tomekkobialka | "Three Japanese Lyrics" by Igor Stravinsky (Audio + Sheet Music) @tomekkobialka | Uploaded March 2016 | Updated October 2024, 1 week ago.
pf: Susan Naricki and Twentieth Century Classics Ensemble, cond/Robert Craft

1. Akahito ; Акахито ; 赤人 (0:05)
2. Mazatsumi ; Мазацуми ; 当純 (0:54)
3. Tsaraïuki ; Tcypайуки ; 貫之 (2:00)

Year/Date of Composition:1913

First Performance: 1914-01-11 in Paris, Société Musicale Indépendante

First Publication: 1913

Stravinsky's Three Japanese Lyrics were composed just as the taste for all things Oriental, from fine arts to fashion, was reaching its apex throughout Europe. Nowhere was this fad more rampant than in Paris, where the composer lived and, in 1912, had come upon an anthology of Japanese poetry translated into Russian, providing him with the texts for a group of three songs. These terse and somewhat mournful songs -- "Akahito," "Mazatsumi," and "Tsaraiuki" -- represent the composer's most overt adoption of Far Eastern subject matter. Like many of Stravinsky's works which draw upon elements from "exotic" sources, the songs reveal a degree of detachment, objectivity and stylization.

The Three Japanese Lyrics were composed some 15 to 18 months after Le sacre du printemps (1911-1913) was completed; as in that seminal ballet, the songs' melodic material is based upon the repetition of numerous small cells. "Akahito" features a six-note ostinato comprised of slow, ornamented eighth notes that run throughout the song, while "Tsamaiuki" contains tiny refrain figures that are likewise repeated in an ostinato pattern. The Lyrics suggest a similarity to Le sacre du printemps in terms of subject matter as well. Both illustrate the dawning of spring, but while Le sacre du printemps expresses the death of winter through violence and elemental force, the Lyrics draw attention elsewhere. Here the emphasis is more upon the visual, decorative aspects of the season, symbolized by the color white -- patterns of white flowers set against fresh snowfall.

Texturally, the Lyrics reveal another significant influence: Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire (1912). Stravinsky attended a performance of the revolutionary melodrama in Berlin in December 1912, and Schoenberg's band of flute, clarinet, violin, cello, and piano was a likely inspiration for the instrumentation of the Lyrics (two flutes, two clarinets, and piano quintet). Moreover, the Lyrics, despite their clearly tonal language, employ harsh sonorities and free chromaticism to a greater extent than in Stravinsky's previous works.

Following their first performance in 1914, many listeners were taken by the Lyrics' metrical freedom and ambiguity. Indeed, rather than relying upon stereotyped orientalist clichés like pentatonic scales and garish ornamentation, Stravinsky emulates Japanese speech patterns with a remarkable degree of authenticity.

Sources:

allmusic.com/composition/japanese-lyrics-3-song-cycle-for-voice-piano-or-chamber-orchestra-mc0002367453

imslp.org/wiki/3_Japanese_Lyrics_%28Stravinsky,_Igor%29