On Visiting Stravinsky’s Grave at San Michele

Notes

Stravinsky was the first 20th century composer whose work had as immediate an impact on me as music of the past. Perhaps this is why, when I visited the cemetery in San Michele (Venice) where his remains lie, I was jolted out of a rather long non-creative period. It was immediately afterwards that I jotted down the somewhat, for me, bold and direct ‘theme’ in octaves, with which the piece begins, and the rest followed quite quickly. The piece consists of a number of apparently unrelated ideas, starkly juxtaposed, which are then ‘clarified’ by dint of varying repetition, becoming familiar together, so that they no longer seem unrelated.  It ends with a short ‘reminiscence’ from Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms’ played in canon.