Stravinsky’s Symphony in C
Notes by TŌN horn player Lee Cyphers
“A good composer does not imitate; he steals.” Versions of this quote have been, appropriately, repeated so often it is difficult to pin down. This particular wording was attributed to Stravinsky by the music critic Peter Yates in his 1967 book Twentieth Century Music. It certainly illustrates Stravinsky’s approach to writing his Symphony in C.
While writing this piece, from 1938 to 1940, Stravinsky was in his late 50s and squarely in his “neoclassical period,” during which he drew inspiration from music of the past. The Symphony in C, like many of Stravinsky’s neoclassical works, draws upon Baroque, Classical, and Romantic musical traditions. Stravinsky’s early works at the turn of the 20th century, like the output of his contemporary Arnold Schoenberg, represented a violent Modernist break from tradition. Stravinsky’s music created radically new ways of treating form, pitch, and rhythm. However, in his Symphony in C, Stravinsky relied heavily on references to past composers; even his opening theme in the first movement seems to recall the opening theme in Beethoven’s First Symphony, also in C. In this later period of his life, Stravinsky was reaching back through music history to comment on his own place within it.
This work seems to follow a very standard symphonic formal structure: a fast first movement, roughly in a sonata-allegro form; a slow second movement in a ternary form, reminiscent of the “Da Capo” aria popular in Baroque operas; a third movement scherzo; and a fast finale. Where Stravinsky departs most dramatically from tradition is in his treatment of harmony and rhythm. In previous musical eras, dissonances resolved to consonances in very specific ways, creating tension and release. Stravinsky instead asks the listener to hear clashing intervals as stable in their own right—for example, ending the first movement on a dissonant chord, or meandering through the many dissonances in the chorale at the end of the fourth movement. Likewise, before the 20th century, composers tended to write in a steady meter, with recurring strong and weak beats. Throughout his Symphony in C, but especially in the third movement, Stravinsky plays with meter and rhythm. He uses mixed meters and unexpected accents to keep both audiences and musicians on their toes. Stravinsky’s music always dances, but in this work, if you aren’t careful, you might trip and fall on your face.
So why are we now looking back at a composer looking back at other composers in music history? I believe Stravinsky’s approach to neoclassicism teaches us that deep engagement with the past need not mean a return to it. His neoclassicism is not musically reactionary; he was still the daring visionary who penned The Rite of Spring nearly three decades earlier. Stravinsky’s Symphony in C teaches us that we can read our histories with modern eyes, informed by present values, and thus understand them anew. We can move beyond mere imitation and take full ownership over our traditions, bringing them into the future.