A Tenor's Look at Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms

Igor Stravinsky was, in my opinion, the coolest composer of the twentieth century. Whenever I think of him and his music I'm reminded of that famous photograph showing him speeding his motorcycle (a '57 Vincent) through the traffic circling Paris's L'Arc de Triomphe - the wind sweeping his hair back, a cigarette clenched between his teeth. His eyes squint at the photographer. And who, I wonder, is the blonde riding pillion whose face is just barely visible behind his right shoulder, her arms wrapped around his black leather jacket, hanging on for dear life? The man was cool, no doubt about it.

I have to wonder how the composer of the Rite of Spring (completed in 1913) reacted to the earnest but amateur music in which he was suddenly immersed when he began attending religious services in Nice during the mid '20s - the period of his return to the Russian Orthodox church. We can be thankful that he left us the answer to this question in the Symphony of Psalms and his other great works of religious devotion. The Psalms are, to Stravinsky's mind, poems of exaltation, but also of anger, judgement, and curses. Stravinsky conveyed the spirit of the poems masterfully through the highly contrasting tempi and harmonies.

I. Hear my prayer, O lord
This is the shortest of three movements and also, in my opinion, the easiest on the chorus. It was composed in a "state of religious and musical ebullience." Some of the notes in this section are just above the top of my range and so I and my tenor colleagues will often sing in a falsetto (false) voice. This is just a tricky way of working with your voice to produce notes outside your normal range. A male falsetto has much of the tonal quality of a female soprano voice - a very pure piercing sound. You can hear it when we sing the phrase remitte, remitte mihi (O spare me...) toward the end of the movement. Actually, truth be told, we do have some altos singing along with us there. (One of the difficulties with amateur choruses is that male voices are often in short supply and creative uses of available resources is necessary.)

You may, if you speak any Latin, notice that the final word of the first movement, ero, is split by the chorus taking a breath between the first syllable and the second. This is deliberate. in fact the last word of each movement is similarly split.

Stravinsky took a lot of flack for this practice. He answered his critics by saying that "in setting the words of this... hymn, I cared above all for the sounds of the syllables.... I really do tire of people pointing out that Dominum is one word and that its meaning is obscured by the way I respirate it.... Do such people know nothing about word-splitting in early polyphonic music?"

II. I waited patiently for the Lord
Patiently the psalmist waits for a new song of praise from the Lord. This movement is a fugue. A fugue is sort of like a round and, if you've ever sung Row, Row, Row Your Boat or  Frere Jacques, you know what a round is. The first voice enters singing the melody or theme. After the first phrase has been completed the second voice enters with the same theme while the first voice continues presenting new material. Subsequent voices enter with the theme after the same pause. A fugue is somewhat more complicated. The first voice enters with the subject, a short melody, which is 'answered' by the second voice. The answer consists of the subject transposed up a fifth or, as here, down a fourth. In this piece Stravinsky also modifies the subject slightly for each voice. Still, if you listen carefully you will hear the phrase Expectans expectavi Dominum sung by the sopranos and then answered by the altos. The tenors then sing the subject, and the basses answer in the same phrase sung by the altos. I should point out here that the movement begins with another, completely different, subject introduced by the instrumental parts. Complex and difficult but also quite lovely.

Once again, the final word of the movement, Domino, is split by a breath between the first and second syllables.

III. Alleluia, Praise ye the Lord
This is the new canticle of praise which the Lord has put into the mouth of the psalmist in answer to his prayer in the second movement. Stravinsky began work on the Symphony of Psalms with the fast sections of this movement. He then went back and composed the first and second movements before returning to complete his work on this psalm. Once again his devil-may-care attitude is instructive: "...at first, and until I understood that God must not be praised in fast, forte, music no matter how often the text specifies 'loud,' I thought of the final hymn in a too-rapid pulsation." Instead the third movement begins with a slow and stately Alleluia which is followed by an exciting and stirring Laudate Dominum "inspired by a vision of Elijah's chariot climbing the Heavens." The triplets (three notes in a single beat) in this section suggest the horses galloping into the sky.

Singing Laudate is quite tricky. The au sound is a diphthong (two 'pure' vowel sounds articulated one after the other). In this case ah is quickly followed by oo - so quickly that you might not notice it while speaking. It's just a single syllable, that's all. Unfortunately you can't sing it the way you speak it. Suppose you have a half note to sing Lau followed by a whole note to sing da followed by a half note to sing te (as happens in this section). If you slide between the ah and the oo too quickly (say a quarter note each) the effect is unlovely. Instead you must hold the ah for the duration of the half note and then quickly hit the oo before beginning the da. Music is an illusion.

A confession: I made up the part about the photograph of Stravinsky riding his motorcycle through Paris. It's just such a lovely image that I couldn't resist sharing it with you. I hope you enjoy tonight's concert despite my deception.

Copyright 1994, Bernard Vachon

Sources: Dialogues and a Diary, Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Doubleday and Co., Inc., 1963