Stravinsky: The Villain
We all know the story. On the evening of May 29, 1913, a revolutionary work was premiered, leading to rioting in and around Paris’ Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. Le sacre du printemps, Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, was released upon the world, and music would never quite be the same again.
And yet, what we don’t talk about enough, what music students don’t learn about in schools, and perhaps, what we don’t want to even admit, is that Stravinsky’s greatest asset was never his knowledge of rhythm, of poetry, of gesture, of orchestration, or even of music, itself; it was his compliance with fascists.
“I don’t believe that anyone venerates Mussolini more than I … He is the savior of Italy and – let us hope – of Europe.”
The year was 1938. The Nazi Party had seized power and Hans Severus Ziegler had organized an exhibit of so-called Entartete Musik (‘Degenerate Music’), attempting to link a decline in music with the rise of composers of Jewish ancestry. Some notable names on their list: Arnold Schoenberg, Kurt Weill, Alban Berg, Paul Hindemith, and yes, Igor Stravinsky. However, our friend Igor did not take too kindly to this inclusion. In a written complaint to the German Bureau of Foreign Affairs, Stravinsky made sure to point out, “My adversaries even go so far as … implying that I am a Jew, [ignoring] that my ancestors were members of the Polish nobility”, to which the regime responded by welcoming him back into good graces with open arms. Stravinsky would go on to be performed in Germany throughout the entirety of the war; his fellow members of that original list of degeneracy would have no such honor or distinction.
Yes, it is commonly touted and accepted among academic circles that Stravinsky, at best, was pleasantly complicit in the behavior of fascist regimes across Europe. Some days were spent hailing fascists (Stravinsky, claiming in 1930, “I don’t believe that anyone venerates Mussolini more than I … He is the savior of Italy and – let us hope – of Europe.”); some others spent pointing out what Stravinsky found evil in the world (in a 1933 letter, “I loathe all communism, Marxism, the execrable Soviet monster, and also all liberalism, democratism, atheism, etc.”). However, why has this knowledge not entered the cultural Zeitgeist?
The drastically altered political and artistic climate that followed the Nazi takeover did nothing to lessen Stravinsky's interest in performances of his music in Germany. Financial and artistic considerations were of primary concern, but the composer's easy tolerance of the Nazi regime was also the result of his reactionary political views during this period, coupled with a prejudice against Jews.
(Evans, Joan. “Stravinsky’s Music in Hitler’s Germany”)
For the better part of two centuries now, ever since the publication of Das Judenthum in der Musik (‘Jewry in Music’), all stagings of the works of Richard Wagner have been observed through the lens of his clear anti-Semitic beliefs. Every Wagner performance, regardless of the production, requires a deep and conscious evaluation into his character, and what the ethics of performing such works might be. Stravinsky has composed ballets (for which he wrote the story) featuring deeply offensive racist portrayals and stereotypes, and yet faces no such ethical consideration or inquisition.
In an age of Harvey Weinsteins and Jeffrey Epsteins and Ghislaine Maxwells, why is it not a shock when Stravinsky in interviews describes the young girls of the Rite as “Lolitas”? – particularly given that the narrative has these girls abducted, and then the selected sacrifice forced to dance herself to death for the amusement of the elder men of their fantastical society (and the hopefully interested great spirits of Spring). In an age of Black Lives Matter and a reinvigorated fight against racism, why do we tolerate Petrushka, despite that its blackface character (The Moor) is a central part of the narrative, and his music is Orientalist schlock that would make the late Edward Said squirm?
Image source: Birmingham Royal Ballet, 2008 production of Petrushka
Stravinsky’s works, as a whole, are a collection of artistic creations always looking backwards. In the earliest major works, it was in appropriation of folk melodies and once-popular songs; from then on, it was in homage (and in some cases, outright theft) of music of the 17th- and 18th-centuries. Stravinsky, despite the rhythmic complexity, despite how radical we might have been told the Rite is, despite the amount of festivals and pre-concert talks and conductors and soloists and liner notes and board members claiming him to be a “maverick”, a “revolutionary”, a “progressive”, was a musical and sociopolitical fascist. He saw a Europe swept away by Schoenberg and his compatriots (Berg, Webern, etc.), and did his damndest to make music ‘great’ again. For what it’s worth, Stravinsky only began writing serialist music after Schoenberg’s death, hence when it had officially become ‘old music’.
I don’t want to name names, but I could tell you about composers who spend all their time inventing a music of the future … [they] only intend to provoke the bourgeoisie and to achieve what pleases the Bolsheviks.
- Igor Stravinsky
(Pasler, Confronting Stravinsky).
We have years and years of public anti-modernist, pro-fascist dog-whistles in his interviews on record, and yet the public continues to lionize him. Perhaps, instead of programming a composer who pandered to the Nazis (and all conservative fascists elsewhere) at every junction, whose music calls to mind questions of ethical sensitivity on sex and race, we could program the composers threatened and denounced by the very regimes Stravinsky supported: Schoenberg (forced to leave Austria due to his Jewish heritage), Zemlinsky (the same), Weill (again, the same), Bartók (an overt anti-fascist who left Hungary after the Nazi rise to power), Messiaen (imprisoned in the Stalag VIII-A Nazi POW camp).
After centuries of our art form being exclusive to the ruling classes, we now find ourselves in a situation in which anyone with internet access is able to access the comparatively few live performances even able to take place. Perhaps, with the beginning of a new era for American orchestras, we can begin a new era ourselves, one in which we take a more critical eye to the music we perform (and do not perform). Perhaps, with the recent necessary push to perform more works by women and composers of color, we can have a full top-to-bottom reevaluation of what we consider our musical canon. Perhaps, with the arrests of protesters and journalists by a Trumpian DHS gestapo in Portland (as well as whatever might come in the coming weeks and months), we can use our art to actively refute any inkling of fascism in the modern day.
This is not a call to outright ban Stravinsky, nor any other composer. It is a demand for our community of musicians to think far more critically about what we perform and for whom. It is a demand for the people most respected in our field who have made it their life’s mission to promote Stravinsky’s music to take time in this moment of global musical silence to reflect on the skewed version of history they have presented. It is a demand to reevaluate whose voices are left unheard with the programming of every Stravinsky work. It has been half a century since Stravinsky’s death, but may we, one day, finally have courage to bury the body.