The Evolution of Neoclassicism in the Ballets Russes

Neoclassicism has proven to be one of the most influential musical movements of the twentieth century. The questions it asked, solutions it proposed, and responses it inspired have guided the direction of musical development since the 1920s. For many years, its only significant challenger for dominance of musical thought was the serialist school of Arnold Schoenberg and his followers.

Pre-war Europe was a continent characterized by disorder, distrust, rabid nationalism, and extreme racial tension. Antiteutonic feelings ran deep in many nations, especially France and Russia. The dominance of German music in European culture only served to further inflame these sentiments. Resentment of German culture had been building for decades and intensified with the outbreak of war in 1914.

Much of the unrest plaguing the continent during this period was due to the waves of nationalist movements which had swept across Europe during the nineteenth century in the wake of the French Revolution. As a result of a wide variety of factors, people had begun to shift their loyalty from their "state" to their "people." The growth in national pride and recognition of common ethnic identities that came about due to these nationalist movements had far-reaching effects on the European political scene, resulting in the creation of Germany and Italy as independent, unified states and the emergence of various separatist groups within the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Nationalism did not express itself only through politics. Political nationalism was often accompanied by or, in most cases, preceded by, renewed interest in the language, art, and literature of an ethnic group. As people became more focused on their national identities, they began to investigate how their art could reflect their culture and help establish this identity.

In Russia, this problem was magnified by the extremely young artistic life of the nation. Until the arrival of Italian musicians and French dancers at the end of the eighteenth century, Russia had no art music or theater tradition. In effect, Russia missed the European renaissance, and instead took in the results all at once in a few short decades. By the mid-nineteenth century, when other groups were struggling to create their own musical voice, Russia was still absorbing the influences of the rest of Europe. It wasn't until Tchaikovsky that Russia had any professional composers.

In the 1880s, a group of Russian composers decided that Russian music must be freed from German influence. These composers-- Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Borodin, Cui, and Balakirev, known collectively as "The Five" or "The Mighty Handful"-- criticized Tchaikovsky for writing music that sounded cosmopolitan and European rather than Russian. Their goal was to create a music that would be undeniably immediately identifiable as Russian.

On the other end of Europe, the overwhelming dominance of German music on the European continent left a particularly sour taste in the mouths of the French. By the late nineteenth century,

Paris was indisputably the cultural center of Europe. The arts flourished in the French capital, where a well-established avant-garde tradition had existed since at least the middle of the century and would have considerable impact on the evolution of modern art. The symbolist poets... and the post-Impressionist painters..., placing unprecedented emphasis on purely formal elements at the expense of conventional representational ones, had completely overthrown the main assumptions of nineteenth-century realism, so that by the turn of the century France was already poised at the edge of a new artistic epoch.⁽¹⁾

Thus, despite the vast differences between the cultures of the two nations, French and Russian composers found themselves involved in very similar struggles at roughly the same time. Each group was searching for a way to rid itself of German influence and establish a national sound. In both cases, this required a break with many of the refinements of accepted music theory. In Russia, this was accomplished by Modest Mussorgsky, in France by Claude Debussy.

Beyond this common struggle, there were many historical connections linking the artistic worlds of France and Russia. French dancers had first introduced ballet to Russia, where it prospered and grew well beyond its original limits, finding its peak in the works of the choreographer Petipa, who collaborated with Tchaikovsky on such masterpieces as Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty.

In nineteenth century France, on the other hand, ballet had become a stagnant art, losing its vitality and much of its artistic integrity. Few new works were being created, and none by major artists. The ballerina was little more than an prostitute for the upper class. One contemporary referred to the Opéra ballet as "the most wonderful seraglio in the western world, and it is reserved to the government and to subscribers."⁽²⁾

It was in this environment that Serge Diaghilev arrived in 1909 with his company, the Ballets Russes. Parisians were fascinated with all things Russian, and the company was an immediate success.⁽³⁾ The Ballets Russes's blend of Russian and orientalist entertainment was a perfect match for the French appetite for exoticist art.

In its early seasons, the Ballets Russes concentrated almost solely on works with Russian and orientalist themes. Oddly, the French public seemed to care little whether the "Russian" entertainment they were getting was truly Russian or, as was more often the case, orientalism (generally Persian culture) seen through a Russian lens. Thus we see the enormous success of Schéhérezade (1910) and The Firebird (1910), both choreographed by Michel Fokine, the former to music by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, the latter to music by Igor Stravinsky. These ballets were both kept in the company's repertory until its demise in 1929. Other orientalist works from this period include Le Dieu Bleu (1912), Stravinsky's opera Le Rossignol (1914), and the opera-ballet Le Coq d'Or (1914).

As the company became established in Paris, it began expanding its focus. However, Diaghilev never lost focus of the key to the company's success. Exoticism remained central to the works of the company throughout the course of its history.

However, relying on exoticism involves continually finding subject matter that is more exotic. Even the strangest foreign culture becomes familiar when seen on the stage each week. Thus, the company's ballets began expanding their focus beyond the Russian fairy-tale exoticism of the first few seasons. In the 1912 seasons, the company produced two ballets-- the Ravel/Fokine collaboration Daphnis et Chloë and Nijinsky's ballet to Debussy's L'Apres-midi d'un Faune-- using ancient Greece, rather than Russia, as the inspiration.

In Petrouchka (1911), Russian fairground culture was exoticized and blended with commedia dell'arte elements. In Jeux (1913), Diaghilev distanced everyday life by staging a ballet set in contemporary culture in which the dancers were costumed in sports clothing. In Le Sacre du Printemps (1913), the company recreated an imagined prehistoric Russia. In The Legend of Joseph (1914), it was ancient Egypt. No culture was safe from exploitation by Diaghilev's company.

Through the course of the Ballets Russes's early seasons, though, German music is conspicuous by its relative absence. From 1909 through 1914, there are only two ballets to music by German composers-- Carnaval (1910), choreographed by Fokine to music by Robert Schumann, and The Legend of Joseph, a Fokine ballet to music by Richard Strauss. Diaghilev's commission of The Legend of Joseph from Strauss marked the only time he commissioned a German composer, and the ballet completely disappeared from the repertory immediately after its first run of performances.

With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, financial realities made the type of extravagant, opulent productions previously common to the company impossible. The political effects of the war caused the company's members to scatter across Europe. Many of the dancers returned (or attempted to return) to Russia. Nijinsky ended up interned by the Austrians in Budapest for a year. Stravinsky went to Switzerland. Diaghilev took Léonide Massine and went to Italy, where, in response to Fokine's departure from the company, he began preparing the young dancer to take on the role of the company's choreographer.

Diaghilev was still planning Russian ballets at this point. Stravinsky was hard at work on the music for Les Noces, though it wouldn't be produced for nearly a decade, and Sergei Prokofiev was commissioned to compose the music for Chout in March of 1915.⁽⁴⁾

However, no impresario can afford to find himself in a rut, whether or not it seems to be sympathetic to his talents and sensibilities. Diaghilev knew this and was at this point, as always, seeking something new and exciting to produce. He seemed to have an idea of what he wanted, but was unable to put it together in a tangible way. When a visitor complimented Schéhérezade in 1915, Diaghilev replied:

Would you care in these days to furnish a room in the pure Regency style or in that of the Directoire? I should find the idea intolerable... What is true of a room is true of a ballet. Fokine's choreography is undoubtedly perfect of its sort but it has now got to make way for something else. One will come back to it later on, in fifty years, when, like everything else that has been lost and found again, it will seem amusing and then become a classic.

What we need now is "emancipated" dancers, that is, dancers who know all the techniques of the school but have freed themselves from it. They will have to evolve new gestures to the sound of such music as has never before been heard.⁽⁵⁾

In November 1916, with his company on tour in the United States under the supervision of Vaslav Nijinsky, Diaghilev spent his time going through old music in Roman libraries. A couple of months previously, Massine had acquired, at Diaghilev's suggestion, several treatises on dance from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries, including works by Carlo Blasis (the nineteenth century maître de ballet at La Scala), Raoul Feuillet, Louis Pécour, Malpied, and Jean-Philippe Rameau.⁽⁶⁾

While in Rome, Serge Diaghilev also first crossed paths with the Italian futurists. A natural affinity quickly developed between him and the group, who were all extremely enthusiastic about many aspects of the Ballets Russes, especially Stravinsky's music-- they famously showed up in large numbers for a concert of Stravinsky's music in Rome; after the performance of Petrouchka, Marinetti leaned from his box and shouted, "Abasso Wagner! Viva Stravinsky!" ("Down with Wagner! Long live Stravinsky!")

Diaghilev was quite favorably impressed with the futurists' ideas, which soon began appearing in various guises in productions he was planning. As a result of his encounters with the futurists, he began to slowly remove naturalism, realism, and the psychologically motivated characterization which had been central to Fokine's work from the company's new ballets. Though he only produced one truly futurist work⁽⁷⁾, he began to adopt the ideas and views of the movement.

Diaghilev was particularly fond of the futurist idea "that inherited categories could be bent, reshaped, combined with others, and injected with new material."⁽⁸⁾ "The futurists advocated a theater that was synthetic, atechnical, dynamic, and autonomous-- shorthand for (1) brevity and compression (Parsifal in forty minutes!), (2) adandonment of narrative, (3) speed and simultaneity, and (4) non-objective forms of representation."⁽⁹⁾ Each of these aspects worked their way into Diaghilev's ballets over the next several years.

After substantial amounts of time spent in the Roman libraries, Diaghilev suggested to Massine a ballet based on Goldoni's comedy Le Donne di buon 'umore, to be danced to orchestrated versions of Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas. Massine agreed to the suggestion, and decided that this "would give [him] an excellent opportunity of putting into practice the dance techniques of Rameau and Feuillet which [he] had been studying so assiduously."⁽¹⁰⁾

This production, which came to the stage in 1917, became Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur. Diaghilev hired Vincenzo Tommasini to orchestrate some twenty Scarlatti sonatas he had chosen from the well over five hundred he had originally collected. Tommasini's orchestrations were straightforward and contained no surprises.

Leon Bakst was hired to do the design. His first design was obviously an attempt to fit in with the Italian futurists. Unfortunately, Bakst clearly had no understanding of either the aesthetics or techniques of the futurists.⁽¹¹⁾ Massine described the set as a "curious circular Venetian piazza as one would see it through a glass ball, which Diaghilev rejected on the grounds that it was too experimental."⁽¹²⁾

Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur marked the beginning of a new line of ballets within the Ballets Russes: historical retrospective ballets. In the music of eighteenth century Italy, Diaghilev had found a means of overcoming Germanic influence and creating something new, bringing to mind his comment several years previously regarding Fokine's choreography; like "everything else that been lost and found again," this music seemed amusing and became a classic. Les Femmes de Bonne Humeur was the first real comedy the Ballets Russes had produced (unless one counts Carnaval or Jeux), and it was the first major ballet by the company to be neither Russian nor orientalist.

This practice of building a new work on music from the past was not original to Diaghilev. In a period when many nationalist composers in Europe had been turning to native folk traditions for inspiration, French composers had turned instead to their nation's art music heritage. Many French composers were heavily influenced by this earlier music, and some, notably Maurice Ravel, even wrote pieces in the older style or imitating the older style; Ravel's Menuet antique (1895) and Le Tombeau de Couperin (1914-17; begun when Ravel decided to halt further work on Wien, later to become La Valse, because he considered it to be in poor taste to create a work honoring the culture of the enemy capital during wartime) are both examples of this trend.

However, Diaghilev's ballets avoided the nostalgia and borderline sentimentality that accompanied Ravel's treatment of the eighteenth century. The ballets produced by Diaghilev treated the music not much differently than he might have treated a new score by Stravinsky; there was little, if any, hint of nostalgia in their presence. They were allowed to stand as music in their own right.

In Madrid, Diaghilev planted the suggestion for the next of these ballets in Massine's mind. In Rome, Ottorino Respighi had introduced Diaghilev to a series of short pieces for piano and various other instruments written by Rossini towards the end of his life entitled Péchés de vieilles. Massine later recalled:

When I heard Diaghilev play some of them on the piano my interest was quickly caught and held. The gaiety and variety of the music inspired me with the idea of choreographing a series of dances by animated toys, and it was agreed to create a ballet within the framework of a toyshop which offered its customers a wide range of dancing dolls.⁽¹³⁾

Bakst was offered the design work on the new ballet at first, but, due to personal conflicts, the job was soon taken from him and given to André Derain, instead. Massine recognized in this move "a change from lavish splendour to simplicity and rigid artistic control."⁽¹⁵⁾ For the London audience on opening night, Derain's designs were "a signal... that the Russian Ballet was now in alliance with the avant-garde."⁽¹⁶⁾ Respighi had been asked to orchestrate the Rossini pieces, which he did in a conservative but skillful manner.

The premiere took place 5 June 1919. The piece was much anticipated by the London public, and the hall was "so packed that you could hardly cross from one side to the other... Everywhere you looked, you could see nothing but rows of white faces blurred by the haze of cigarette smoke. It was a critical audience, too, for [there were] many faithful ballet-goers and many well-known music critics, painters, sculptors, and composers."⁽¹⁷⁾ The audience was not disappointed, and the ballet received raving reviews from the British press.

While in Naples, Massine became fascinated with the Italian commedia dell'arte, and became interested in doing a ballet on one of the Pulcinella stories. When he mentioned the idea to Diaghilev, the impresario suggested the music of Pergolesi. The two selected a handful of pieces attributed to Pergolesi from the library of the Conservatorio of S. Pietro a Maiella, and Massine began work on the ballet.

At the same time, the group was hard at work on Le Astuzie Femminili, a production of Cimarosa's opera. Diaghilev had contracted Respighi to reorchestrate the ballet and add some recitatives and commissioned José-María Sert to design the opera. This piece, described by Diaghilev as "a typical comic opera of the eighteenth century"⁽¹⁸⁾ closes with a ballo russo, from which cue, apparently, came the idea to design the piece as a St. Petersburg court spectacle.

It is quite natural that Diaghilev would find the concept of an eighteenth century Italian writing music inspired by Russian folk dances (Cimarosa spent four years in Russia as a court composer for Catherine the Great) an attractive one at this point. He was, after all, a Russian trying to create shows inspired by eighteenth century Italians. This final divertissement of the opera entered the Ballets Russes's repertory as the finale of a suite of dances from the opera entitled Cimarosiana.

Twelve days before the first performance of Le Astuzie Femminili, however, was the premiere of the most influential of the Ballets Russes' four old-Italian ballets: Pulcinella. Massine had begun conceiving this ballet as early as the summer of 1917. Diaghilev originally had intended for Manuel de Falla to do the orchestration for this ballet, but this fell through, and Stravinsky received the commission at the last minute, in the autumn of 1919.⁽¹⁹⁾

There is little reason to believe that Stravinsky had any personal interest in doing this score, at least not at first. In a manner typical of Stravinsky, his various recollections of the origins completely contradict each other, particularly with respect to his prior opinion of the music of Pergolesi. At one point, he recalled, "When [Diaghilev] said that the composer was Pergolesi, I thought he must be deranged. I knew Pergolesi only by the Stabat Mater and La Serva Padrona, and though I had just seen a production of the latter in Barcelona, Diaghilev knew I wasn't in the least excited by it."⁽²⁰⁾ However, in his autobiography published in 1936, he claimed, "The success of The Good-humored Ladies... had suggested the idea of producing something to the music of another illustrious Italian, Pergolesi, whom, as [Diaghilev] knew, I liked and admired immensely."⁽²¹⁾

Most of the evidence seems to point to the former recollection as more accurate, however, and it seems likely that any initial interest he had in the job stemmed more from the fact that this was the first paying job Diaghilev had offered him in five years than from any personal interest in the idea itself. However, once he looked through the music, it would seem he fell in love with the project.

According to Stravinsky, Diaghilev expected nothing more than a "stylish orchestration."⁽²²⁾ He told Massine that "Stravinsky was scoring the Pergolesi numbers for a large orchestra 'with harps.'"⁽²³⁾ It is quite reasonable to assume that Diaghilev was expecting Stravinsky to give these pieces similar treatment to that given the Rossini and Cimarosa by Respighi.

The score Stravinsky presented, however, was for a small orchestra of flutes and oboes in pairs, two horns, a trumpet, a trombone, string quintet, string section, and a trio of singers.⁽²⁴⁾ In addition, the orchestration was not just stylish, but heavily stylized. This was no straightforward orchestration of the Pergolesi (or what everyone assumed were Pergolesi's pieces⁽²⁵⁾), but they were not, as has been widely asserted, a new composition, either. They were something new and different: a kind of musical commentary on the pieces selected for the ballet.

The changes made by Stravinsky to the music were significant, but not fundamental. Aside from a few cases, he make no significant structural changes to the music. When melodic or harmonic material is altered, it is generally done so through extension of material which is already there. For example, a cadence might be repeated in an odd way or a melodic line briefly broken up and treated synthetically. However, instances of such extreme changes are few and far between.

Stravinsky's real mark on this music was actually made, as Diaghilev had requested, in the orchestration. The problem, if one can even call it that, is that Stravinsky chose to orchestrate these pieces in a highly idiosyncratic method. Stravinsky explained:

Musical "effects" are usually obtained by the juxtaposition of nuances; a piano following a forte produces an "effect." But that is the conventional, accepted thing.

I have tried to achieve an equal dynamism by juxtaposing the timbres of the instruments which are the very foundation of the sound material. A color only has value in relation to the other colors which are placed next to it. Red has no value itself. It only acquires it through its proximity to another red or a green, for example. And that is what I have wanted to do in music, and what I look for first of all is the quality of the sound.

I also look for truth in a disequilibrium of instruments, which is the opposite of the thing done in what is known as chamber music, whose whole basis is an agreed balance between the various instruments.⁽²⁶⁾

This effect can be easily heard in the Vivo at figure 170.⁽²⁷⁾ The melody here is orchestrated in a duet between the trombone and solo contrabass, both marked fortissimo. It is clearly impossible for a contrabass to balance the sound of a trombone playing at such a high dynamic. The naturally occurring imbalance between the two solo instruments is part of the effect Stravinsky is creating through his orchestration. The imbalance is emphasized when the solo contrabass plays segments without the trombone, such as the echo four measures after figure 170.

Where Stravinsky alters harmonies and other structural features, it is primarily through manipulation of existing elements in the work, rather than insertion of newly composed material. The most dramatic example of this technique is seen in the ending of the ballet, in which Stravinsky orchestrates Domenico Gallo's Trio Sonata No. 12 in E Major. To the basic melody, Stravinsky has added insistent 6-4 position tonic chords in an ostinato throughout, moving to a strange dominant chord in the penultimate bar containing every note but E and B. The F of this chord resolves to an E in the final chord, providing the sense of resolution. However, B, the leading tone, is oddly absent throughout. This combination of changes conspire to give the ending of Pulcinella a subtly Russian tone; it becomes eighteenth century Italian music with a twentieth century Russian accent-- "beady Scythian eyes seem to glint from behind the mask of European urbanity."⁽²⁸⁾

This change is, however, the most drastic alteration made at any point in Pulcinella, and it occurs at the very end of the piece. A look at the piece as a whole reveals that Stravinsky only gradually makes his presence felt. At the beginning of the ballet, there is little hint that the piece is anything but a straightforward orchestration of an eighteenth century piece. As the ballet progresses, Stravinsky "refuses removal of the disguise, but rather in time renders it transparent."⁽²⁹⁾

Few listeners would suspect any interference in the music through much of the beginning of the ballet; there is little reason to suspect this piece is anything but a skillful orchestration of an eighteenth century piece. As the music continues, though, hints of Stravinsky's presence begin to appear. The alterations become more obvious, and Stravinsky makes his presence more strongly felt until, by the time the ballet reaches the trombone and contrabass duet mentioned earlier, Stravinsky's hand is blindingly obvious.

The finale, as described above, retains the necessary ingredients of an eighteenth century final cadence, but exaggerates them to the point of absurdity, making it quite clear that Stravinsky is in charge. The audience has been allowed to hear a ballet created from eighteenth century Italian music, but only because he was willing to allow them to hear it; the finale reminds the audience that, had he wanted to, he could easily have Russicized the entire piece.

Glen Watkins points out that such treatment is entirely appropriate for a piece based on a commedia dell'arte story. Just as Massine wore a mask while dancing the piece stylized to recall the costume of commedia dell'arte performers, Stravinsky wears a musical mask while orchestrating the music. Both are full-blooded twentieth century Russians dressing as eighteenth century Italians for the evening and, though they are perfectly capable of completely disguising themselves, neither can resist the urge to allow his own personality to peek out from behind the mask at some point.

The score for Pulcinella was truly something new-- not a new composition, but a new type of musical item. On a very basic level it is "just" an arrangement, but it is much more. In many ways, it can be considered the musical equivalent of criticism. When asked years later what he thought of contemporary music, Stravinsky replied that the scores he'd recently heard sounded more like imitations of music than music itself:

today's imitations of Cologne and Company seem to me no better than yesterday's imitations of, as the expression goes, "Stravinsky and Hindemith." The music I saw showed what its composers thought about other music. At best, this might have been good music criticism. (I believe, with Auden, that the only critical exercise of value must take place in and by means of art, i.e., in pastiche or parody...)⁽³⁰⁾

This comment, made in 1959, hints subtly at what Pulcinella is. Like the student scores in the contest Stravinsky had been judging, Pulcinella is music criticism, and music criticism of the highest order. However, it also succeeds in being good music, something which referential art does not always manage.

All of this was far more than Diaghilev had expected from Stravinsky. Since Stravinsky claims that he had no original intentions of creating such a work, Diaghilev had little warning for the sounds which were to greet him the first time he heard the music. Stravinsky recalls:

Diaghilev hadn't even considered the possibility of such a thing. A stylish orchestration was what Diaghilev wanted, and nothing more, and my music so shocked him that he went about for a long time with a look that suggested The Offended Eighteenth Century. In fact, however, the remarkable thing about Pulcinella is not how much but how little has been added or changed.⁽³¹⁾

In the previous retrospective ballets, Diaghilev had merely been recreating old ballets using new talent; while the choreography built upon eighteenth century models to create something new, the design and music were essentially faithful to the original models. However, in Pulcinella, however accidentally, Diaghilev ended up with a new style. Stravinsky's score, while eighteenth century at the core, was rendered in a way that forced the audience to view it through twentieth century eyes. The same is true of Picasso's cubist street scene and Massine's choreography. In this ballet, Diaghilev sent artists with tools of the present into the past to create their work. In many ways, Gertrude Stein's famous comment about Parade-- that it was cubism put on stage-- could be even more appropriately applied to Pulcinella. Stravinsky, at least, seemed pleased with the result:

Pulcinella is one of those productions-- and they are rare-- where everything harmonizes, where all the elements-- subject, music, dancing, and artistic setting-- form a coherent and homogeneous whole.⁽³³⁾

I was seated here next to a very beautiful young woman who said all the time: "This is delightful!" She had never heard the music of Stravinsky, she ignored the name of Pergolesi, she was seeing the Ballets russes for the first time; and, in front of the knowingly unusual spectacle which unfolded before her, she swooned with ecstasy... As I let myself become astonished how M. Stravinsky had changed, in the Stravinskian sense, and orchestrated the little melodies of Pergolesi with the inspired devilry of which he alone is capable, an eminent and charming woman reproached me to "respect" the old things instead of "loving" them, and my friend Diaghilev retorted that without Pulcinella all the pages of Pergolesi which had served M. Stravinsky would have remained unknown. I would have been able to respond to the former that there was a unique way of "loving" old thing by changing the view of them, and to the latter that the first condition of observing in order to reveal unknown pages does not consist of presenting them inside out.⁽³⁴⁾

Positive reviews tended to express "delight in the surprise caused by the novel instrumental effects,"⁽³⁵⁾ while negative ones tended to proceed from a belief that Stravinsky had vandalized Pergolesi's music.

The legacy of Pulcinella was far-reaching. It revived interest in techniques and tools of the past at a time when it would seem that many artists were more concerned with progress than having any perspective on history. More importantly, it provided an example of how music can comment on itself and come to terms with its own history.

Pulcinella marked the end of Stravinsky's "Russian" period. Though Les Noces had yet to be completed, the composition was done by this point; it awaited orchestration. Taruskin suggests that the aesthetic shift Stravinsky went through at this point may have influenced the final choice of instrumentation for Les Noces; after years of trying odd combinations of obscure ethnic instruments, he finally settled on the oddly universal sound of pianos and percussion.⁽³⁶⁾

Stravinsky referred to Pulcinella as "my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible. It was a backward look, of course-- the first of many love affairs in that direction-- but it was a look in the mirror, too."⁽³⁷⁾ This piece was the first of his neoclassic period, which would last through the composition of Agon in 1957. This period was marked by his simplification of texture in order to create the most transparent music possible and his attempt to write objective music-- music with as few sentimental emotional connotations as possible. The neoclassicism created in Pulcinella and the other retrospective ballets of the Ballets Russes proved to be one of the most important artistic movements of the twentieth century, with effects that continue to resound today.

Endnotes

1. Robert P. Morgan, Twentieth-Century Music (New York: W.W. Norton, 1991) 40.

2. Arnold Bennett, "Russian Imperial Ballet at the Opera," Paris Nights and Other Impressions of Places and People (New York: George H. Doran, 1913) 67, quoted in Lynn Garafola, Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998) 274.

3. Lynn Garafola notes that Diaghilev's three previous Parisian offerings-- the 1906 Exhibition of Russian Art, the 1907 concert series of Russian music, and the 1908 presentation of the first complete production of Boris Godunov-- should not be overlooked in considering the success of the first season of the Ballets Russes. See Lynn Garafola, Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (New York: Da Capo Press, 1998) 274.

4. Richard Buckle, Diaghilev (New York: Atheneum, 1979) 289.

5. Buckle 292.

6. Léonide Massine, My Life in Ballet (London: Macmillan, 1968) 92.

7. In 1917, the Ballets Russes presented a piece by Giacomo Balla choreographed to Stravinsky's Feu d'Artifice. The piece consisted of a light show on a set built of geometrical solids. Diaghilev took a personal interest in this piece, designing much of the lighting design himself.

8. Garafola 81.

9. Garafola 79.

10. Massine 95.

11. Buckle 319.

12. Massine 96.

13. Massine 119.

14. Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through Mavra, Vol. II (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996) 1507.

15. Massine 133.

16. Buckle 355.

17. Cyril W. Beaumont, The Diaghilev Ballet in London: A Personal Record, 3^rd ed. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1951) 135.

18. Buckle 365.

19. Taruskin 1462.

20. Igor Stravinksy and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962) 127.

21. Igor Stravinsky, An Autobiography (New York: W.W. Norton, 1962) 80.

22. Stravinksy and Craft 128.

23. Buckle 361.

24. Igor Stravinksy, Pulcinella: Ballet in one act for small orchestra with three solo voices after Giambattista Pergolesi (London: Boosey & Hawkes, 1966).

25. The pieces were actually by at least a half dozen different eighteenth century Italian composers; only about half of them were actually by Pergolesi. See Taruskin 1464.

26. Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky: A Creative Spring (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1999) 312.

27. Stravinsky, Pulcinella 137.

28. Taruskin 1505.

29. Glen Watkins, Pyramids at the Louvre: Music, Culture, and Collage from Stravinsky to the Postmodernists (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994) 292.

30. Stravinsky and Craft 124.

31. Ibid. 128.

32. Constant Lambert, Music Ho! A Study of Music in Decline, 2^nd ed. (New York: October House, 1967) 74.

33. Stravinsky, Autobiography 85.

34. Scott Messing, Neoclassicism in Music from the Genesis of the Concept through the Schoenberg/Stravinsky Polemic (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1988) 115-16.

35. Messing 114.

36. Taruskin 1501.

37. Stravinsky and Craft 128-9.

Works Cited

Beaumont, Cyril W. The Diaghilev Ballet in London: A Personal Record. 3^rd ed. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1951.

Buckle, Richard. Diaghilev. New York: Atheneum, 1979.

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