Stravinsky's ‘Abraham and Isaac’ and ‘Elegy for J. F. K.’

Extract

The nature of feeling in Stravinsky's art, variously described as depersonalised, ritualistic or monumental, finds its epitome in the small memorial pieces which have appeared throughout his life. Here one can say that personal grief does not in the least affect the means of expression, yet paradoxically it is the music's sole raison d'être. With such an oblique relationship between personal feeling and artistic expression, it is not surprising that the composer's three most recent memorials, Epitaphium, Dirge Canons, and the new Elegy for JKF, find in the pre-compositionally determined factors of twelve-note serialism a most convincing discouragement to personal indulgence. It is even more instructive that the row is used with simple rigidity, and little of the licence which elsewhere in the composer's serial works encompasses the more improvisatory and empirical demands of his highly characteristic harmonic sense. This rigidity of technique perfectly corresponds to the plain fact of the carved epitaph, and is close to the universal poignancy of some Roman memorial inscriptions.