The machine has always fascinated him. One of his first
original compositions, written while he was yet a pupil of
Rimsky-Korsakoff's, imitates fireworks, distinguishes what is human in
their activity, in the popping, hissing, exploding, in the hysterical
weeping of the fiery fountains, the proud exhibitions and sudden
collapses of the pin-wheels. It is the machine, enemy of man, that is
pictured by "The Nightingale," that curious work of which one act dates
from 1909, and two from 1914. Strawinsky had the libretto formed on the
tale of Hans Christian Andersen which recounts the adventures of the
little brown bird that sings so beautifully that the Emperor of China
bids it to his court. Strawinsky's nightingale, too, comes to the palace
and sings, and all the ladies of the entourage fill their mouths with
water in the hopes of better imitating the warbling of the songster. But
then there enter envoys bearing the gift of the Emperor of Japan, a
mechanical nightingale that amuses the court with its clockwork antics.
Once more the emperor commands the woodland bird to sing. But it is
flown. In his rage the emperor banishes it from his realm. Then Death
comes and sits at the emperor's bedside, and steals from him crown and
scepter, till, of a sudden, the Nightingale returns, and sings, and
makes Death relinquish his spoils.
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