Stravinsky composed his Pulcinella, a one-act ballet with songs, in 1919-1920, while he was in Switzerland. Pulcinella was the first work that marks Stravinsky’s plunge into neo-classicism, in which he borrowed the musical materials by composers in 18th-century. The full title of this work is called Pulcinella; ballet avec chant en un acte d’apres Giambattista Pergolesi. Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes at the Paris Opera first performed it on 15th May 1920, with Ernest Ansermet conducting; the choreography was by Leonide Massine, the scenery and costumes by Pablo Picasso. The instrumentation is rather unusual in which it was scored for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons; 2 horns, 1 trumpet, 1 trombone; string concertino (2 violins, viola, cello and double-bass) and string ripieno (4 first-violins, 4 second-violins, 4 violas, 3 cellos and 3 double-basses), plus three solo voices- soprano, tenor and bass.

Pulcinella has aroused the interests of many researchers and musicologists, of how Stravinsky came about in writing this ballet, especially on the issues of where and how he obtained the sources, and whether he was awared of the original sources he is using. For many years, scholars and musicologists accepted the fact that the music of Pulcinella was constructed entirely on the music by Pergolesi, namely his trio sonatas. But from the end of 1950s onwards, many researchers such as Frank Walker and Charles Cudworth, and continuing with Francesco Degrada, Helmut Hucke, Albert Dunning, Marvin Paymer, and others, have placed the “spuriosity” label on a large number of works ascribed to Pergolesi, including many that were used in Pulcinella [1]. According to Paymer, ‘…that of the 148 works in the complete works edition, 69 are misattributed, 49 are of questionable parentage, and only 30 may be considered genuine’ [2]. In other words, only about 20% of the works attributed to Pergolesi are authentic.

Stravinsky did contradict himself in many occasions when talking about his Pulcinella in a few conversations recorded by Walter Nouvel and Robert Craft. For example, in his autobiography, Stravinsky tells us that:

The success of The Good-Humoured Ladies, with Domenico Scarlatti’s music, had suggested the idea of producing something to the music of another illustrious Italian, Pergolesi, whom, as he knew, I liked and admired immensely. In his visits to Italy, Diaghilev had gone through a number of this master’s unfinished manuscripts that he discovered in various Italian conservatoires, copies of which he had had made for him. He later completed the collection with what he found in the libraries of London. There was a very considerable amount of material, which Diaghilev showed to me, urging that I should seek my inspiration in it and compose the music for a ballet, the subject of which was to be taken from a collection containing various versions of the amorous adventures of Pulcinella [3].

Even though the comment given by Stravinsky himself gave us a glimpse of how he obtained the original sources to construct his ballet music, but was it the actual scenario? According to Brook, ‘virtually none of Pergolesi manuscripts, neither autographs nor copies, are unfinished; and the various Italian conservatories are actually only one Italian conservatory’ [4]. Further from his autobiography, he said, "I have always bee enchanted by Pergolesi’s Neapolitan music, so entirely of the people and yet so exotic in its Spanish character [5]."

His testimony about Pergolesi music quoted above was a disgrace when in a conversation with Robert Craft in 1959, when asked whether he is interested in the current revival of 18th-century Italian masters, Stravinsky turned his back and thus contradicted his own opinion in his autobiography:

Not very. Vivaldi is greatly overrated - a dull fellow who could compose the same form so many times over. And in spite of my predisposition in favour of Galuppi and Marcello, they are poor composers… Caldara I respect largely because Mozart copied seven of his canons; I do not know much of his music. Pergolesi? Pulcinella is the only work of his that I like [6].

Again from his autobiography:

During the following months I gave myself up entirely to Pulcinella, and the work filled me with joy. The material I had at my disposal- numerous fragments and shreds of compositions, either unfinished or merely outlined, which by good fortune had eluded filtering academic editors- made me appreciate more and more the true nature of Pergolesi while discerning ever more clearly the closeness of my mental and, so to speak, sensory kinship with him [7].

As was pointed out by Brook, what Stravinsky was saying is pure fiction and caused more confusion to the origin of the manuscripts copies he used [8]. In an interview with Craft, we may begin to see a clearer picture of the birth of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella:

The suggestion that was to lead to Pulcinella came from Diaghilev one spring afternoon while we were walking together in the Place de la Concorde: “Don’t protest at what I am about to say… but I have an idea that I think will amuse you more than anything they can propose. I want you to look at some delightful 18th-century music with the idea of orchestrating it for a ballet.”

I looked and I fell in love. My ultimate selection of pieces derived only partly from Diaghilev’s examples, however, and partly from published editions, but I did play through the whole of the available Pergolesi before making my choice… [9].

 

Continuing from the interview:

I began by composing on the Pergolesi manuscripts themselves, as though I were correcting an old work of my own. I began without preconceptions or aesthetic attitudes, and I could not have predicted anything about the result. I knew that I could not produce a ‘forgery’ of Pergolesi because my motor habits are so different; at best, I could repeat him in my own accent. That the result was to some extent a satire was probably inevitable- who could have treated that material in 1919 without satire? - But even this observation is hindsight; I did not set out to compose a satire and, of course, Diaghilev hadn’t even considered the possibility of such a thing. A stylish orchestration was what Diaghilev wanted, and nothing more, and my music so shocked him that he went about for a long time with a look that suggested The Offended Eighteenth Century. In fact, however, the remarkable thing about Pulcinella is not how much but how little has been added or changed [10].

Yet, the genesis of Pulcinella was not told in details and the response given both by Stravinsky and Diaghilev were vague. We may wonder as if Stravinsky and Diaghilev were trying to hide anything from us.

Continuing from the interview with Craft:

Pulcinella was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible. It was a backward look, of course- the first of many love affairs in that direction - but it was a look in the mirror, too. No critic understood this at the time, and I was therefore attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing ‘simple’ music, blamed for deserting ‘modernism’, accused of renouncing my ‘true Russian heritage’ [11].

What was so remarkable about the Pulcinella ballet lies in the construction of the music using many dissimilar and unrelated building blocks, which were borrowed from five different composers. As Stravinsky shared with us in his autobiography:

…I enjoyed taking part in a task that ended in a real success. Pulcinella is one of those productions- and they are rare- where everything harmonizes, where all the elements- subject, music, dancing and artistic setting- form a coherent and homogeneous whole. As for the choreography, with the possible exception of a few episodes that it had not been possible to change, it is one of Massine’s finest creations, so fully has he assimilated the spirit of the Neapolitan theatre. In addition, his own performance in the title role was above all praise. As for Picasso, he worked miracles, and I find it difficult to decide what was most enchanting- the colouring, the design, or the amazing inventiveness of this remarkable man [12].

Stravinsky's Musical Treatment

In the past two decades, Brook had done a comprehensive and extensive research on the actual musical works attributed to Pergolesi that Stravinsky had used for his Pulcinella and also the original musical works that were misattributed to Pergolesi. Table 1 shows the summary of the original sources in which Stravinsky had borrowed [13]. Apart from Pergolesi, Brook has identified four other composers, and they are Domenico Gallo, Count Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer, Alessandro Parisotti and Carlo Monza. Due to the difficulty in getting the music manuscripts by these five composers, I shall limit my discussion to a few examples.

In treating the music borrowed from these composers, Stravinsky showed great skill in arranging and occasionally transposing of the music. The score is ‘more than a suite of individual numbers - it has a definite entity of its own produced by the careful relation of textures, dynamics, tonalities and instrumental colours’ [14]. Most of the music Stravinsky borrowed are unaltered, especially the melodies and basses. His own contribution was to break up the formal symmetry typical of 18th-century music through ‘the elision or lengthening or repetition of phrases, and also to eliminate the traditional harmonic scheme by use of ostinato and the prolongation of certain harmonies’ [15]. The instrumentation is also quite unusual in which there is a duet for double-bass and trombone in the Vivo (Ex. 1- scene VII).

Example 1: Duet between trombone and double-bass (Vivo: bars 1 - 13)

The Overture, Scherzino (scene I), Allegro (scene I), Andantino (scene I), Allegro assai (scene II), Allegro alla breve (scene IV) and Allegro assai (scene VIII) from Pulcinella was believed for many years to be borrowed from Pergolesi’s trio sonatas. The 12 Trio Sonatas, which were mistakenly attributed to Pergolesi, is actually by Domenico Gallo. These trio sonatas could not be by Pergolesi because there is no contemporary source bearing his name. According to Walker and Cudworth, it has been known for decades that the composer is Gallo, who was born around 1730 in Venice [16]. It was quite common at that time to ascribe works by a lesser-known author to a famous person, in order to increase sales promotion; and it was the English publisher Robert Bremner who took the liberty of attributing these twelve excellent trio sonatas to the already legendary composer Pergolesi [17]. The principal theme of the Overture is presented three times in the tonic (Bars 1-2), dominant (Bars 11-13) and tonic (Bars 30-32). The keys are related to classical principles. Both the overture and the trio sonata (First movement of Gallo’s Trio Sonatas, No.1) have the same formal structure. There are several solo passages for oboe, bassoon, viola and violin (in concertino) in the overture, typical of 18th-century concertato style. In addition, Stravinsky also applied the ostinato device to the 2nd violin in concertino and ripieno (marked in bracket), and thus it creates a subtle dissonant sonority.

Example 2a: Gallo's Trio Sonata No. 1, (first movement)

Example 2b: Stravinsky's Overture (woodwinds and brass sections omitted)