Very Tonal Man

"One day it will be universally recognized that the white house in the Hollywood hills in which this Symphony was written, and which was regarded by some as an ivory tower, was just as close to the core of a world at war as the place where Picasso painted Guernica."

So ran the program notes for Igor Stravinsky's new symphony. The notes were written by the composer's close friend Ingolf Dahl, and approved by Stravinsky. Last week the new symphony had its world premiere in Manhattan, conducted by Stravinsky, a myopic, big-eared, little man of 63, who hopped sparrowlike about the podium of Carnegie Hall. In contrast, he also played a revised version of his famed Firebird suite, which he had composed at 27.

In the great days of his ballet suites (Firebird, Petrouchka, Sacre du Printemps), Igor Fedorovich Stravinsky had been the No. 1 bad boy of music. He founded a school of cacophony which resulted in atonalism, and then, like his friend Picasso in art, left his school behind. He went on to a preoccupation with 18th-Century counterpoint, and shocked his fellow revolutionaries by having a good word for a romantic composer like Tchaikovsky. In his new symphony, Stravinsky carries his musical vagabonding a step further--blending a kind of Tchaikovskian and Brahmsian romanticism with jazzy rhythms. The Carnegie Hall audience gave it a polite hearing, and several rounds of applause which seemed intended primarily as a tribute to Stravinsky rather than to his symphony. The critics felt the same way.

The new work was generally referred to as his third symphony, though it is probably his fifth. (Says Stravinsky: "Don't ask me. I hate the numbers. It is a symphony in three parts.") His first symphony, written at 25 and dedicated to his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov, is no longer played. He wrote another in 1920, in memory of Debussy--a seldom played twelve-minute symphony for wind instruments, which he still thinks is a wonderful work but was too new for the public then. In 1930 Koussevitsky persuaded him to write a symphony for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Orchestra. Stravinsky, a devout Greek Catholic, wrote the Symphony of Psalms, with three choral movements sung in Latin. The next came in 1940, when the Chicago Symphony Orchestra celebrated its 50th anniversary. Says Stravinsky drily: "I am a composer of anniversaries." He composed a symphony in four parts, "in the classical way," which Chicago liked better than the critics. Last year the Philharmonic decided it also deserved a symphony to commemorate its 20 years' friendship with Stravinsky. Like the others, the Philharmonic's symphony has no story theme. "The music herself is enough," Stravinsky says. "She must decide her own nature."

Since 1940, Stravinsky has lived in his own house in Hollywood ("The only way to escape Hollywood is to live there"), where he composes in a Celotex-lined room. When he is not working he passes time with his rose gardens, four pairs of lovebirds and a friendly black cat who sleeps on the birds' cages. Though he has never written for films, he has composed for almost everything else. He wrote ballets for Ringling Brothers' Circus and for Billy Rose (Scenes de Ballet), a dissonantly reharmonized Star-Spangled Banner (to celebrate his U.S. citizenship).

Stravinsky hates to be catalogued. Says he: "I don't like the word 'modernist.' That's an old word. Everything is modern in the time it is written. And I never was an atonalist. I am very tonaL If I have some tonalities together, that is very legal. Of course, I am polytonal. Bach was too, and Mozart very often."

Stravinsky's most recent work is an Ebony Concerto for clarinet, commissioned by Jazzbandsman Woodrow Wilson ("Woody") Herman, whose swing band will play it in Carnegie Hall March 29. If critics disapprove, Stravinsky will not be upset. Says he: "I am way ahead of the critics. They are not competent to judge. They do not know 5% of what I know. I do not compose for today--I compose for forever."

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