time that he could premiere himself—presumably to both make more money and control the artistic integrity of his new compositions. In terms of Stravinsky's compositional process, his work on the concerto also represents a change in his approach, as he began concentrating on a single composition rather than multitasking several projects, as was his practice earlier in his career.

Though Stravinsky's concerto generated many varying critical opinions, one shortcoming common to both positive and negative reviews was the frequent "mention of only one movement or, more common still, just part of one movement, with little concern for context" (p. 2). Traut thus approaches his analysis using what he dubs "Recurring Elements" (REs), which are (primarily four) motives prominently featured at multiple structural levels of all three movements (p. 4). This approach is particularly effective in that it allows Traut to analyze compositional elements that other theorists describe as surface references to Baroque gestures, and to demonstrate a variety of ways in which these same gestures impact all three movements of the work on the deepest structural levels. It also allows the author to engage with criticisms previously leveled against the piece (and Stravinsky's neoclassical style) on their own terms. For example, Traut provides methods for understanding Stravinsky's use of counterpoint to engage with Heinrich Schenker's negative critique of this piece and the composer's neoclassical style in general.

The chapters divide the book neatly in half, with the first three providing a historical and analytical backdrop, and the last three each focusing on analyses of individual movements of the concerto. [End Page 96] Brief introductory and concluding chapters serve as bookends. Chapter 1 examines historical sources (letters and sketch materials) and includes several high-quality black-and-white photographs of Stravinsky's sketches from the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basel, Switzerland. Of particular interest is a page from a pocket calendar dated Tuesday, 17 July (1923), which would become the earliest known sketch for the...

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