A late morsel by Stravinsky

If one thing can be said about Igor Stravinsky's long career as a composer (from the turn of the century till his death in 1971), it's that he never let any piece slip past him.  You have to make a pretty concerted effort to find a lackluster work by Our Igor, and conveniently for me he left us three leaves near the end of his life.  This first one, Double Canon Raoul Dufy in Memoriam (actually my favorite) is from 1959 and is in a series of pieces written "in memoriam"; others include the Elegy to J.F.K. for voice and three clarinets, In Memoriam Dylan Thomas for voice, string quartet and trombone quartet, Epitaphium (which I'll get to later) for flute, clarinet, and harp, and Variations Aldous Huxley in Memoriam for orchestra.

(Click for larger view)

Truth be told, I don't know that much about Raoul Dufy beyond a handful of his paintings, but the piece isn't supposed to be an evocation of him or his work.  Stravinsky's work became more and more concentrated at the end of his life, and adopted the practice of letting the lines end in the score mid-stave when there weren't any more notes.  This is more apparent in other works (such as Movements for piano and orchestra), but in the case of the Double Canon works in its favor, an elegant solution to this contrapuntal nugget.  The practice of small counterpoints dates back to the Renaissance (when most pieces were only a few minutes anyway), and plenty of Bach's smaller pieces would qualify for this blog.  The practice has largely fallen by the wayside with strict counterpoint itself, but at least we have this little heartbreaker from 1959 to sate ourselves.  It's a testament to his creativity that, while the leaf begins with an inverted canon at the 2nd, the second canon covers Stravinsky's restarting of the first, this time in reverse - ending at a unison.  That's a magic you can't fake, and here it's in tribute to a man whose best known for a picture-book style, often with boats.  I can't say I'm an expert on Dufy, but Stravinsky saw the unfakeable spark in him and that's the best thing you can ask for in a eulogy - a reminder that great minds can always meet each other at the unison.

~PNK