AÑO 18 Nº 31. ENERO - DICIEMBRE 2023
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Revista Arbitrada de la Facultad Experimental de Arte
de la Universidad del Zulia
Maracaibo, Venezuela
Revista Arbitrada de la Facultad Experimental de Arte
de la Universidad del Zulia. Maracaibo, Venezuela
AÑO 18 N° 31. ENERO - DICIEMBRE 2023 ~ pp. 77-81
Anastasia Kozachenko-Stravinsky
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
Venice, Italy
anastasia.kozachenko@unive.it
Recibido: 08-01-23
Aceptado: 17-02-23
Architectural Forms in Stravinsky's Music:
Site-Specic Case Studies
Formas arquitectónicas en la música de Stravinsky:
Estudios de casos especícos
Igor Stravinsky wrote: “We cannot better specify the
sensation produced by music than by identifying it with
that which the contemplation of architectural forms
provokes in us. Goethe understood this well when he
said that architecture is petried music”. Since the Middle
Ages, architecture and music have cooperated. They have
gone through their metamorphosis together, hand in
hand. Their fusion has produced unique architectural and
musical hybrids. A similar story connects Igor Stravinsky's
The Concerto in E at major for chamber orchestra
“Dumbarton Oaks” or Canticum Sacrum, which was written
for St. Mark's Basilica in Venice. This paper aims to provide a
multidisciplinary approach to a deep connection between
music and architecture. The semiology method allows us
to nd hidden ideas in musical and monumental works.
Keywords: Igor Stravinsky, Architecture, Music,
Dumbarton Oaks, Canticum Sacrum.
Igor Stravinsky escribió: “No podemos precisar mejor la
sensación que produce la música que identicándola
con la que nos provoca la contemplación de las formas
arquitectónicas. Goethe lo entendió bien cuando dijo que
la arquitectura es música petricada”. Desde la Edad Media,
la arquitectura y la música han cooperado. Han vivido su
metamorfosis juntas, de la mano. Su fusión ha producido
híbridos arquitectónicos y musicales únicos. Una historia
similar conecta el Concierto en mi bemol mayor para
orquesta de cámara “Dumbarton Oaks” o Canticum Sacrum,
de Igor Stravinsky, escrito para la Basílica de San Marcos
de Venecia. Este trabajo pretende ofrecer un enfoque
multidisciplinar de una conexión profunda entre música y
arquitectura. El método de la semiología permite encontrar
ideas ocultas en obras musicales y monumentales.
Palabras clave: Igor Stravinsky, arquitectura, música,
Dumbarton Oaks, Canticum Sacrum.
Abstract Resumen
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Introduction
Architecture is as emotional, spontaneous, and
intuitive as music. For example, Schelling noted architecture
as music in space, a kind of frozen music (Schelling, 2013).
Alternatively, Madame de Staël wrote in her novel Corinne,
or Italy that the architecture of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome
is like uninterrupted and xed music (Staël, 2016). One can
see in the four tiers a model of the four voices (the base is
the bass, then the tenor, the alto, and the highest voice, the
soprano), but it is speculative. A more accurate formulation
may be another related to the laws of perception in music
and the distribution of weight in architecture. All the load
should be on the bottom, and the structure should be
lightened at the top. If we look at the polyphonic score, we
see that the upper voice is painted in detail and shallowly,
and the lower voice is painted in more signicant durations.
A recent study on Music, Space and Architecture
at the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture (Voorthuis,
2012) states that architecture and music are produced in
stages by ordering our environment in a design (the virtual
space of a drawing or a composition). More than any other
art forms, musical and architectural compositions remain
most attached to this initial abstract origin since they both
retain a highly abstract form (Murray, 1956). Although the
essences of architecture and music are gracefully abstract,
both can be highly inuenced by external forces (Zuk, 1983).
Similarly, an architect may construct and visualize
initial aspects or schematics of a building in his or her mind
before transferring them to paper, using sketching and
graphic notation to work out other design elements and
details. In this way, the processes of developing a piece of
music and an architectural design through experimental
sketching and symbol notation systems are parallel
(Zuk, 1983). Architecture and music strongly impact our
immediate emotional states because they both exist in time
and space (Martin, 1994). Most prominently, architecture
and music create immersive experiences for their receivers
(Holl, 2012).
Discussion about Frozen Music
Even Goethe (2014, p. 44) referred to architecture
as frozen music: “I know-not-how streams from the airy
tones whilst they move; all becomes melody. The columns,
even the triglyph sounds: I believe the whole temple is
singing.” And this is not just an image: the two elds of
art, architecture, and music, are closely related. Music is
invisible, and architecture is inaudible, but one can see
music and hear architecture by association.
In an article for the Musical Times, Higgins (1925)
compares music and architecture, saying that while the
two are radically dierent art forms, they are evidence of
man’s ability to create a form. But not only a researcher
who hypothetically thinks about the relation between
architecture and music but musicians as well. For example,
American musician David Byrne has come a long way from
playing at a small New York club to a packed house at
Carnegie Hall. The connection between music and the space
in which it is played has always interested him. In 2012 the
musician even presented his book How Music Works (Byrne,
2017). He reected on how music changes to suit the
specic space. However, music not only adjusts itself to the
space in which it will be played but also shapes it. In 1877
the British art historian Walter Pater (2010, p. 155) remarked,
“All art strives to become music” and architecture, of course,
is no exception – built on rhythms and harmony, it consists
of chord equivalent elements: columns, arcades, galleries,
etc. – but there are several outstanding architectural
projects conceived as frozen music.
Here we will provide several examples. The Italian
architect Manfredi Nicoletti proposed one of the projects to
build an opera house. This project was heavily inuenced
by traditional Italian opera architecture. Contrary to its
name, the wave is not only the literal wave of the Gulf of
Cadiz, on whose shore the building was to be located but
also the sound wave that spills melody over the audience.
The transparent glass roof acts as a dome, sealing o the
music and shielding it from the aggressive external marine
environment. At the same time, it minimizes the length of
sound waves, thereby increasing the exibility of the entire
ensemble. Manfredi Nicoletti was able to realize his concert
hall in Kazakhstan. It is not as musical externally, but even
here one can trace how the architectural form is formed
under the inuence of music.
If when viewed from the front the building seems
unnecessarily rough or harsh, when viewed from above it
resembles a clam shell – they used to be used as musical
instruments, among other things –. The architectural
bureau of Zaha Hadid realized the actual opera house
in Cardi. Another clearest example of how music gives
birth to architecture and vice versa is the Philips Pavilion
designed by Le Corbusier for the Brussels International
Exhibition in 1958. The architect worked on it with the Greek
composer and architect Yanis Xenakis. By the time he began
working on the pavilion, Xenakis had already formulated his
hypothesis of how music takes architectural form. He said:
“Architecture embraces the three-dimensional space in
which we live. Convex and concave surfaces are essential to
both the aural and visual realms. The main thing here is the
observance of proportions” (Xenakis, 1992, p. 206).
It was an architectural experimentation
comprising a concrete form and an internal immersive
experience where the composition Metastasis was
performed. The Phillips Pavilion designed by Xenakis is
often cited as one of the more inuential precedents for
the connection between architecture and music. Last but
not least, Steven Holl’s Stretto House in Texas was based
on Béla Bartók’s composition Music for Strings, Percussion
and Celesta in 1991. The Stretto house is located adjacent
to three ponds made from concrete dams. The sound of
the water owing over the dams is reminiscent of stretto
79
Architectural Forms in Stravinsky's Music: Site-Specic Case Studies
Anastasia Kozachenko-Stravinsky
in music, where one musical phrase overlaps another. The
house is divided into several sections from one space to
another, like the musical piece. It allows the movement of
time to evolve in dierent ways. It also allows us to explore
the architecture design approach beyond its disciplines
by understanding that music is felt and can inform the
emotional quality of the architecture.
Igor Stravinsky was fascinated by painting,
sculpture, architecture, and rhythm. Mikhail Druskin (1983,
p. 101) remarked, “isn’t that the reason for Stravinsky’s
long-standing fondness for ballet, its graphic purity of
movement, and his interest in the rhythmic emphasis that
changes mimic gestures into speaking ones?”. Perhaps, yes.
Stravinsky was very rhythmic. He wrote: “Music is that which
architecturally occupies a certain segment of time... in
dance... the body means nothing until it lls time as music
does. The gesture is meaningless (Stravinsky, 2021, p. 56).
This paper aims to consider Stravinsky from
the perspective of a composer who often worked with
architectural forms within his musical work and how to
perform them. The works in question could be called
site-specic works, although each has its typology: 1)
Music as sacral architecture. Here we consider a sacred
structure (temple) as a visual-semiotic unit capturing
essential religious-cultural contents; 2) music as landscape
architecture, where the garden and park structure become
a musical form and can organize the aesthetic side of the
living environment; 3) music as social architecture is spaces
where music is the main component, as in a theatre or
concert hall, but rather an accompanying form for other
activities; and 4) musical work as kinetic architecture, in
which the musical parts and components are designed so
that their parts can move without violating the structure’s
overall integrity.
We will analyze each of these types according to
one of Stravinsky’s musical works.
Music as a Sacral Architecture
Here it is interesting to investigate the paradigms
of semiotic transfer of sacred meanings: transfer of idea,
image, and copying. Sacred architecture in question has
a functional and aesthetic load and a semiotic function,
acting as a means of communication in both senses of the
word: as an object of socio-cultural communication, and as
a sign complex.
During the mature Renaissance, composers begin
to work more intensively with the architectural context.
First, this concerns the authors of the Venetian school,
which formed in the second half of the 16th century around
Andrea Gabrieli and his nephew Giovanni Gabrieli in the
Venetian Cathedral of St. Mark. This basilica was in plan a
cross with many galleries, where the Gabriele’s arranged the
brass players and choristers. The audience sat below and
watched the sound move from gallery to gallery. The echo
eect, where the exact musical phrase was repeated from
several dierent points, was often used on such occasions.
Interestingly, ve hundred years later, Igor
Stravinsky also turn to the architecture of San Marco and
in 1957 write the oratorio Canticum Sacrum for chorus and
several instrumental groups distributed in space for the
Venetian cathedral: Canticum Sacrum in ve movements,
plus an introductory dedication. Some critics have
suggested that the Canticum Sacrum bears a solid structural
relationship to that of the basilica, the ve principal sections
of Stravinsky’s piece relating directly to the ve domes of
Saint Mark’s. Both the central dome of the church and the
central movement of Canticum Sacrum, are the largest and
most structurally imposing. Furthermore, in this movement,
Stravinsky chooses to depict the three Christian virtues
(Faith, Hope, and Charity), perhaps corresponding to the
central dome of Saint Mark’s.
Music as a Landscape Architecture
Here we draw a parallel between the Dumbarton
Oaks estate and Stravinsky’s work of the same title, the
most striking example of Igor Stravinsky’s neoclassical
style. In 1938 the Bliss couple commissioned Stravinsky to
compose on their 30th wedding anniversary. The composer
was invited to the Dumbarton Oaks estate (Washington) to
discuss the commission. Stravinsky was so impressed by the
beautiful gardens surrounding the house that he decided
to base his Concerto on the structural layout of the gardens.
Beatrix Ferrand designed the project.
She worked at a time when landscape art was
beginning to take on a professional framework. Her goal
was to extend the garden planning and design culture
to large areas, turning garden art into landscape art. The
composer admitted that his Concerto was modeled on the
Brandenburg style. However, despite the many similarities
to the texture of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos, the fresh
originality creates the uniqueness of this music. Dumbarton
Oaks continues the series of concert compositions of the
1930s. A more detailed analysis might show which musical
phrases from the piece have a similar form to the landscapes
of the estate and its gardens.
Music as a Social Architecture
In this paragraph, we will talk about several
works devoted mainly to vocal and piano miniatures, which
Stravinsky created for the occasion, for home entertainment,
and other not-too-serious occasions. However, almost all of
them are miniature masterpieces. “The pieces are intended
for the atmosphere of a music hall or a cafe-concert”,
Stravinsky wrote to Ernest Ansermet (Stravinsky, 2021,
p. 58). It was no accident that Stravinsky turned to such a
small entertainment genre. The future composer's father
shone on the opera stage at the Mariinsky Theatre, and
his mother, as a pianist, accompanied her husband during
concerts. Together with his brothers, Stravinsky witnessed
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REVISTA ARBITRADA DE LA FACULTAD EXPERIMENTAL DE ARTE DE LA UNIVERSIDAD DEL ZULIA. AÑO 18 Nº 31. ENERO - DICIEMBRE 2023
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the gathering of the entire artistic and cultural elite of St.
Petersburg in their home – Liadov, Rimsky-Korsakov, Cui,
and Stasov – and even Dostoyevsky came to visit. The
creative atmosphere in which the future composer grew up
subsequently inuenced the formation of his artistic tastes
and the diverse form and content of his musical works.
Later in his youth, together with his younger
brother Gurij Stravinsky future composer often attended
Rimsky-Korsakov’s playful house concerts. Stravinsky
sought to create such a domestic music hall, a playful
musical space for his children: sons Sviatoslav and Fyodor
and daughters Lyudmila and Milena. The sons became
prominent cultural gures: Sviatoslav became a virtuoso
composer and pianist, and Fedor became an artist. One of
the cycles of entertaining or social music is Five Easy Pieces
for piano in four hands. Stravinsky’s eldest children, Fyodor
and Mika (Lyudmila), were the cycle recipients. “I wanted
to instill in them a love of music, masking my pedagogical
goals by composing very easy parts for them and more
dicult ones for the teacher, in this case for myself; in this
way I hoped to excite in them a sense of genuine performing
complicity” (Stravinsky, 2010, p. 71).
Later, Stravinsky made an orchestral version of
both light cycles, composing two suites from them, and
loved to conduct them himself.
Music as a Kinetic Architecture
The last and perhaps most exciting type I
highlight is dynamic or kinetic Architecture. In the space
of this dialogue, one of the dominant ideas becomes the
desire to break down the boundary between the stage and
the viewer and to include the viewer in the direct artistic
event. This occurs through the immersion of Tale of the
Soldier in the immediate historical context of an era, such
as the tragedy of Auschwitz, the escalation of the Cold War
conict, the student protests of 1968, or the end of the low-
intensity civil war in Italy. Stravinsky’s theatrical and musical
work surprisingly combines a tragic narrative reexed
through a satirical, comedic perspective. This chamber
work, whose construction dates back to the traveling circus
or touring theatre, consists of several short dances: tango,
waltz, and even ragtime.
The chamberness of production allowed it to be
shown in various Swiss villages. An exceptional feature of
this work, very clearly articulated by Igor Stravinsky himself,
is the meta-contextuality of the piece and its ability to be
considered in a system of diverse meanings and dierent
eras. The composer intended to relate the piece to any era
and, simultaneously, to 1918, to many nationalities and
none in particular. Igor Stravinsky, Charles Rameau and
Ernest Ansermet used the grotesque and irony as a universal
language. This has led to a variety of productions all over
the world at dierent times, giving rise to a whole range of
new readings of the work. This is evidenced by sometimes
relatively polar theatrical forms such as circus show and
mono-performance, burlesque and non-professional street
theater, ritual puppets and clowning. The task of stage
directors, artists, and actors becomes a direct appeal to
the reality in which they nd themselves, and its insistent
evocation and disembodiment.
Among the productions were ballets by Jiří
Kylián and Maurice Béjart. In 1984, American illustrator and
animator created an animated lm, using music and textual
background, combining line techniques and associations
with Kandinsky, Mondrian, and Art Deco styles. There
were even Ian McKellen (narrator), Sting (soldier), Vanessa
Redgrave (devil) in the 1990 version – live recording with
the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Kent
Nagano –. Furthermore, in 2018, Roger Waters, one of the
founding members of Pink Floyd, released an adaptation of
Tale of a Soldier on the Sony Classical Masterworks label.
The accentual and rhythmic element in Stravinsky’s music
is perhaps its most important distinguishing feature and
the most valuable thing with which this composer has
enriched the musical world. His works are so plastic that
they can be stretched and compressed, forming. As a result
a montage of various types of movement. It is a skillful
musical topography.
Conclusion
The global cultural processes that took place
during the 20th century gradually led to the convergence
of all the arts, sometimes to the point of erasing the
boundaries between them (Murray, 1956). Literary and
philosophical concepts developed among architects,
artists, and musicians repeatedly emerged, becoming
independent cultural phenomena. Such phenomena were
reected in each of the arts, acquiring its form and content.
In all kinds of art, the most important are parameters and
attributes such as form, dimensions, space, color, texture,
light, time, movement, etc.
Moreover, it is true that those kinds of arts, which
are considered static, may have signs of dynamic arts (for
example, performing arts), and vice versa. For example,
architecture, static in its nature, may have compositional
elements that make it dynamic, or kinetic elements. “Music,
like architecture, is an immersive experience – it surrounds
you. One can turn away from a painting or a work of
sculpture, while music and architecture engulf the body
in space” (Holl, 2012, p. 4). At the same time, a theatrical
production or a ballet can be very static, almost sculptural,
possessing tectonics, and these are already categories of
architecture.
In discussing musical space, Robert Morgan (1980)
writes in an article entitled Musical Time/Musical Space
that people who listen to music have the impression of the
dierent phrases and voices that occur in music because
of tonal space. Tonal space denes a structure by grouping
sounds relative to one another. In this way, Morgan argues
that a musical composition denes its own space.
81
Architectural Forms in Stravinsky's Music: Site-Specic Case Studies
Anastasia Kozachenko-Stravinsky
Stravinsky is primarily an experimentalist, but
a creator of new forms. It is not surprising that one can
easily nd architectural motifs in his music and draw quite
apparent parallels. This direction in his work has yet to be
suciently explored, but could potentially be a great study.
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