Talk:Symphony of Psalms

Riot?

At which performance of SoP was there a riot? Details? --Myke Cuthbert 05:58, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe you may be thinking of The Rite of Spring, which was premiered to what amounted to a riot. --S.dedalus 20:50, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

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2 Piano Arrangement

I have been told by my professor that their is a 2 piano arrangement/accompaniment of Symphony of Psalms. Do you know of this arrangement? I'm starting to plan for my M.M. recital and I would really like to do this piece. Of course, I can't afford to hire an orchestra! I was hoping to find this 2-piano arr. and add some important single instruments. Do you have any suggestions for this also? Thank you. --Heatherclausen (talk) 17:09, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Stravinsky's son Sviatoslav made a piano reduction of the symphony, which Edition Russe de Musique (Kousevitshy's firm) published in 1930. This may be the version to which your teacher is referring. Dmitri Shostakovich also made a piano reduction, which he played with his compostiion students at the Leningrad Conservatory. I don't know whether this version was ever published. Jonyungk (talk) 18:18, 29 April 2008 (UTC)

I was hoping to find out something more here myself. Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (ed. Elizabeth Wilson, Princeton 1994) cites Karen Kachaturian (p185) "he himself made a 4-hand version of this wonderful score" and later Craft's diary "his own piano score" (p377). Sparafucil (talk) 23:38, 27 May 2014 (UTC)

Rehearsals for the Symphony of Psalms with the Los Angeles Philharmonic & LA Master Chorale, conducted by Igor Stravinsky were in a UCLA choral practice room in 1967. A piano accompaniment would have fit the small room. I recollect how casually Stravinsky rehearsed, & being privileged seated next to pregnant Alto, Sally Terry. (Edi Montijo)

2600:8801:129B:CE00:B9E5:5102:A968:EFA1 (talk) 07:05, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

OCTATONIC SCALE

Is not that clear that the octatonic scales plays such an important role. A very detailed study can be found here: http://www.music.princeton.edu/~dmitri/stravinsky.pdf Romanspain (talk) 17:55, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

Metronome marks

The type of note for the metronome mark comes out as unreadable gibberish - "Tempo 𝅘𝅥 = 92". I know I've seen proper symbols for quarter notes, eighth notes, etc. in other articles, so I don't think the problem is with my browser. Can someone fix them here? Rigaudon (talk) 20:33, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

See also Mantra (Stockhausen). Hyacinth (talk) 21:27, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

See: Template:Music#Notes_and_Rests. Hyacinth (talk) 22:21, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

The symbols appear to have been improvised by joining two different signs. I have attempted replacing them by the Unicode characters for crotchet and minim. On my browser (Safari 4.0), the crotchets look better, but the minim still is unsatisfactory. I shall have a look at the Mantra article, also.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 21:47, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

It's an improvement in that they look less awful now (on Firefox 3). But they still don't look at all like crotchets or minims - I couldn't even guess that they were meant to be crotchets or minims. The quaver in Mantra looks fine, though. Rigaudon (talk) 22:23, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

What about ? Hyacinth (talk) 22:33, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

That looks good. But I'd rather not make the changes. I don't know the Symphony of Psalms or the Mantra, and the symbols are so unreadable that I can't tell which ones are meant to be crotchets/quarter notes and which ones are minims/half notes. So I might get it wrong if I tried to guess. Thanks for useful the link to the template. Rigaudon (talk) 22:39, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

That's a nifty template, I agree. Thanks, Hyacinth for calling this to our attention. I tried out the minim equivalent, which was not as satisfactory as the crotchet, but the real problem is that this makes a very large note symbol which, because it is in a template, is not affected by the usual HTML "small" markups. It is interesting that the quaver looks better than the crotchet under Firefox 3. I have checked and, although they both look OK to me, the crotchet is significantly smaller (I'm running the Mac version of Firefox under OS 10.4, which might make a difference). Safari displays both quaver and crotchet at the same size, and they look fine to me. The semiquavers (sixteenth notes) in the Mantra article, on the other hand, looks just as awful as before, whether using Safari or Firefox.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 23:02, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

Improvement is better than nothing. A very large note is better than a box with two numbers. Hyacinth (talk) 18:53, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I don't know if this is of any use? Rigaudon (talk) 16:47, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

This might help, since graphics can be sized to fit. The trouble is that different browsers will size the text differently, but the graphic remains fixed in size. What is this business about "a box with two numbers", Hyacinth? No one has mentioned this before. What browser are you using that gives this result? It sounds like it might be displaying the code for a Unicode character, rather than the character itself—though there ought to be more than two characters. The quaver, for example, ought to be either 1D160 (in Unicode) or F0 9D 85 A0 (in UTF8)—Jerome Kohl (talk) 19:18, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

I see a box with two numbers as well. But before you changed it, it was worse - I saw two boxes with numbers. So before your change, it said,

The first movement of the Symphony of Psalms is marked "Tempo 𝅘𝅥 = 92”

After "Tempo", but before "= 92", there were two boxes. The left box had OID at the top and 158 at the bottom. The right box had OID at the top and 165 at the bottom.

After your change, it said (and says),

The first movement of the Symphony of Psalms is marked "Tempo ♩ = 92"

There's only one box, with 26 at the top and 69 at the bottom. And I'm using Firefox. Rigaudon (talk) 19:42, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

Exactly, Firefox 3.0.11. Hyacinth (talk) 20:16, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

This gets stranger and stranger. I've just re-checked it with Firefox, and it displays the correct symbol for me. The change from two boxes to one that you describe seems to correspond to the change that I made from a two-part figure (note-head + stem) to a one-part figure. FWIW, the full version name of the Firefox I am using is Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042315 Firefox/3.0.10. Perhaps the problem is generated by that last ".01" upgrade.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:32, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

F- Dorian?

Why would it be in F-Dorian and not G- Phrygian? Not only are they the same thing, but I would assume that keeping the theme of Phrygian would be important. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.77.162.55 (talk) 07:27, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

F-Dorian and G-Phrygian are certainly not the same thing (that is why they have different names). The issue is one of pitch-centre (tonic, or mode final). For comparison, C major and E Phrygian are not the same, either, though they share the same diatonic set of pitch classes.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 08:04, 4 December 2010 (UTC)

I think what the above user is suggesting, rather than that F-Dorian and G-Phrygian are the same thing musically, is that, notationally, they share the same set of pitches. Thus, in light of the first movement's predilection towards G, it would make more sense to analyse that passage under the guise of the Phrygian mode on G. I tend to agree with this, given that the previous measures stress the Ocatatonic scale (with G as one of the two important "axis pitches,") and that it leads directly to another Phyrgian section, namely the E-Phyrgian ostinato beginning at m. 15 in the piano. I think the importance of G here, and in the piece as a whole, would lend credence to seeing the phrase in question as G-related more than F-related, despite the fact that it just so happens to start on an F. I have seen analyses argue in favour of G-Phyrgian as well. See, for example, Arthur Berger's "Pitch Organization in Stravinsky," Perspectives of New Music, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Autumn-Winter, 1963), 11-42. --24.47.93.56 (talk) 02:27, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, well, I think I already pointed out that C major and E Phrygian are not the same, either. However, it is nice to have a source at last, instead of Original Research. Let us see if Berger supports G Phrygian or not, though, before changing the (already unsupported) claim of F Dorian.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 03:01, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

There is also another claim of those two measures being a transition into Eb major. The leading tone does not resolve but rather, the Em triad appears and the return to C, the central tonality, is carried out. (Kang, 11) Let's remember that this is a transitional section that holds little importance on the overall tonality of the movement (let alone the piece). As Tymoczko argues, there are various ways of analyzing Stravinsky which sheds more light on his compositional technique.*Cc (talk) 04:23, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Well, there's not much point wasting time telling us about it here—put it in the article, with the appropriate source citations, of course.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 05:49, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Citation needed?

Does the fact that "Stravinsky's chorus comprises men and children" really need a citation? It's written on the cover page of most scores and reductions that he would prefer a children's choir to women singers. If the instrumental scoring in the section above it doesn't need a "proper citation," I don't see why the vocal scoring does.--129.49.96.250 (talk) 23:29, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, the earlier statement that "Stravinsky stated a preference for children's voices for the upper two choral parts" remains unchallenged (though it might be a good idea to specify that his preference is stated in the score preface and not, say, in one of the Craft dialogue books). It looks to me as if the problem is two-fold, having to do with (1) the implication that the choir must not include women's voices, contrary to the score instructions which merely say children's voices are preferable, and (2) that this somehow has a connection to the alleged prohibition of women singers in churches during the Baroque period (a problematic claim in itself).—Jerome Kohl (talk) 00:18, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Psalm Links

While the piece was written in Latin, and while Stravinsky is Russian, it's not appropriate for this article to have the links pointing to the articles for the Psalms by their Greek/Vulgate numbering rather than their Hebrew numbering, because the Wikipedia articles for individual Psalms exclusively use the Hebrew numbering. Prior to my edit today, the first excerpt pointed to the page for the Hebrew Psalm 38, rather than the actual text in use. The second section similarly pointed at the incorrect page. I changed the infobox as well, as it was linking to the Psalms' individual pages.

Perhaps someone with a more critical eye than me would like to evaluate whether the headers of the text should instead parenthesize the Greek numbering and have the Hebrew numbering first. Ehler (talk) 00:48, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Prokofiev connection?

Added a dubious tag to the assertion that Prokofiev meant a dig at Stravinsky by using a handful of the same words purportedly taken from the Symphony of Psalms text. The problem with this assertion is that the words in question are not from the Symphony of Psalms, but from the Book of Psalms whose texts (including the very ones Stravinsky used and Prokofiev ostensibly appropriated for his gag) have been set by numerous composers over the centuries. Even if somehow this assertion were true and Prokofiev did mean for this to be an in-joke, are there any statements from the composer himself or his intimates which confirm this to be true? Stravinsky, at any rate, was a French citizen at the time Alexander Nevsky was being produced, had been profoundly influenced by French music, and left a lasting influence on future generations of French composers. How Teutonic could he really have been? If anybody can provide persuasive evidence (such as documentation or statements by Prokofiev, Eisenstein, or the Nevsky production team) on this matter, then they need to be cited. Otherwise, this claim ought to be tossed out of the article. CurryTime7-24 (talk) 23:37, 3 January 2021 (UTC)