Contrapuntal Bones

The musical explorations of Igor Stravinsky, e.g., The Rite of Spring, once got him branded as a wild-eyed futurist. Long since overtaken on the innovation front, he has for many years now been burrowing back into the musical past--but as an explorer still.

Last week, to the mingled horror, delight and bemusement of a capacity (2,500) crowd in U.C.L.A.'s Royce Hall, Stravinsky conducted the Los Angeles Chamber Symphony Orchestra in the world premiere of his newest work--a Cantata based on the Flemish and Burgundian styles of the isth and 16th centuries. The lyrics of its four parts were taken from English folk songs of the same period.

"Mind Music." Stravinsky used only five instruments--two flutes, an oboe, English horn and cello. A chorus of eight women and two soloists. Mezzo-Soprano Marni Nixon and Tenor Hughes Cuenod, were the only voices. Stravinsky conducted in his usual jerky, graceless style, looking, with his prominent eyes and waving tailcoat, rather like a dapper little Beatrix Potter frog.

The chorus sang A Lyke-Wake Dirge before, between and after the solos. It was slow music, in close harmony and mildly dissonant, not a dirge of despair but rather "contemplative," as one listener put it. The soprano solo, The Maidens Came, was sparse, austere, reminded some in spirit of Italian primitive painting of an even earlier era than Stravinsky's models. The tenor solo, Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day, was a singer's nightmare of half tones and difficult intervals. Most everybody was relieved when the duet, Westron Winde, came breezing in with a cheerfully dissonant allegro.

Stravinsky took three curtain calls. There were bravos for the tenor. A slight hissing was heard at the rear of the hall. Mostly, though, the audience didn't quite know what to think. "It is mind music," said one musician. An esthete put it precisely: "From the lush, full, rich sound we think of as Stravinsky, you are suddenly in an entirely different world--in a bony world."

"Once Again ..." The critics next day were sharply divided. Mildred Norton of the Los Angeles Daily News called the cantata an "essay in boredom," and added: "The most invigorating sound I heard was a restive neighbor winding his watch." Wrote Albert Goldberg of the Times: "Perhaps only a musician can appreciate the extreme technical discipline involved ... It makes no obvious appeal to anything within the range of the average listener's experience, yet by its very starkness it creates a perfect setting . . . for the old English texts involved. Once again, it would seem, Stravinsky has opened new paths . . ."

The composer himself was not inclined to say much about his new work. "A contrapuntal work entirely," he said. "Counterpoint is my real home. I feel quite at ease . . ."

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