The Music of Stravinsky

The Music of Stravinsky

Collected Essays

by Pieter van den Toorn

The Music of Stravinsky: Collected Essays, by Pieter C. Van den Toorn, marks the foundational period in the history of music theory in the United States. The debates over Stravinsky’s music started in the 1960s with the publication of “The Structure of Atonal Music” by Allen Forte and “Problems of Pitch Organization in Stravinsky” by Arthur Berger and lasted until the recent decade. Two most prominent participants, Pieter C. Van den Toorn and Richard Taruskin, created the field of tension on an unprecedented level. Their agon on Stravinsky rivals the debates on theological topics in the early patristic period. While Van den Toorn represented the position of music theory, Taruskin represented that of music history. On a different plane, the argument centered around the validity of historians’ postmodern ideas in contrast with theorists’ neopositivist stand. Another question was whether Stravinsky was predominantly Russian, or his music was universal to the extent that this parameter can be treated as secondary. The book presents these binary oppositions on the examples of octatonic pitch collection (and this discussion includes the contribution of Dmitri Tymoczko), metric displacements, and neoclassical trend in Stravinsky’s extensive musical biography.”

Dr Ildar Khannanov, Johns Hopkins University, USA
  • Format: eBook
  • ISBN: 9781003359166
  • Subject: Music Styles
  • Published: January 2023