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Renard (Stravinsky)
Encyclopedia
Renard, Histoire burlesque chantée et jouée (The Fox: burlesque
tale sung and played) is a one-act chamber opera-ballet by Igor Stravinsky
, written in 1916. The Russian text by the composer was based on Russian folk tales from the collection by Alexander Afanasyev
.
The full Russian
name of the piece is: Ба́йка про лису́, петуха́, кота́, да барана́. Весё́лое представле́ние с пе́нием и му́зыкой – (Bayka pro lisu, petukha, kota da barana. Vesyoloe predstavlenie s peniem i muzykoi – The Fable
of the Vixen, the Cock, the Cat and the Ram. A burlesque for the stage with singing and music).
, aka la Princesse Edmond de Polignac, commissioned Stravinsky to write a piece that could be played in her salon. She paid the composer 2,500 Swiss francs. The work was completed in Morges
(Switzerland
) in 1916, and Stravinsky himself made a staging plan, trying to avoid any resemblance to the operatic staging or conventions. He created rather a new form of theatre in which the acrobatic dance is connected with singing, and the declamation comments on the musical action. However the piece was never performed in the salon of the princess. It was not staged until 1922.
The premiere (a double bill with Mavra
) was given on May 18, 1922 by the Ballets Russes
at the Théâtre de l’Opéra, Paris
It was conducted by Ernest Ansermet
; the choreography was by Bronislava Nijinska
and the decorations and costumes were by Mikhail Larionov
. Stravinsky remained pleased with Nijinska's "acrobatic Renard, which coincided with my ideas...Renard was also a real Russian satire. The animals saluted very like the Russian Army (Orwell would have liked this), and there was always an underlying significance to their movements."
In 1929 Diaghilev staged a revival with the Ballets Russes
, choreographed by Fokine. "[It] was ruined chiefly by some jugglers Diaghilev had borrowed from a circus" Stravinsky regretted Chagall's refusal of a commission to do the sets.
who deceives the Cock, the Cat and the Ram, but at the end they catch and punish him. The Cock is twice tricked and captured by the Fox, only to be rescued each time by the Cat and the Ram. After the Cock's second rescue, the Cat and the Ram strangle the Fox, and the three friends dance and sing. It also contains a slight irony relating to religion and the church – to be invulnerable the Fox wears the black gown of the nun (nuns used the privilege of inviolability in Russia).
As later in his Les noces
(or Russian
:Свадебка, 1914–17) Stravinsky employs here the singers as part of the orchestra, and the vocal parts are not identified with specific characters.
: A. Henn, ©1917; London
: J. & W. Chester, ©1917; Vienna
: Wiener Philharmonischer Verlag. ©1917; (as Bajka: veseloe predstavlenie s peniem i muzykaj) Moscow
: Muzyka, 1973.
Duration c. 15–20 minutes.
Dedication: “Très respectueusement dédié a Madame la Princesse Edmond de Polignac”
Ensemble: flute
(doubling piccolo
), oboe
(doubling cor anglais
), clarinet
(doubling Eb clarinet), bassoon
, 2 horns
, trumpet
, percussion (timpani
, triangle
, tambourine
with bells, tambourine without bells, cylindrical drum
, cymbal
s, bass drum
), cimbalom (or piano), 2 violin
s, viola
, cello
and double-bass.
's 2005 recording is offered as the composer's own. Later, however, he told Craft: "I prefer to hear [it] in Russian or not at all."
that was almost unknown in the European classical tradition, however was always typical for the folk music
. The main features of this are the stubborn repetition of small and simple melodic phrases (called in Russian
«попевки» – popevki), played in a syncopated rhythm, with an irregular meter (changing the time signature
almost in every bar); the multi-voiced texture is not a real polyphony
, but rather a heterophony
, that represents monophony
or so to say “ragged unison
”, where the melody
of one instrument is accompanied and embellished with the fragments of the same melody. Here is the most telling example:
Burlesque
Burlesque is a literary, dramatic or musical work intended to cause laughter by caricaturing the manner or spirit of serious works, or by ludicrous treatment of their subjects...
tale sung and played) is a one-act chamber opera-ballet by Igor Stravinsky
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ; 6 April 1971) was a Russian, later naturalized French, and then naturalized American composer, pianist, and conductor....
, written in 1916. The Russian text by the composer was based on Russian folk tales from the collection by Alexander Afanasyev
Alexander Afanasyev
Alexander Nikolayevich Afanasyev was a Russian folklorist who recorded and published over 600 Russian folktales and fairytales, by far the largest folktale collection by any one man in the world...
.
The full Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
name of the piece is: Ба́йка про лису́, петуха́, кота́, да барана́. Весё́лое представле́ние с пе́нием и му́зыкой – (Bayka pro lisu, petukha, kota da barana. Vesyoloe predstavlenie s peniem i muzykoi – The Fable
Fable
A fable is a succinct fictional story, in prose or verse, that features animals, mythical creatures, plants, inanimate objects or forces of nature which are anthropomorphized , and that illustrates a moral lesson , which may at the end be expressed explicitly in a pithy maxim.A fable differs from...
of the Vixen, the Cock, the Cat and the Ram. A burlesque for the stage with singing and music).
History
In April 1915 Winnaretta SingerWinnaretta Singer
Winnaretta Singer, Princesse Edmond de Polignac was an American musical patron and heir to the Singer sewing machine fortune.-Early Life and Family:...
, aka la Princesse Edmond de Polignac, commissioned Stravinsky to write a piece that could be played in her salon. She paid the composer 2,500 Swiss francs. The work was completed in Morges
Morges
Morges is a municipality in the Swiss canton of Vaud, located in the district of Morges and is also the seat of the district.-History:...
(Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
) in 1916, and Stravinsky himself made a staging plan, trying to avoid any resemblance to the operatic staging or conventions. He created rather a new form of theatre in which the acrobatic dance is connected with singing, and the declamation comments on the musical action. However the piece was never performed in the salon of the princess. It was not staged until 1922.
The premiere (a double bill with Mavra
Mavra
Mavra is a one-act opera buffa composed by Igor Stravinsky, and one of the earliest works of Stravinsky's 'neo-classical' period. The libretto of the opera, by Boris Kochno, is based on Aleksandr Pushkin's The Little House in Kolomna. Mavra is about 25 minutes long, and features two arias, a...
) was given on May 18, 1922 by the Ballets Russes
Ballets Russes
The Ballets Russes was an itinerant ballet company from Russia which performed between 1909 and 1929 in many countries. Directed by Sergei Diaghilev, it is regarded as the greatest ballet company of the 20th century. Many of its dancers originated from the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg...
at the Théâtre de l’Opéra, Paris
Palais Garnier
The Palais Garnier, , is an elegant 1,979-seat opera house, which was built from 1861 to 1875 for the Paris Opera. It was originally called the Salle des Capucines because of its location on the Boulevard des Capucines in the 9th arrondissement of Paris, but soon became known as the Palais Garnier...
It was conducted by Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Ansermet
Ernest Alexandre Ansermet was a Swiss conductor.- Biography :Ansermet was born in Vevey, Switzerland. Although he was a contemporary of Wilhelm Furtwängler and Otto Klemperer, Ansermet represents in most ways a very different tradition and approach from those two musicians. Originally he was a...
; the choreography was by Bronislava Nijinska
Bronislava Nijinska
Bronislava Nijinska - February 22, 1972)) was a Russian dancer, choreographer, and teacher of Polish descent.Nijinska was born in Minsk, the third child of the Polish dancers Tomasz and Eleonora Nijinska . Her brother was Vaslav Nijinsky...
and the decorations and costumes were by Mikhail Larionov
Mikhail Larionov
Mikhail Fyodorovich Larionov was an avant-garde Russian painter.-Life and work:...
. Stravinsky remained pleased with Nijinska's "acrobatic Renard, which coincided with my ideas...Renard was also a real Russian satire. The animals saluted very like the Russian Army (Orwell would have liked this), and there was always an underlying significance to their movements."
In 1929 Diaghilev staged a revival with the Ballets Russes
Ballets Russes
The Ballets Russes was an itinerant ballet company from Russia which performed between 1909 and 1929 in many countries. Directed by Sergei Diaghilev, it is regarded as the greatest ballet company of the 20th century. Many of its dancers originated from the Imperial Ballet of Saint Petersburg...
, choreographed by Fokine. "[It] was ruined chiefly by some jugglers Diaghilev had borrowed from a circus" Stravinsky regretted Chagall's refusal of a commission to do the sets.
Plot
This is a moralizing story, a farmyard fairy tale about Reynard the FoxReynard
Reynard is the subject of a literary cycle of allegorical French, Dutch, English, and German fables largely concerned with Reynard, an anthropomorphic red fox and trickster figure.-Etymology of the name:Theories about the origin of the name Reynard are:...
who deceives the Cock, the Cat and the Ram, but at the end they catch and punish him. The Cock is twice tricked and captured by the Fox, only to be rescued each time by the Cat and the Ram. After the Cock's second rescue, the Cat and the Ram strangle the Fox, and the three friends dance and sing. It also contains a slight irony relating to religion and the church – to be invulnerable the Fox wears the black gown of the nun (nuns used the privilege of inviolability in Russia).
As later in his Les noces
Les Noces
Les noces by Igor Stravinsky, is a dance cantata, or ballet with vocalists.-History:The ballet was premiered on June 13, 1923 at the Théâtre de la Gaîté, by the Ballets Russes with choreography by Bronislava Nijinska...
(or Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
:Свадебка, 1914–17) Stravinsky employs here the singers as part of the orchestra, and the vocal parts are not identified with specific characters.
Publication
GenevaGeneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
: A. Henn, ©1917; London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
: J. & W. Chester, ©1917; Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
: Wiener Philharmonischer Verlag. ©1917; (as Bajka: veseloe predstavlenie s peniem i muzykaj) 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...
: Muzyka, 1973.
Duration c. 15–20 minutes.
Dedication: “Très respectueusement dédié a Madame la Princesse Edmond de Polignac”
Scoring
Singers: 2 tenors, 2 bassesEnsemble: flute
Flute
The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike woodwind instruments with reeds, a flute is an aerophone or reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air across an opening...
(doubling piccolo
Piccolo
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...
), 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...
(doubling cor anglais
Cor anglais
The cor anglais , or English horn , is a double-reed woodwind instrument in the oboe family....
), 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...
(doubling Eb clarinet), 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...
, 2 horns
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 ....
, 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...
, percussion (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...
, triangle
Triangle (instrument)
The triangle is an idiophone type of musical instrument in the percussion family. It is a bar of metal, usually steel but sometimes other metals like beryllium copper, bent into a triangle shape. The instrument is usually held by a loop of some form of thread or wire at the top curve...
, tambourine
Tambourine
The tambourine or marine is a musical instrument of the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zils". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though some variants may not have a head at all....
with bells, tambourine without bells, cylindrical drum
Drum
The drum is a member of the percussion group of musical instruments, which is technically classified as the membranophones. Drums consist of at least one membrane, called a drumhead or drum skin, that is stretched over a shell and struck, either directly with the player's hands, or with a...
, 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, 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...
), cimbalom (or piano), 2 violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
s, viola
Viola
The viola is a bowed string instrument. It is the middle voice of the violin family, between the violin and the cello.- Form :The viola is similar in material and construction to the violin. A full-size viola's body is between and longer than the body of a full-size violin , with an average...
, cello
Cello
The cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
and double-bass.
Translations
The French translation by C. F. Ramuz appears in the original vocal score. A German translation by Rupert Koller is in the Chester study score and an English translation by Rollo H. Myers in the current vocal score bears the copyright date 1956. It is somewhat modified on the Stravinsky conducts Stravinsky recording; a more though-going revision heard on Robert CraftRobert Craft
Robert Lawson Craft is an American conductor and writer. He is best known for his intimate working friendship with Igor Stravinsky, a relationship which resulted in a number of recordings and books.-Life:...
's 2005 recording is offered as the composer's own. Later, however, he told Craft: "I prefer to hear [it] in Russian or not at all."
Errata
There are many discrepancies between full and vocal scores, the most startling being the PV's extra bass drum beat at the beginning, the study score's downbeat at the start of the allegro (not heard on Stravinsky's recording), the rebarring between figures 21 and 22, and the PV's missing third beat of the bassoon before figure 24.Score and music sample
Stravinsky developed here the original technique of compositionMusical composition
Musical composition can refer to an original piece of music, the structure of a musical piece, or the process of creating a new piece of music. People who practice composition are called composers.- Musical compositions :...
that was almost unknown in the European classical tradition, however was always typical for the folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
. The main features of this are the stubborn repetition of small and simple melodic phrases (called in Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
«попевки» – popevki), played in a syncopated rhythm, with an irregular meter (changing the time signature
Time signature
The time signature is a notational convention used in Western musical notation to specify how many beats are in each measure and which note value constitutes one beat....
almost in every bar); the multi-voiced texture is not a real polyphony
Polyphony
In music, polyphony is a texture consisting of two or more independent melodic voices, as opposed to music with just one voice or music with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chords ....
, but rather a heterophony
Heterophony
In music, heterophony is a type of texture characterized by the simultaneous variation of a single melodic line. Such a texture can be regarded as a kind of complex monophony in which there is only one basic melody, but realized at the same time in multiple voices, each of which plays the melody...
, that represents monophony
Monophony
In music, monophony is the simplest of textures, consisting of melody without accompanying harmony. This may be realized as just one note at a time, or with the same note duplicated at the octave . If the entire melody is sung by two voices or a choir with an interval between the notes or in...
or so to say “ragged unison
Unison
In music, the word unison can be applied in more than one way. In general terms, it may refer to two notes sounding the same pitch, often but not always at the same time; or to the same musical voice being sounded by several voices or instruments together, either at the same pitch or at a distance...
”, where the melody
Melody
A melody , also tune, voice, or line, is a linear succession of musical tones which is perceived as a single entity...
of one instrument is accompanied and embellished with the fragments of the same melody. Here is the most telling example:
Recordings
- Stravinsky, Igor. The Complete Edition, Volume 1, Sony Classical SM3K46291
- Stravinsky, Igor. Orchestral music. Ballets ; Stage works ; Orchestral works/ Stravinsky. London : Decca
- Stravinsky the Composer. Two Suites, Four Etudes, etc../Robert CraftRobert CraftRobert Lawson Craft is an American conductor and writer. He is best known for his intimate working friendship with Igor Stravinsky, a relationship which resulted in a number of recordings and books.-Life:...
. Music Masters 67110-2