STRAVINSKY Concerto in E Flat DumbartonOaks

Igor Stravinsky
Concerto in E-flat for chamber orchestra, Dumbarton Oaks, 8.v.38

IGOR FEDOROVICH STRAVINSKY was born at Oranienbaum, Russia (now Lomonosov in the
Northwest Petersburg Region of Russia) on June 17, 1882, and died in New York City on April 6, 1971. He
composed his Concerto in E-flat on a commission from Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, beginning work at the
Chteau de Montoux, near Annemasse, France, in the spring of 1937, and completing it in Paris on March
29, 1938. Nadia Boulanger conducted the first performance on May 8, 1938, at the Bliss family estate
Dumbarton Oaksin Washington, D.C., in celebration of the thirtieth wedding anniversary of Mr. and
Mrs. Bliss.
THE SCORE OF STRAVINSKYS DUMBARTON OAKS CONCERTO calls for one flute, one E-flat
clarinet, one bassoon, two horns, three violins, three violas, two cellos, and two double basses.
Although officially titled Concerto in E-flat, this workcommissioned by Mrs. Robert Woods Blissis
more commonly referred to by the distinctive title Dumbarton Oaks for the Washington, D.C., estate
where its first performance celebrated the thirtieth wedding anniversary of Mr. and Mrs. Bliss. (Today
Dumbarton Oaks is owned by Harvard University and is the universitys Center for Byzantine Studies.)
The title as it appears on the score was the result of negotiations between Stravinsky and his publisher
Willy Strecker soon after the premiere. After completing the music, Stravinsky corresponded with Strecker
about the form the dedication should take, suggesting that he could write it in either French or English and
that it could be reproduced in facsimile. Strecker replied, If I know Americans, the French dedication is
preferable. But Mrs. Bliss had other ideas. She was happy to dispense with any dedication but wanted the
work to be called Dumbarton Oaks Concerto after her property. And it had been suggested to Stravinsky
by his collaborator and friend Samuel Dushkin (the violinist for whom he had written several concert works
including the Violin Concerto in D) that he might tranquilly go on composing Dumbarton Oaks Concertos
as Bach did his Brandenburg Concertos, since Mrs. Bliss intended to continue giving concerts at her
estate, and she might become a long-term patron to the composer. But Strecker had a serious objection:
Frankly, I do not like the title Dumbarton Oaks Concerto. Bach did not call his concertos Brandenburg
Concertos: this title was attached to them gradually over the years. No one outside of America will
understand the designation or be able to pronounce it, and stupid remarks may even by made about the
name, since it resembles duck or frog sounds in French and German pronunciation.
So Strecker suggested a compromise: give the work a formal title, Concerto in E-flat, and add as a
notation the place and date of the first performance: Dumbarton Oaks, 8.v.38 (that is, 8 May 1938). This
added notation is a hint to the character of the piece, which is really a celebratory divertissement composed
as a gift for a wedding anniversary. And Stravinskys reference to Bachs Brandenburg Concertos in his
letter to Strecker was entirely appropriate, because the Dumbarton Oaks concerto was, at least in its
opening movement, explicitly inspired by the Bach compositions, especially the Third.
Here, as in so many places in Stravinskys output, the past seems alive in the mind of the composer, not
because he is imitating an older piece or styleanyone can do thatbut because he has absorbed its
essence and is recreating it in his own terms. Throughout his career Stravinsky assimilated the most diverse
influencesfrom ragtime to twelve-tone serialismwithout ever losing his own evident personality. And
in the 1930s, particularly, and through the following decade, virtually all of his music sprang from an
encounter with or reaction to some foreign influence. Stravinskys heart and soul were Russian, and the
essential core of his music came from a basis in Russian culture that was deep and rich. But revolution and
world war drove Stravinsky from his homeland; he was deracinated, forced to live and work in a culture
not his own. By the end of the 1930s, he had begun to acclimate himself to being a Frenchman when the
same thing happened all over again, and he became, perforce, an American. So his works of those years,
large and small, can be understood in part as reconnoiterings of the territory to see what was there and what
he could do with it, territory ranging from classical ballet to the circus march, from the Baroque concerto to
the Beethovenian symphonic tradition. (As different as they may seem at first, the Dumbarton Oaks
concerto has links with the Symphony in C, Stravinskys first American score, the next piece that he
would compose.)
In any case, the character of Dumbarton Oaks was not difficult for him to choose, since the occasion for
which it was composed was purely celebratory. It is a modern equivalent to the kind of brilliant
entertainment music a court composer would have been called upon to write two centuries earlier to
celebrate thirty years of marriage of his duke or princeonly now the aristocrats were plutocrats. Three
movements in the standard fast-slow-fast pattern were a foregone conclusion. Stravinskys first theme is
similar to the opening of Bachs Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, and his scoring likewise calls for three
violins and three violas, yet another adumbration of Bach. All fifteen instruments are treated as soloists.
The sonority is clear and bell-like, with occasional added-note dissonances, especially from the horn, to
piquant effect. The first movement is predominantly polyphonic in texture, with characteristic brief motives
intertwining and turning into a kind of fugue. The bustling rhythms, inspired by Baroque beat-marking
patterns, become entirely Stravinskyan in their flexible irregularity. The slow movement is built of little
wisps of tune or even simply of sound, growing to a shimmering texture with subdivided strings. The
processional character of the finale does not prevent it from turning briefly into a fugato as well, though it
no longer has much Bachian feel to it. The concerto is brief. Its three movements take, in all, only a
dozen minutes, yet within that span Stravinsky packs rich polyphonic textures and exhilarating wit.
Steven Ledbetter
STEVEN LEDBETTER
was program annotator of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1998.
THE FIRST AMERICAN PERFORMANCE OF STRAVINSKYS DUMBARTON OAKS

CONCERTO took place (as noted above) on May 8, 1938, with Nadia Boulanger conducting, at the family
estate of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss in Washington, D.C.
THE FIRST BOSTON SYMPHONY PERFORMANCES OF THIS CONCERTO were led by Colin Davis
on October 26 and 27, 1973, since which time the BSO has played it on just two previous occasions: in
subscription concerts led by Hans Graf in March 1997, and a Tanglewood performance led by David
Robertson on July 15, 2005.

STRAVINSKY Concerto in E Flat DumbartonOaks

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Igor Stravinsky

Concerto in E-flat for chamber orchestra, Dumbarton Oaks, 8.v.38

THE FIRST AMERICAN PERFORMANCE OF STRAVINSKYS DUMBARTON OAKS

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