Stravinsky’s commedia dell’arte scamp is 100 years-old.
“Pulcinella” was given its first performance on this date in 1920. The ballet was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev and given its premiere, at the Paris Opera, by the Ballets Russes. Leonide Massine provided both the libretto and the choreography. The sets were designed by Pablo Picasso.
For years, it was thought that the raw material for Stravinsky’s score, based on manuscripts of the 18th century, derived from the quill of Giovanni Pergolesi. However, over time, scholarship has revealed that many of the original pieces were actually the work of Pergolesi contemporaries, composers such as Domenico Gallo and Unico Wilhelm von Wassenaer.
The idea of arranging Pergolesi’s music was the idea of conductor Ernest Ansermet, who conducted the ballet’s premiere. Stravinsky was resistant at first, but closer acquaintance with the original scores unlocked their possibilities. Stravinsky’s arrangements honored the spirit of the past, but also imbued it with a modern sensibility, employing a distinctly 20th century syntax. It is one of the composer’s most playful, exuberant scores.
“‘Pulcinella’ was… the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible,” he later wrote. “It was a backward look, of course—the first of many love affairs in that direction—but it was a look in the mirror, too.”
It would be the first of Stravinsky’s innumerable interactions with historical music and forms and the birth of a style that would soon be identified as “neoclassical.”
The popular suite, shorn of the complete ballet vocal music, was giving its first performance in Boston, two years later, with Pierre Monteux conducting.
“Pergolesi” themes also inform the spin-off chamber works “Suite d’après des thèmes, fragments et morceaux de Giambattista Pergolesi,” for violin and piano (1925), and the “Suite Italienne,” for cello or violin and piano (1932-33). Any way you slice it, the music is a delight.
“Pulcinella” (complete):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD6dRSKLjlU&t=0m7s
The suite, part of a complete concert performed (without conductor) by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5ZpCA4pRtM&t=8m24s
Cellist Heinrich Schiff and the “Suite Italienne”:
