Iron Foundry
Encyclopedia
Factory: machine-music , Op. 19, commonly referred to as the Iron Foundry, is the most well-known work by Soviet composer Alexander Mosolov
and a prime example of Soviet futurist music
. It was composed between 1926 and 1927 as the first movement of the ballet suite ("Steel"). The remaining movements of Steel, "In Prison," "At the Ball," and "On the Square" have been lost, and Iron Foundry is performed today as a standalone orchestral episode.
, Dmitri Shostakovich
, and other composers joined. Iron Foundry was originally composed for the ballet Stal with a scenario by Inna Chernetskaya, which was ultimately never staged; instead it was presented as the first movement of an orchestral suite from the ballet that premiered in Moscow
on December 4, 1927, in a concert by the Association for Contemporary Music commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The same concert featured Shostakovich
's Second Symphony
, Nikolai Roslavets
' cantata October, and Leonid Polovinkin's Prologue. Mosolov's composition was performed at the International Society for Contemporary Music
's eighth festival in Liège
on September 6, 1930, where it was met with critical acclaim. "We have ... a kind of lyrical theme, the song of steel, or possible of man, the ironmaster. ... [I]t is an essentially musical idea carried out with convincing skill, and as a concluding piece to an orchestral programme it deserves to become popular," one critic said of the piece.
At the Hollywood Bowl in 1931, Iron Foundry was used as the music to Adolph Bolm
's ballet, The Spirit of the Factory—known also as Ballet mécanique (not to be confused with the 1924 composition by George Antheil
), Mechanical Ballet, and The Iron Foundry—which opened to "rousing ovations, rapturous reviews, and popular demands" for an encore performance. This was the first time for Iron Foundry to be performed for a stage performance; though its original intentions were as music for the ballet Steel, it was never staged as originally intended.
, two flutes
, two oboe
s, English horn, two clarinet
s, bass clarinet
, two bassoon
s, contrabassoon
, four horn
s, three trumpet
s, two trombone
s, bass trombone, and tuba
, timpani
, snare drum
, bass drum
, cymbal
s, tam-tam, iron sheet, and strings.
. It begins with an allegro section, consisting of brief chromatic
figure
s across the orchestra that build slowly to a trio section, after which it returns to the feeling of the allegro beginning for the coda. In this way Mosolov "coordinates the mechanistic rhythms into specific orchestral groups that work together like cogs in a well-oiled machine." Interestingly, Mosolov uses a live orchestra to create a factory-like sound, unlike Antheil's Ballet mécanique
, which uses mechanical elements to reach its musical goals.
that begin in a few instruments and, measure by measure, are added to the sound until the instruments join together to suggest the sound of a factory at work. By measure twenty-seven, the overlapping instruments create a deliberate and machine-like sound above which the horns are directed to stand and play the main theme of the piece.
, interpret the iron sheet part (see figure) as both for iron sheet and orchestral anvil, with anvil strikes on every beat as indicated by the vertical accent
s; however, the conductor's score published by Kalmus includes a note that the sheet is to be vibrated at each vertical accent and for the sheet to vibrate naturally between beats. The last ten measures of the piece accelerate and grow louder until the penultimate measure, where most of the instrumentation drops away. The horn and trumpet play a brief figure and the full orchestra returns to end the piece with a sforzando stab
.
Alexander Mosolov
Alexander Vasilyevich MosolovMosolov's name is transliterated variously and inconsistently between sources. Alternative spellings of Alexander include Alexandr, Aleksandr, Aleksander, and Alexandre; variations on Mosolov include Mossolov and Mossolow...
and a prime example of Soviet futurist music
Futurism (music)
Futurism was a 20th century movement in art which encompassed painting, sculpture, poetry, theatre, music, architecture and gastronomy. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti initiated the movement in his Manifesto of Futurism, published in February 1909. Futurist music rejected tradition and introduced...
. It was composed between 1926 and 1927 as the first movement of the ballet suite ("Steel"). The remaining movements of Steel, "In Prison," "At the Ball," and "On the Square" have been lost, and Iron Foundry is performed today as a standalone orchestral episode.
History
Iron Foundry was a product of its time. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, romantic music—though not banned—fell from prominence as it was a remnant of the deposed ruling class, and experimental and revolutionary ideas flourished. In 1923, the Association for Contemporary Music was founded for avant-garde composers. Mosolov, his teacher Nikolai MyaskovskyNikolai Myaskovsky
Nikolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky was a Russian and Soviet composer. He is sometimes referred to as the "father of the Soviet symphony".-Early years and first important works:...
, Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
, and other composers joined. Iron Foundry was originally composed for the ballet Stal with a scenario by Inna Chernetskaya, which was ultimately never staged; instead it was presented as the first movement of an orchestral suite from the ballet that premiered in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
on December 4, 1927, in a concert by the Association for Contemporary Music commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Russian Revolution. The same concert featured Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
's Second Symphony
Symphony No. 2 (Shostakovich)
Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No. 2 in B major, Opus 14 and subtitled To October, for the 10th anniversary of the October Revolution. It was first performed by the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra and the Academy Capella Choir under Nikolai Malko, on 5 November 1927...
, Nikolai Roslavets
Nikolai Roslavets
Nikolai Andreevich Roslavets was a significant Soviet modernist composer. Roslavets was a convinced modernist and cosmopolitan thinker; his music was officially suppressed from 1930 onwards....
' cantata October, and Leonid Polovinkin's Prologue. Mosolov's composition was performed at the International Society for Contemporary Music
International Society for Contemporary Music
The International Society for Contemporary Music is a music organization that promotes contemporary classical music.ISCM was established in 1922, in Salzburg. Its core activity is the World Music Days Festival, held every year at a different location. The festival includes cutting edge productions...
's eighth festival in Liège
Liège
Liège is a major city and municipality of Belgium located in the province of Liège, of which it is the economic capital, in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium....
on September 6, 1930, where it was met with critical acclaim. "We have ... a kind of lyrical theme, the song of steel, or possible of man, the ironmaster. ... [I]t is an essentially musical idea carried out with convincing skill, and as a concluding piece to an orchestral programme it deserves to become popular," one critic said of the piece.
At the Hollywood Bowl in 1931, Iron Foundry was used as the music to Adolph Bolm
Adolph Bolm
Adolph Rudolphovitch Bolm was a Russian born American ballet dancer and choreographer....
's ballet, The Spirit of the Factory—known also as Ballet mécanique (not to be confused with the 1924 composition by George Antheil
George Antheil
George Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor. A self-described "Bad Boy of Music", his modernist compositions amazed and appalled listeners in Europe and the US during the 1920s with their cacophonous celebration of mechanical devices.Returning permanently to...
), Mechanical Ballet, and The Iron Foundry—which opened to "rousing ovations, rapturous reviews, and popular demands" for an encore performance. This was the first time for Iron Foundry to be performed for a stage performance; though its original intentions were as music for the ballet Steel, it was never staged as originally intended.
Orchestration
Iron Foundry is scored for piccoloPiccolo
The piccolo is a half-size flute, and a member of the woodwind family of musical instruments. The piccolo has the same fingerings as its larger sibling, the standard transverse flute, but the sound it produces is an octave higher than written...
, two flutes
Western concert flute
The Western concert flute is a transverse woodwind instrument made of metal or wood. It is the most common variant of the flute. A musician who plays the flute is called a flautist, flutist, or flute player....
, two oboe
Oboe
The oboe is a double reed musical instrument of the woodwind family. In English, prior to 1770, the instrument was called "hautbois" , "hoboy", or "French hoboy". The spelling "oboe" was adopted into English ca...
s, English horn, two clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
s, bass clarinet
Bass clarinet
The bass clarinet is a musical instrument of the clarinet family. Like the more common soprano B clarinet, it is usually pitched in B , but it plays notes an octave below the soprano B clarinet...
, two bassoon
Bassoon
The bassoon is a woodwind instrument in the double reed family that typically plays music written in the bass and tenor registers, and occasionally higher. Appearing in its modern form in the 19th century, the bassoon figures prominently in orchestral, concert band and chamber music literature...
s, contrabassoon
Contrabassoon
The contrabassoon, also known as the double bassoon or double-bassoon, is a larger version of the bassoon, sounding an octave lower...
, four horn
Horn (instrument)
The horn is a brass instrument consisting of about of tubing wrapped into a coil with a flared bell. A musician who plays the horn is called a horn player ....
s, three trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
s, two trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
s, bass trombone, and tuba
Tuba
The tuba is the largest and lowest-pitched brass instrument. Sound is produced by vibrating or "buzzing" the lips into a large cupped mouthpiece. It is one of the most recent additions to the modern symphony orchestra, first appearing in the mid-19th century, when it largely replaced the...
, timpani
Timpani
Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. A type of drum, they consist of a skin called a head stretched over a large bowl traditionally made of copper. They are played by striking the head with a specialized drum stick called a timpani stick or timpani mallet...
, snare drum
Snare drum
The snare drum or side drum is a melodic percussion instrument with strands of snares made of curled metal wire, metal cable, plastic cable, or gut cords stretched across the drumhead, typically the bottom. Pipe and tabor and some military snare drums often have a second set of snares on the bottom...
, bass drum
Bass drum
Bass drums are percussion instruments that can vary in size and are used in several musical genres. Three major types of bass drums can be distinguished. The type usually seen or heard in orchestral, ensemble or concert band music is the orchestral, or concert bass drum . It is the largest drum of...
, cymbal
Cymbal
Cymbals are a common percussion instrument. Cymbals consist of thin, normally round plates of various alloys; see cymbal making for a discussion of their manufacture. The greater majority of cymbals are of indefinite pitch, although small disc-shaped cymbals based on ancient designs sound a...
s, tam-tam, iron sheet, and strings.
Analysis
The piece is written in ternary formTernary form
Ternary form, sometimes called song form, is a three-part musical form, usually schematicized as A-B-A. The first and third parts are musically identical, or very nearly so, while the second part in some way provides a contrast with them...
. It begins with an allegro section, consisting of brief chromatic
Diatonic and chromatic
Diatonic and chromatic are terms in music theory that are most often used to characterize scales, and are also applied to intervals, chords, notes, musical styles, and kinds of harmony...
figure
Figure (music)
A musical figure is the shortest idea in music, a short succession of notes, often recurring. It may have melodic pitch, harmonic progression and rhythmic . The 1964 Grove's Dictionary defines the figure as "the exact counterpart of the German 'motiv' and the French 'motif'": it produces a "single...
s across the orchestra that build slowly to a trio section, after which it returns to the feeling of the allegro beginning for the coda. In this way Mosolov "coordinates the mechanistic rhythms into specific orchestral groups that work together like cogs in a well-oiled machine." Interestingly, Mosolov uses a live orchestra to create a factory-like sound, unlike Antheil's Ballet mécanique
Ballet mécanique
Ballet Mécanique was a project by the American composer George Antheil and the filmmaker/artists Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy. Although the film was intended to use Antheil's score as a soundtrack, the two parts were not brought together until the 1990s. As a composition, Ballet Mécanique is...
, which uses mechanical elements to reach its musical goals.
Introduction
The piece begins as a representation of the start of the machine, with a tam-tam stroke and repetitious figuresOstinato
In music, an ostinato is a motif or phrase, which is persistently repeated in the same musical voice. An ostinato is always a succession of equal sounds, wherein each note always has the same weight or stress. The repeating idea may be a rhythmic pattern, part of a tune, or a complete melody in...
that begin in a few instruments and, measure by measure, are added to the sound until the instruments join together to suggest the sound of a factory at work. By measure twenty-seven, the overlapping instruments create a deliberate and machine-like sound above which the horns are directed to stand and play the main theme of the piece.
Trio
At the trio, the machine suddenly shuts down. Upper winds and the snare drum push forward to a syncopated exchange between the low brass and upper winds and marked by the bass drum and tam-tam. This gives way to a steady, march-like timpani motif that drives the orchestra back to the atmosphere of the beginning.Coda
Now the machine has returned to full power. Musical ideas from the introduction are reintroduced, and the piccolo and iron sheet are added to the texture. Some performances, including those of the Interlochen Arts Academy and Royal Concertgebouw OrchestraRoyal Concertgebouw Orchestra
The Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra is a symphony orchestra of the Netherlands, based at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. In 1988, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands conferred the "Royal" title upon the orchestra...
, interpret the iron sheet part (see figure) as both for iron sheet and orchestral anvil, with anvil strikes on every beat as indicated by the vertical accent
Accent (music)
In music, an accent is an emphasis placed on a particular note,either as a result of its context or specifically indicated by an accent mark.Accents contribute to the articulation and prosody of a performance of a musical phrase....
s; however, the conductor's score published by Kalmus includes a note that the sheet is to be vibrated at each vertical accent and for the sheet to vibrate naturally between beats. The last ten measures of the piece accelerate and grow louder until the penultimate measure, where most of the instrumentation drops away. The horn and trumpet play a brief figure and the full orchestra returns to end the piece with a sforzando stab
Orchestra hit
An orchestra hit, also known as an orchestral hit, orchestra stab, or orchestral stab, is a sound created through the layering of the sounds of a number of different orchestral instruments playing a single staccato note or chord. The orchestra hit sound was propagated by the use of early samplers,...
.
See also
- Pacific 231Pacific 231Pacific 231 is an orchestral work by Arthur Honegger, written in 1923. It is one of his most frequently performed works today.The popular interpretation of the piece is that it depicts a steam locomotive, an interpretation that is supported by the title of the piece. Honegger, however, insisted...
, a 1923 orchestral piece by Arthur HoneggerArthur HoneggerArthur Honegger was a Swiss composer, who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. He was a member of Les six. His most frequently performed work is probably the orchestral work Pacific 231, which is interpreted as imitating the sound of a steam locomotive.-Biography:Born... - Ballet mécaniqueBallet mécaniqueBallet Mécanique was a project by the American composer George Antheil and the filmmaker/artists Fernand Léger and Dudley Murphy. Although the film was intended to use Antheil's score as a soundtrack, the two parts were not brought together until the 1990s. As a composition, Ballet Mécanique is...
, a 1924 piece by George AntheilGeorge AntheilGeorge Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor. A self-described "Bad Boy of Music", his modernist compositions amazed and appalled listeners in Europe and the US during the 1920s with their cacophonous celebration of mechanical devices.Returning permanently to...