Igor STRAVINSKY (1882-1971). Octet for wind instruments. 1st - Lot 66

Igor STRAVINSKY (1882-1971). Octet for wind instruments. 1st Movement. Handwritten score in brown ink on five sheets of paper folded and laminated to a stand. Signed Igor Stravinsky, 1922, Biarritz at the end of the staff. Dedicated at the beginning of the staff "To my dear Eugenia... Stravinsky Biarritz Août 1922". Brown ink and blue pencil. Minor spotting and folds. Dimensions: 15 x 140 cm (in a frame). The Octet for Wind Instruments is a chamber music composition by Igor Stravinsky, completed in 1923. It was written for an unusual combination of wind and brass instruments: flute, clarinet in B-flat and A, two bassoons, trumpet in C, trumpet in A, tenor trombone and bass trombone. Because of its dry sonorities, its divertimento character and its open, conscious adoption of the "classical" forms of the German tradition (sonata, variation, fugue), as well as the composer's publication of an article affirming his formalist ideas about it shortly after the Octet's premiere, it has generally been regarded as the beginning of neoclassicism in Stravinsky's music, even though his opera Mavra (1921-1922) already exhibited most of the characteristics associated with this period of his career (Walsh 2001, §5). He composed the Octet relatively quickly in 1922. After completing the first movement, he composed the waltz that would become the fourth variation of the central movement. It was only after composing this waltz that he imagined it might make a good subject for a variation movement. The seventh variation, a fugato, particularly appealed to Stravinsky, and the following third movement is derived from it (Stravinsky and Craft 1963, p. 71). One biographer concludes that Stravinsky began composing the Octet after his return from Germany to Biarritz in late autumn 1922, and completed the score on May 20, 1923. However, the sketches reveal a more complex chronology. Twelve bars of what would become the waltz variation were composed in 1919, and the fugato variation was the first complete section composed in January 1921. An early five-page draft, of uncertain date, exists for the beginning of the Allegro section of the first movement, then intended for piano and wind orchestra. The main segments of the first movement were outlined in sketches dated between July 12 and August 8, and the full score of the movement was completed on August 16, 1922. Two days later, Stravinsky began work on the second movement, adding the previously composed fugato, followed by the slightly augmented waltz fragment. Coincidentally, the waltz contains the same intervals as the beginning of the fugato, and on August 23, 1922, he created the theme and entitled the movement "Theme with monometric variations". Variation D was then begun, but work was interrupted and Stravinsky didn't complete it until November 18. The "ribbons of scales" followed, Variation A on December 1, Variation B on December 6 and Variation C on December 9. The Finale was completed in Paris on May 20, 1923. The score was revised by the composer in 1952. Stravinsky himself conducted the premiere of the Octet at a concert by Serge Koussevitzky at the Paris Opéra on October 18, 1923. It was the first time he had conducted the premiere of a new work, but not the first time he had conducted his music in public. The cavernous space may not have been ideal for the presentation of such a chamber work, but Stravinsky later expressed his satisfaction with the sonic balance of this performance. The opening Sinfonia is a relatively rare example (despite its label as a "neoclassical composer") of Stravinsky's use of sonata form. His use of this form, along with other stylistic elements consciously borrowed from the past, is not the result of a reverential desire to perpetuate them, but rather constitutes a provocative and satirical act of mockery. The opening Lento section functions as a classical introduction, presenting the tonal background structure that will also govern the main Allegro section. In the Allegro, Stravinsky exploits the apparent contradiction of two formal balances: one created by the parallel reformulation of themes, the other by the symmetrical arrangement of themes and events on different structural layers of the composition. Provenance: Eugenia Errazuriz (1860-1951).