''Serenade in A'' is a work for solo piano by Russian composer
Igor Stravinsky
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky ( – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and American citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential 20th-century c ...
. Completed on September 9, 1925, in Vienna and published by
Boosey & Hawkes,
it resulted from his signing his first gramophone recording contract, for
Brunswick, and was written so that each
movement could fit on one side of a
78 rpm
A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English) or a vinyl record (for later varieties only) is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The g ...
record. The dedicatee was Stravinsky's wife
Yekaterina.
Structure
''Serenade in A'' lasts about twelve minutes and is in four movements:
Despite its title, the work is in neither
A major nor
A minor. According to Eric White,
A is not the "key" of the work, but rather the music radiates from and tends towards A as a "tonic pole". Thus, the first and the last chord of each movement contains the note A, either as the root, third, or fifth of a
triad. According to Stravinsky, the piece was conceived "in imitation of the ' of the eighteenth century, which was usually commissioned by patron princes for various festive occasions, and included, as did the suites, an indeterminate number of pieces". Therefore, the movement titles are meant to evoke the specific parts of such festive celebration.
From the pianist's perspective, "Hymne" is related to
Frédéric Chopin's
Ballade No. 2, while the reflects Stravinsky's Russian heritage.
[John Ogdon, "Stravinsky and the Piano", '']Tempo
In musical terminology, tempo (Italian for 'time'; plural 'tempos', or from the Italian plural), measured in beats per minute, is the speed or pace of a given musical composition, composition, and is often also an indication of the composition ...
'', new series, no. 81, Stravinsky's 85th Birthday (Summer 1967): 36–41. Citation on 40; Alfredo Casella, "Stravinsky" (Brescia: Editrice La Scuola, 1947): 129.
References
Further reading
* Boettcher, Bonna J. 1991. ''A Study of Stravinsky's Sonate pour piano (1924) and Sérénade en la''. San Francisco: Mellen Research University. .
*
Cone, Edward T. 1962. "Stravinsky: The Progress of a Method". ''
Perspectives of New Music
''Perspectives of New Music'' (PNM) is a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in music theory
Music theory is the study of theoretical frameworks for understanding the practices and possibilities of music. ''The Oxford Companion to Musi ...
'' 1, no. 1 (Fall): 18–26.
* Joseph, Charles M. 1983. ''Stravinsky and the Piano''. Russian Music Studies 8. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press.
* Martins, José António Oliveira. 2006. "Stravinsky's Discontinuities, Harmonic Practice, and the Guidonian Space in the 'Hymne' from the ''Serenade in A''". ''Theory and Practice'' 31:39–63.
* Straus, Joseph N. 1987. "The Problem of Coherence in Stravinsky's Sérénade in la". ''Theory and Practice'' 12:3–10.
* White, Eric Walter. 1948. ''Stravinsky: A Critical Survey, 1882–1946''. New York: Philosophical Library. Reprinted, Mineola, New York: Courier Dover Publications, 1997. .
External links
*
{{Authority control
1925 compositions
Compositions for solo piano
Piano compositions by Igor Stravinsky
Music dedicated to family or friends
Stravinsky