For Strawinsky
music is either an infection, the communication of a lyrical impulse, or
nothing at all. And so he would have it performed in ordinary places of
congregation, at fairs, in taverns, music-halls, street-cars, if you
will, in order to enable it to function freely once again. His art is
pointed to quicken, to infect, to begin an action that the listener must
complete within himself. It is a sort of musical shorthand. On paper, it
has a fragmentary look. It is as though Strawinsky had sought to reduce
the elements of music to their sharpest and simplest terms, had hoped
that the "development" would be made by the audience. He seems to feel
that if he cannot achieve his end, the communication of his lyrical
impulse, with a single strong _motif_, a single strong movement of
tones, a single rhythmic start, he cannot achieve it at all. So we find
him writing songs, the three Japanese lyrics, for instance, that are
epigrammatic in their brevity; a piece for string-quartet that is played
in fifty seconds; a three-act opera that can be performed in thirty
minutes.
But it is no experiment in form that he is making. He seems to bring
into music some of the power of the Chinese artists who, in the painting
of a twig, or of a pair of blossoms, represent the entire springtide.
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