Using a plethora of primary source material drawn from letters, sketches, and score manuscripts, Charles M. Joseph proposes that Stravinsky's ballets offer a “looking glass” (247) through which we can chart his developing compositional vocabulary. Joseph's emphasis on Stravinsky's use of musical movement, via his employment of pace, rhythm, meter, and silence, substantiates this assertion. It is important to note that one-third of Stravinsky's works were composed for ballet, and more than half of his remaining compositions have also been choreographed. Stravinsky's Ballets charts a trajectory from “the artistic mentor Diaghilev originally set out to be” (111) to Balanchine, who “provided [Stravinsky] with a lifelong confidant” (111). As such, the book is a packed volume, with more than enough examples to ensure that dance is placed at the center of Stravinsky's oeuvre.
Joseph is a recognized expert in Stravinsky's music and dance works, particularly regarding the composer's longstanding collaborations with Balanchine. He has previously produced three books on Stravinsky, including the award winning Stravinsky and Balanchine (Reference Jordan2002) and Stravinsky Inside Out (Reference Joseph2001). Although the new book is well researched, lovingly written, and presents much detail, it is marred by a lack of consistency in methodology and structure. In addition, Joseph draws extensively on his earlier volumes, as he notes in the introduction (xvi). This is disappointing to any scholar, who will find a good deal of overlap with his earlier books. The thick description of Stravinsky's compositions, although demonstrating detailed archival research and using copious quotations from primary sources, limits what Joseph is able to offer by way of analysis. Finally, the relegation of some significant compositions, including Renard, Pulcinella, and Les Noces, to a single chapter limits the extent to which Joseph can analyze the music–dance relationships of these ballets.
The debate into how music and dance are related in Stravinsky's ballets is raised in the introduction. In particular, Joseph asks: “Why … would Stravinsky devote an inordinate amount of his creative energy over the breadth of his long career to such a historically bereft genre?” (xv). He answers the question by providing much evidence of Stravinsky's collaborative opportunities and genuine interest in the other arts. Through the course of the book he guides the reader toward the conclusion that Stravinsky considered collaboration a partnership. In his final chapter, Joseph makes this certain by quoting the composer, himself: “Music and Dance should be a true marriage of the separate arts, a partnership, not a dictatorship of one over the other” (Stravinsky 1934, quoted on p. 234).
Joseph writes in a clear and enthusiastic manner while conveying his awe of Stravinsky's ballets. The text is thick with description of Stravinsky's creative process, stage sets, scenarios, and collaborative partners. Stravinsky is cited often and at length, providing the reader with ample evidence of the composer's opinions. Joseph navigates Stravinsky's changing perspectives across his letters, autobiography, and conversations with Robert Craft. The scope of primary source material with which Joseph engages is impressive. He also raises useful questions that critically engage with the central themes concerning Stravinsky's collaborative partners, notions of time and space, and stylistic advancements. These themes are illustrated in Stravinsky's letters and in the reception of the various works. Joseph argues that Stravinsky developed his collaborative process in order to extend his ideas to all elements of a music–dance production. He also includes speculative, rhetorical questions that ponder the “what if” moments of Stravinsky's career: for example, “How much progress would Stravinsky have achieved without the home Diaghilev provided?” (135). Joseph gives credit to Diaghilev's initial guidance, which in many ways liberated Stravinsky to work so successfully across music and dance.
Through the book's nine chapters, Joseph carefully details the creation of Stravinsky's works, first by describing individual compositions, then by exploring the primary source evidence and analyzing what contributions and decisions Stravinsky made within the collaborative teams. After exploring Stravinsky's early ballets, he moves on to the composer's career in America, and finally discusses Stravinsky's collaborations with Balanchine. Joseph makes clear in his introduction that he will not establish a “single template” (xvi) for analysis. He notes that he discusses both music and dance, but that “at times” he focuses on music, rather than dance, and on other occasions he “focuses instead on choreography or the storyline” (xvi). This inconsistent approach distinguishes the book from other contemporary Stravinsky music–dance scholarship. For example, Stephanie Jordan's similarly named Stravinsky Dances (Reference Jordan2007) charts Stravinsky's views of dance with a detailed musico-choreographic analysis, using a methodology that extends from and develops her earlier work in Moving Music (Reference Jordan2000). The reception of Stravinsky's ballets is central to Jordan's volume. Richard Taruskin's two-volume biography, Stravinsky and the Russian Tradition (Reference Taruskin1996), interrogates what constitutes this Russian tradition in relation to Stravinsky's compositional vocabulary. He challenges notions of nationalism, utilizing a wide range of Russian primary sources. Likewise, Stephen Walsh's two-volume biography of Stravinsky (Reference Walsh1999 and Reference Walsh2006) is organized by period and location: first the Russian and French context from 1882 to 1934, then the French and American context from 1934 to 1971. Walsh argues for the importance of Stravinsky's cultural milieu during the time of musical composition, establishing the composer's Russian heritage and self-exiled status. Although Joseph projects a warm and deeply inspiring passion for Stravinsky's works, it is perhaps at the cost of a consistent critical reading of the creative process.
The first four chapters of Stravinsky's Ballets provide a historical survey of the composer's musical education and the creation of his early ballets, The Firebird, Petrouchka, and The Rite of Spring. Balanchine then becomes central to the remaining five chapters, with the exception of Chapter 8 (which I will discuss in a moment). In Chapter 5, Joseph chronicles Stravinsky's move away from Diaghilev toward other collaborative partners, particularly Balanchine, with reference to Apollo. Then the chronology is diverted by skipping the early hybrid compositions, such as Renard and Pulcinella, to discuss Stravinsky's work in America. Here Joseph begins to chart the development of a symbiotic relationship between Balanchine and Stravinsky in ballets such as Jeu de Cartes and Orpheus. In reference to Agon in Chapter 7, Joseph explores the pitch sets Stravinsky used and draws some detailed comparisons to Balanchine's choreography. This leads him to assert that: “In tracking these internal operations [in Agon], one begins to discover Balanchine's coordination of Stravinsky's score with his choreographic techniques—a synergetic achievement if ever there was one” (186). The closing chapter outlines Balanchine's involvement in the 1972 Stravinsky Festival, in which newly choreographed ballets paid tribute to Stravinsky.
The later chapters of the book, which have the most critical depth, raise many probing questions about specific works, especially regarding Stravinsky's input into the choreography, which Joseph answers by reference to primary source material and Stravinsky's own assertions. The lack of a scenario in Agon, in particular, ensures that Joseph engages with the music–dance content, rather than describing the scenario and its musical illustration.
It is also in the later part of the book that Joseph raises the issue of versification (which refers to music deriving elements from the other art forms, specifically text) and asks: “How could the internal distortion of versification prove useful as part of a compositional transmogrification?” (219). Versification has been addressed by Peter Dayan (Reference Dayan2011, 119–45), who explores the concept that music is in fact “Stravinsky's poetry,” exposing an active inter-art aesthetic within his oeuvre. Both Joseph and Dayan explore Stravinsky's use of the poetic text, the scenario, and the other arts. Moreover, they both refer to Stravinsky's discussion of this process. Joseph cites Stravinsky at length to demonstrate the problems of artistic transfer (the transference of ideas and content from one artistic medium to another): “In musical versification … a translation of sound-sense is impossible and a translation of word-sense, even if possible, would be through a glass darkly” (Stravinsky and Craft 1962, 116, quoted in Joseph, 219).
Throughout the book Joseph emphasizes Stravinsky's persistent involvement in all elements of the artistic production, as well as an acute awareness of his self-image. For example, he states in reference to The Rite of Spring, “[Stravinsky] actively promoted the fiction that his breakthrough composition was neither based on any compositional methodology, nor influenced by any historical models” (84). Noting Balanchine's perspective on the composer, Joseph writes: “Stravinsky's insertion of himself into the creative process by physically doing something, either at the keyboard or in the rehearsal studio, impressed Balanchine” (110). In reference to Le baiser de la fée, Joseph states that, “[Stravinsky] insists that he himself play the music for [Rubinstein and Nijinska]” (143). Such detail provides insights into Stravinsky's character and working process.
Since most of the book follows a chronological structure, Chapter 8 seems oddly out of place. It returns to earlier compositions, which are defined as hybrid in that they include music, dance, narration, mime, and sung performance. Joseph discusses Renard, L'Histoire du soldat, Pulcinella, Les Noces, Perséphone, and The Flood. Many of these works are integral to the development of Stravinsky's compositional style and collaborative choices. Each ballet receives brief attention and much less analysis than the other works: It is clear that Joseph could say much more, and indeed expand the idea of hybridization, which is significant in Stravinsky's oeuvre, to a volume of its own. Joseph notes that “Stravinsky's most complex hybridization” (216) is in Les Noces. Reference to this seminal work towards the end of the book infringes on its structural cohesiveness. As it stands, the structure sets up divisions between the early ballets (Chapters 1–4), those choreographed by Balanchine (Chapters 5–7 and 9), and the earlier compositions that are a hybrid. For a scholar familiar with Stravinsky, this structure will not be a problem, but for a reader yet to be introduced to his work, it is likely to be confusing. In addition, Joseph places less emphasis on some compositions (grouping them into one chapter), while giving others probing analysis. With the extent of source material available, it would have been possible for each ballet to receive more equal attention.
Another drawback of the volume is its lack of a single analytical approach. The counterpoints of music and dance, which are referred to often, might have been further explored were there a consistent analytical framework applied to each work. In order to interrogate the structural, gestural, and spatial dialogue between the arts cohesively, a single method would be required. Without such a single method, there is a disjunction between the historical survey of the opening five chapters and the more detailed and analytical later chapters in which Joseph engages with the musical content, and to an extent, the choreography.
This all-encompassing volume is a huge feat in terms of the archival work required to present a creative history of the works. Its strength resides in its narration of Stravinsky's creative activities utilizing many primary sources. The author observes Stravinsky's “stylistic changes, discrete turns in the road, and overarching commonalities that speak to matters of unity and coherence” (247). Stravinsky's voice is clearly heard in these pages via plentiful quotations, and a summary of the ballets' scenarios is readily given. Moreover, numerous sketches have been transcribed (Apollo, Jeu de cartes, Orpheus) and reproduced, providing some original material. The large amount of primary source material that is presented and cited ensures that Joseph's book is a useful reference for Stravinsky scholars, despite its structural and analytical issues.
