Stravinsky - Van Den Toorn

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doi:10.1093/musqtl/gdh017 87:468–509

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The Twentieth Century and Beyond andInstitutions, Technology, and Economics

Stravinsky, Adorno, and the Art

of DisplacementPieter C. van den Toorn

Much of what is characteristic of Igor Stravinsky’s music may be defined

rhythmically in terms of displacement, shifts in the metrical alignment ofrepeated motives, themes, and chords. Stravinsky himself often beganhere, in fact, not necessarily with a committed set of pitch relations, one

that is octatonic, for example, but with a phrase turned rhythmically, amotive or chord displaced in relation to a steady metrical framework. Themany references in his published remarks to starting ideas bear this out, as

do the works and sections of works themselves—Russian, neoclassical,and serial in origin. Even before the birth of concrete ideas, the composerwould set himself in motion by “relating intervals rhythmically,” improvising

on a set of “rhythmic units.” This initial exploration, he later confessed,

“was always conducted at the piano.”1

Adorno began here, too. Targeted in his celebrated indictment of

Stravinsky’s music are, above all, the composer’s rhythmic practices, thefrequent displacement of accents, and the disruptive effect of displace-ment on the listener. The absence of expressive timing is bemoaned, the

lack of any “subjectively expressive fluctuation of the beat.”2 And insteadof the developmental style of the classical tradition (as defined by ArnoldSchoenberg, Adorno’s point of departure musically and music-analyti-

cally), the repetition in Stravinsky’s music was relentless and literal. Nodevelopment could be inferred, no elaboration of motives or “motive-

forms.”3 So paradoxical in a music that could seem outwardly vital from arhythmic standpoint, the overall effect was often one of standstill or stasis,

an invention “incapable of any kind of forward motion.”4 “The repetitionconstantly presents the same thing as though it were something different,”Adorno complained. “Farcical and clownish, it has the effect of putting on

airs, of straining without anything really happening.”5 Such characterizations form the liveliest part of Adorno’s critique.

Descriptions of one kind or another, they address the psychological effect

of Stravinsky’s music. At the same time, however, they are often incom-plete and fragmentary, with the task of piecing them together left to the


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Stravinsky, Adorno, and the Art of Displacement 469

reader. Adorno’s approach is unsystematic to the point of being unintelligible

(“anti-systematic,” as some have suggested more sympathetically),6 with

the analytical descriptions themselves hemmed in by sweeping philosophicaland sociological conjectures often no less fragmentary in character. The

stream of consciousness can be explained by the dialectical processes atwork, but only up to a point, and the suggestion of many of Adorno’sadherents to the effect that the critic-philosopher fetishized this particular

aspect of the process (its lack of finality) can seem real enough.7 Adornoacknowledged the “constellation”-like effect of his thought and prose,8 but the results can often seem like waywardness all the same, a poetic

obscurity substituting for the more determined effort to address head-onthe complexity of the issues raised.

Indeed, there are problems with the analytical description as well. AsMax Paddison has observed, “a strange disparity” exists between “thesophistication and radicality of [Adorno’s] aesthetics and sociology on theone hand and the lack of sophistication and traditional character of his

music-analytical method on the other.”9 Actually, it is not so much thethematic-motivic model of analysis inherited from Schoenberg that lackssophistication as it is its application (or lack of application). Missing not

only in Adorno’s Philosophy of Modern Music10 but also in a later essay onStravinsky11 are definitions of every conceivable kind (elementary onesfor terms such as “accent,” for example), identifications of passages and

sections of works cited, and the analytical detail that must necessarilyqualify generalization if generalization is not to lapse into polemic. The

need for concrete detail—for the grounding of abstract terms and con-cepts “in the structure of the music itself”—is acknowledged early on inthe Philosophy of Modern Music,12 but is never allowed to materialize in theform of an effective supplement.

Yet the bits and pieces of Adorno’s description are worth pursuing allthe same. And they are so more for the musical illumination than for the

larger philosophical and sociological ideas to which they are attached (and

from which, as Adorno and his adherents have insisted, they not onlyderive their meaning but are “inseparable”).13 They are worth pursuing for

the musical and music-historical sense that can be made of the juxta-position of Schoenberg and Stravinsky, the juxtaposition of the classical or“homophonic” style as defined by Schoenberg (the style of “developing

variation”)14 and Stravinsky’s processes of displacement. Where the con-struction of thematic material is concerned, the invention and use of suchmaterial, these two worlds can indeed seem to stand apart in ways that are

immediately identifying, ways that can enliven experience and its reflection.Confronted in Adorno’s Philosophy, and in the later Stravinsky essay

as well, is that single dimension in Stravinsky’s music that has seemed


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470 The Musical Quarterly

most to identify it in the ears and eyes of the listening public, namely that

of rhythm and meter. The features that preoccupy Adorno are those that

tend to stand out, in fact, perhaps in works of the early Russian periodabove all: the mechanical nature of the beat and its transmission, the

displacement of accents, the rigidity of the juxtapositions, and the seem-ingly unvaried and relentless nature of the repetition. Touching on mattersthat pertain to the listener’s immediate response to Stravinsky’s music,

Adorno’s concerns can be made to relate to wider and more tangible ones,to the listener’s “entrainment” of meter, for example, to the role of expec-tation in music, and to the way in which emotion (pleasureful or not) is

aroused. In Leonard Meyer’s now classic formulation of “emotion andmeaning” in the Western art tradition, emotions are stirred when implica-

tions or tendencies are inhibited or arrested, when established norms arebroken.15 And the way in which expectations of metrical parallelism arethwarted by displacement in Stravinsky’s music, with the meter often dis-rupted as a result, figures as an instance of this type of interaction. Indeed,

there is little reason why Adorno’s critique should not be scrutinized fromperspectives of this kind, be made to relate to the world of music theoryand analysis and its ties to issues of perception and cognition.

Much of this can be pursued irrespective not only of Adorno’sphilosophical ideas, but of the still larger framework (mainly Hegelian andMarxist) to which those ideas are attached. Indeed, it can be pursued

irrespective of Adorno’s critical verdict. The latter need not be acceptedin order for the analytical description, harnessed as a means of support, to

be appreciated. Our understanding can be reasonably sympathetic, in fact,without in any way accepting the “no” of Adorno’s account. Indeed, asVirgil Thomson remarked some time ago, where matters of musical under-

standing and criticism are concerned, the actual opinions of critics neednot concern us unduly.16 What counts is the musical understanding thatis brought to bear, the features that are noticed, described, and com-

mented upon in one way or another. The Schoenbergian model of the

classical style can serve as a useful foil for Stravinsky’s music regardless ofthe larger and less tangible philosophical and sociopolitical meanings to

which, in Adorno’s account, that model is attached. On the more speculativeside of Adorno’s argument, too, many of the negative images can bedetached and replaced by positive ones.

With this in mind we shall first be seeking to retrace the steps ofAdorno’s critique, supplementing the analytical description with the detailand exemplification often missing in the Philosophy. Following this, a detaileddefinition of metrical displacement and its implications in Stravinsky’s musicwill be attempted, followed in turn by a number of rebuttals of Adorno’s argu-

ment. Conclusions will then lead to a somewhat less strident, less polarized


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view of the Schoenberg-Stravinsky divide, one in which the great variety of

displacement in Stravinsky’s music can imply processes and psychologies that

are not always at odds with those of more traditional tonal contexts.

Adorno Interpreted

Adorno is struck above all by the “concentration of accents and time rela-tionships” in Stravinsky’s music. The “most elementary principle” of this

“concentration” is displacement: melodic fragments and motives areconstructed in such a way that “if they immediately reappear, the accentson their own accord fall upon notes other than they had upon their first

appearance.”17 Because of their irregularity, the shifting accents “canappear to be the result of a game of chance.” They can seem to be “undera spell.”18 The game they play is an “arbitrary” one, according to Adorno,

one whose rules lie beyond the control of the listener. And the arbitrarinessof the game precludes participation and engagement on the part of theperformer or listener. The listener’s role is reduced to that of a spectator.

Stravinsky’s displaced accents resist assimilation. They cannot beanticipated, and so appear as “shock effects.”19 And while “shock” isaccorded a legitimate place in the reception of much contemporary music

(in that of Schoenberg’s atonal and twelve-tone music, above all, whereAdorno identifies it with a sudden recognition of the horrors of themodern world), its effect in Stravinsky’s music is viewed as debilitating.

Deprived of the ability to anticipate, listeners cannot absorb the irregu-larly shifting accents of displacement. “Shock” overwhelms them, andthey lose their “self-control.” “In Stravinsky, there is neither the anticipa-

tion of anxiety nor the resisting ego; it is rather simply assumed that shockcannot be appropriated by the individual for himself. The musical subjectmakes no attempt to assert itself, and contents itself with the reflective

absorption of the blows. The subject behaves literally like a critically

injured victim of an accident which he cannot absorb and which, there-fore, he repeats in the hopeless tension of dreams.”20

Reference here and elsewhere in Adorno’s account to a “musicalsubject” implies dramatization. “The musical subject” rather than thelistener falls victim to Stravinsky’s arbitrarily displaced accents. (The

listener is seldom mentioned in Adorno’s account, in fact, although“listener” and “subject” are clearly interchangeable in this regard, witheach viewed as the victim of the same set of musical circumstances.)

Thus, the music lacks an overriding pattern according to which theirregularly shifting accents could be organized. In Adorno’s descriptions,

the listener’s inability to organize these accents becomes the subject’s


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inability. Just as the listener loses his or her metrical bearings, so, too, the

subject cannot “heroically reshape” the displaced accents in his or her

image: the accents are experienced as “convulsive blows and shocks.”21

And although the specifics of this listener-to-subject translation are omit-

ted from the record, they are an integral part of the equation. Withoutthem, Adorno’s characterizations would make little sense.

Central to Adorno’s argument is the idea of a balance in music of the

highest quality, a balance between the four musical dimensions of melody,harmony, rhythm, and form. In Stravinsky’s music, this is overturned byan emphasis on rhythm and, more specifically, on displacement and its

effect of shock. That “great” music could consist of such an idealequilibrium—one good for all seasons, as it were—is an idea traceable to

Schoenberg (Adorno’s likely source, in any case),22 although it appears inother guises early in the twentieth century as well. Schoenberg wrote ofthe need for music to develop consistently and “equally” in all direc-tions.23 Not only were these directions inseparable, but an emphasis on

one could come only at the expense of the others. Ideas similar to thesewere expressed in a number of critical surveys during the 1920s and 1930s,including Cecil Gray’s A Survey of Contemporary Music (1924). There,each parameter is viewed similarly as being “at its highest when all are incomplete equilibrium, when one does not predominate over the others.”24 Music “of the greatest masters” is neither harmonic, rhythmic, nor

melodic, according to Gray; “it is all and it is none.”25 Adorno’s version ofthis ideal runs as follows:

Stravinsky’s admirers have grown accustomed to declaring him a rhythmistand testifying that he has restored the rhythmic dimension of music—

which had been overgrown by melodic-harmonic thinking—again tohonor. . . . Rhythmic structure is, to be sure, blatantly prominent, but this isachieved at the expense of all the other aspects of rhythmic

organization. . . . Rhythm is underscored, but it is split off from content, it

results not in more, but rather in less rhythm than in compositions inwhich there is no fetish made of rhythm.26

Melody is the first casualty of these imbalances. Instead of a formationof shapes and contours, the melodies subjected to displacement inStravinsky’s music are “truncated, primitivistic patterns.”27 No indepen-

dent melodic life may be inferred from these “patterns,” no structure tospeak of. Melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic features are not subjected to a“developing variation” along the lines implied by the Schoenbergianmodel, but are repeated literally and relentlessly. They are not varied, and

without variation, progress and development are thwarted as well. For it is


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only by means of a process of elaboration that the repetition of motives

and thematic segments can add up to an overreaching design or train of

thought, something other than a mere sum or total. With Stravinsky’s“primitivistic patterns” and their repetition, there are only “fluctuations of

something always constant and totally static.”28 The much ballyhooedrhythmic invention “consists of varied recurrence of the same; of the samemelodic forms; of the same harmonic patterns, indeed, of the very same

rhythmic patterns.”29 Evidence of a musical nightmare of this kind may be found on virtually

any page of Stravinsky’s music, but see, as a starting point here, the repeti-

tion of the A–D–C–D fragment in the horns in the “Ritual of the RivalTribes” and “Procession of the Sage” in The Rite of Spring (1913; see Ex. 1).

Repeats of this “primitivistic pattern” (ten in all) are without elaboration,transposition, or changes in articulation, dynamics, or instrumentalassignment. All is fixed from start to finish in these respects: the first twonotes of the fragment are always accented, while the last three, D–C–D,

are always slurred. What changes is the fragment’s alignment in relationto the steady 4/4 meter and the accompanying parts. Entering on thefourth, first, third, and second quarter-note beats, respectively, the frag-

ment falls on and off the half-note beat, the likely tactus here with a met-ronome marking of 83. (The half-note beat, along with the sensation offalling on and off it, is likely to define the conditions of displacement in

this passage. At a level of pulsation just below the tactus, the quarter-notebeat becomes a subtactus unit, the level of the pulse, as we shall presently

be defining it.)In turn, the steady meter on which displacements of this kind hinge

is likely to impose itself independently and prior to the entrances of the

horn fragment and its sustained Ds. The repetition of the G–F–E–D frag-ment in the first violins is crucial in this regard. As a point of departureand return, the pitch G in this fragment falls on the downbeat, while the

fragment’s division into two segments, or “cells” (labeled A and B in Ex. 1),

with each of these segments spanning the 4/4 bar line, lends further sup-port for the 4/4 framework. Further along, repeats of the accompanying

segments in the tuba, although irregularly spaced at rehearsal nos. 64–67,serve as an additional means of support—indeed, following the removal ofthe reiterated fragment in the violins at rehearsal no. 66, as a constant

backdrop in this respect. The spans of these entrances are multiples oftwo and four; repeats of the segments G-sharp–F-sharp(G)–(G-sharp)and G-sharp–A-sharp–C-sharp–A-sharp–(G-sharp) are aligned in a

metrically parallel fashion.In sum, while repeats of the various segments in the first violins and

tubas are spaced irregularly, they are metrically parallel in relation to the


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Example 1. Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring , “Ritual of the Rival Tribes,” “Procession of the Sage.”© Copyright 1912, 1921 by Hawkes & Son (London) Ltd. Copyright renewed. Reprinted by

permission of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.


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4/4 bar line. The two fragments are not ostinati, strictly speaking, but thedisplacement that results from the irregular spanning of their repeats ishypermetrical rather than metrical. Typical of the melodic invention in

Stravinsky’s Russian-period works, the reiterated G–F–E–D fragment inthe first violins is sliced up into smaller segments. Labeled A and B inExample 1, these segments are reshuffled: after each repeat of segment A,

segment B is repeated once, sometimes twice. Significantly, however, allrepeats of these segments fall on the downbeat of the 4/4 bar line. Andthis parallelism is likely to reinforce the sense of a 4/4 hierarchy. At the

outset of this passage, the effect is likely to be one of at least relative stability,and in preparation for the entrances of the sustained Ds and A–D–C–Dsegment in the horns. The latter are not only irregularly spaced, they are

metrically nonparallel as well; the latter entrances are the troublemakersin this passage: the cause, as we shall see, of metrical conflict. (Theconflicting cycle of the bass drum noted in Ex. 1 will come to the fore fur-

ther along, and then only in the form of a challenge; even at rehearsal no.70, where the notated meter changes to 6/4, the sense of a duple or 4/4

bar line is likely to persist.)

Example 1. continued


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Pitch relations in this example follow an analogous path. The octa-

tonicism at the outset is explicit and relatively unimpaired. Consisting in

the main of the tritone-related 0–2–3–5 Dorian tetrachords G–F–E–Dand C-sharp–(B)–A-sharp–G-sharp in the first violins and tubas, respec-

tively, octatonic relations are qualified diatonically by the D-scale on G,implied by the accompanying parts in the strings (see Ex. 2: the dottedline beneath the quotation signifies octatonic-diatonic interaction in

terms of the single octatonic transposition Collection II and the D-scale onG, shared by these two interacting orderings of reference is the G–F–E–Dtetrachordal fragment, which serves as a connecting link).30 And this,

too, would seem to be in preparation for the entrances of the A–D–C–Dfragment in the horns. Articulating another 0–2–(3)–5 incomplete Dorian

tetrachord, here in terms of D–C–(B)–A, the latter entrances are foreignto Collection II. The clash with the C-sharp–(B)–A-sharp–G-sharptetrachord in the tubas is likely to be especially harsh in this regard.

Typical of Stravinsky’s music as well is the layered or stratified struc-

ture that may be inferred. Fixed registrally as well as instrumentally, frag-ments in the first violins, tubas, and horns repeat according to cycles thatvary independently of one another.31 The varying cycles in the horns and

tubas result in an alignment or coincidence that changes vertically or“harmonically” as well as metrically. Yet the “harmonic” changes arelocked into a limited set of variables from the start; harmony in the large is

exceedingly static. The sound of the superimposed fragments midwaythrough this passage is little different from what it is at the beginning or

Example 2. Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring , “Ritual of the Rival Tribes,” opening.© Copyright 1912, 1921 by Hawkes & Son (London) Ltd. Copyright renewed. Reprinted by permission

of Boosey & Hawkes, Inc.


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the end. As with the separately moving parts of a giant locomotive, the

individual fragments churn away with little, if any, local, over-the-bar-line

sense of harmonic movement or progress.A starker contrast to the world of developing variation would be

difficult to imagine. There are motivic variations, as we have indicated,changes in motivic succession (reshuffling), durational spanning, andmetrical placement. But the sort of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic vari-

ations identified with the earlier developmental style are missing altogether.There are only “fluctuations of something always constant and totallystatic,” as Adorno complained. The invention consists merely of “a varied

recurrence” of the same melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic “patterns.”Indeed, processes of metrical displacement, along with the stratification

of this passage, preclude the sympathetic give-and-take of the world ofdeveloping variation, in the way in which motivic particles, detached fromthemes, are exchanged between instrumental parts. In Example 1, thehorn fragment is not tossed about from one instrument to the next, made

the subject of a “dialogue” in this respect (as it might have been in, say, astring quartet of Haydn or Mozart). It is not treated “humanistically” bysuch means (as the character of such treatment has often been imagined,

at the very least, in modern times, since the dawn of chamber music).32 And it is not treated expressively, either. If the displacement of theA–D–C–D fragment in the horns is to have its effect, then the beat must

be held evenly (mechanically) throughout, with little if any yielding to theconventions of expressive timing and nuance, the means by which,

traditionally, performers have made their mediating presence felt.So stark is the contrast, in fact, with so many of the familiar givens of

the developmental style missing, that anything but the most negative of

accounts on the part of a critic such as Adorno would have been difficultto imagine. It can almost seem as if the impression gained would have hadto have been that of a cold, stiff, and unyielding music. Here, however,

the point concerns the “protest” that, according to Adorno, music has

always represented: “the protest, however ineffectual, against myth,”against “the inexorable bonds of fate.”33 No cry in the dark could be heard

in Stravinsky’s music, no “inner self” in its struggle with “outrageous for-tune,” expressing the inexpressible. All this seemed missing as well,replaced by barking proclamations: “Thus it is, and not otherwise,” the

composer seemed to be saying from one unvaried repeat to the next. Andthe proclamations seemed to be those of an authority, of someone incharge, not those of the lone individual. “Stravinsky’s music identifies not

with the victims,” Adorno complained in one of his more provocative pro-nouncements, “but with the agents of destruction.”34 Indeed, it identifies

with the fascists who were just then appearing on Europe’s horizon.35


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More generally, the “identification” of Stravinsky’s music “with the collec-

tive” admits of two interpretations: Adorno makes reference to a “primitive,”

pre-individual age, and to a modern, industrial one.36

The musical subjectbehaves ritualistically in these worlds, “regressively” and in an “infantile”

manner.37 Stravinsky’s music is “anti-humanistic” in these respects. Itssympathies are not with the “suffering subject,” but with the powers thatbe, various “agents of destruction.”

In contrast, the developmental style symbolized for Adorno theability of the subject to mature with time, to meet the day’s challenges andto develop accordingly.38 While the subject remained locked in repetitive

gesture in Stravinsky’s music, unable to move beyond the trancelikestupor of ritual, he was relatively free in the world of developing varia-

tion.39 This was the nature of the musical opposition Adorno sought tounravel, the split he attributed to Stravinsky’s music, its tear from traditionand traditional sensibility.

A sampling of Adorno’s analytical descriptions appears in Figure 1.

Incomplete and fragmentary in the writings themselves, they are herecompressed into a single train of thought. All are ultimately traceable toa single musical condition, namely that of metrical displacement. Two

subsidiary conditions result from displacement: 1) inflexibly held beats(beats lacking in expressive timing); and 2) a repetition of themes,motives, and chords that, apart from the displacement itself, is literal

and lacking in the traditional modes of elaboration or developingvariation. The characterizations triggered by these conditions are

relatively concrete, neutral, and observational to begin with inFigure 1, increasingly less so further on down the line. Indeed, themore specific the imagery, the less tangible and the more speculative.

On the left side of Figure 1, the need for strict metricality in theperformance of Stravinsky’s music (the need for “expressive fluctuation”or nuance to be kept to a minimum) is made to imply mechanization and

impersonality, which in turn are made to imply “anti-humanism” and a

collective authority of one kind or another. On the right side, a lack ofvariation in the repetition of Stravinsky’s motives is made to imply a

similar lack of “identification” with the individual, the plight of themusical subject.

The descriptions and characterizations are Adorno’s, as has been

suggested, while the outline converts both the description and the charac-terization into actual features of the music, features that are then con-nected in the form of an explanatory path. A larger rationale is thus

imposed along lines that are more specifically musical. (The outline is notAdorno’s, in other words, but represents an attempt to piece the various

descriptions together as a single line of thought.)


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Displacement Defined

Often missing from Adorno’s account, in fact, is precisely the sense of alarger rationale for Stravinsky’s music, what it is that connects the variousmusical components, motivates or triggers one factor in relation to theothers. No doubt, as Adorno insists, the concern in Stravinsky’s music

(and in his settings of displacement more specifically) is not with thefeatures of a motive and their elaboration, but with just the opposite,namely the literal repetition of such features. Yet there are reasons for the

unvaried nature of the repetition, reasons that are musically specific. Therepetition in Stravinsky’s music follows a different logic. In works of theRussian period above all, Stravinsky repeats not to elaborate or to develop

along traditional lines, but to displace. And in seeking metrically to

Figure 1. Adorno’s Characterizations in the Form of an Explanation.


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displace a repeated theme, motive, or chord, the composer seeks to retain

features other than alignment in order that alignment itself (and its shifts)

might be set in relief. The literalness of the repetition acts as a foil in thisrespect. As features of pitch, duration, and articulation are retained, the

metrical alignment of the given theme, motive, or chord shifts.This is not the whole of it, however. Literalness in the repetition of a

fragment acts as a counterforce, too, a way of referring the listener back to

the fragment’s original placement. In direct opposition to displacement, itimplies metrical parallelism, a repetition of the original alignment alongwith all else that is repeated literally.40 And the more that is repeated

literally, the more fully aroused are these conflicting expectations ofmetrical parallelism likely to be.

The implications here are quite fiendish. To repeat a theme, motive,or chord literally and without variation so as to highlight and expose itsmetrical displacement is to undermine that displacement at the sametime. It is to raise a conflicting signal of metrical parallelism. Typically,

and with varying degrees of intensity, listeners are caught off guard.Unable to commit themselves initially one way or the other, to a readingof displacement or one of metrical parallelism, they are apt to lose their

metrical bearings.41 This is the origin of the disruptive effect of displace-ment, indeed, of the “convulsive blows and shocks” to which Adornorefers. It has to do not with one or the other of these two signals, not with

metrical displacement or parallelism strictly speaking, but with their con-flict, with the fact that there is insufficient evidence for an easy, automatic

ruling in favor of one or the other. Crucially, too, the two sides are notreconcilable. Listeners cannot attend to both simultaneously.42

In Example 1 from The Rite of Spring , the horn fragment A–D–C–Dis introduced on the fourth quarter-note beat of a 4/4 measure, only to bedisplaced to the first quarter-note beat several bars later. In half-notebeats, it falls first off and then on the beat. How is this shift likely to be

interpreted? Will listeners read through the displacement with the steady

4/4 meter sustained as a frame of reference? Or, alternatively, will they betaken in by the literalness of the repetition, by the fixed character of the

articulation of accents and slurs? Will they attempt to match that literalnesswith the fragment’s original placement off the half-note beat? And willthey do so by interrupting the meter at the half-note beat, adding an

irregular (or “extra”) quarter-note beat to the count at rehearsal no. 68?43 The first of these alternatives is “conservative” in nature.44 An

established meter is sustained (conserved) in order that the “same”

fragment might be read through placed and displaced. The second alter-native is “radical.” The meter is interrupted in order that the repeat of the

fragment might be aligned as before, that is, in a fashion that is metrically


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parallel. The reciprocity of the relationship between these two metrical

interpretations is summarized graphically in Figure 2.

Reading from left to right, “conservative” listeners adjust the align-ment of a repeated theme, motive, or chord (“change”) by holding on to

an established meter (“no change”), while “radical” listeners do thereverse, adjusting their metrical bearings (“change”) in order to perseverewith an established alignment. A measure of conservation thus underliesboth interpretations, whether it be meter, in the case of the conservativeresponse, or alignment, in that of the radical one.

Stravinsky’s notation will tend to reflect one or the other of these

responses. It may not always reflect the one to which a given listener isdrawn, but it will tend to reflect one or the other all the same. And it will

do so categorically. If, at any given moment of the listening experience,the repetition of a fragment may be heard as placed or displaced but notboth, then the notation is no less categorical. It, too, acknowledges eitherthe displacement or the fixed placement of a repeated fragment.

The principal fragment in the clarinet in the opening allegro of

Renard (1916) can serve as an additional illustration. The alternative bar-rings in Examples 3a and 3b are derived from the finished score and an

early sketch of Stravinsky’s, respectively.Typical of Stravinsky’s music, the fragment is sliced up into smaller

segments or “cells,” units that are then repeated independently of one

another; the series of irregularly spaced entrances that results is 5 +2+5quarter-note beats. (The quarter-note beat is the likely tactus here with a

marking of 84.) In the finished score (see Ex. 3a), the resultant displace-ments lie exposed to the eye. The assumption here is that the passagewill be heard and understood conservatively, that is, with the clarinet

change no change

“conservative” placement meter

(displacement)

“radical” meter placement

Figure 2. Alternative Responses to Displacement.


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fragment newly placed at m. 9 and m. 10. Introduced on the bar line orhalf-note beat, the fragment falls off the beat twice and then on the beatagain at m. 13. The steady 2/4 meter on which these displacements hingeis introduced and then maintained in large part by the basso ostinato,

which acts as a metrical backdrop.

The radical alternative, shown in Example 3b, stems from an earlysketch of Renard.45 One of many in the sketchbook that would seem toindicate the composer’s awareness of these conservative and radicaloptions, the sketch follows several drafts in which the conservativesolution of the finished score is in place. (The sketch may have arisen as

an afterthought, in fact, with the composer having wanted to test theradical option on paper.) Here, the meter shifts in order that the repeatsof the clarinet fragment might be aligned in parallel fashion. All repeats

fall on the downbeat. And much of the motivation for the notated metri-cal irregularity in Stravinsky’s music may be traced accordingly, that is, to

attempts to expose these opposing forces of metrical parallelism. The parallel

Example 3a-c. Stravinsky, Renard, opening allegro, mm. 7–13, score (conservative), early sketch(radical), and rebarred (still more radical). © Copyright 1917 by J. & W. Chester, Ltd. (Chester Music),London. Reprinted by permission of G. Schirmer, Inc.


16/42


alignment in the analytical notation of Example 3c is still more radical

from this standpoint. (Like the passage cited in Ex. 1 from The Rite of

Spring , the opening allegro of Renard is a layered structure.)No doubt, compromises can sometimes be worked out in the nota-

tion, often by crossing the bar line with beams—attempts, at least onpaper, to preserve both an established meter and an established align-ment. But such solutions cannot alter perception or, indeed, the role

played by an orientation, a frame of reference against which “events” arelocated, timed, and weighed. Listeners orient themselves as a matter ofcourse, seeking a reliable groove, a context in this respect, a backdropagainst which to organize “events.” They can respond conservatively orradically to a displacement, but not in both ways simultaneously (however

much, by means of a crossing of the bar line, the notation may imply thepossibility of such an option). Opposing forces are set in motion, forcesthat are ultimately not reconcilable.

Yet the equivocation implied by the crossing of a bar line is not

without perceptual implications. At least initially, the experience is likely tobe conflicted, subject to a good deal of qualification or sensed opposition.A displacement is felt not in isolation, obviously, but as it relates to previously

established placements. It implies those earlier placements, intimations ofwhich surface not as part of an evolving sense of structure (an overridingpattern, in other words), but as something that conflicts. And this is crucial.

The feeling is that of a prevailing assumption gone amiss, and of being takenunaware by this. Assumptions about meter and the metrical alignment of

the repeated fragment or chord, inferred reflexively and internalized at someearlier point, cannot be sustained.46 The process may be likened to that of arug being pulled suddenly and unexpectedly from under the listener’s feet.

And this is likely to be the case even with highly conservative readings, inwhich established levels of metrical pulsation may be clung to tenaciously. Ifonly for a split second, a change in the metrical alignment of a repeated

theme, motive, or chord is likely to bring about a disruption of that which

underlies alignment, namely meter.As depicted in Figure 2, the reciprocal nature of meter and metrical

alignment is crucial. For it is not as if meter arose independently of place-ment and displacement, as if the materials of Stravinsky’s music fellautomatically (or mechanically) into place, wholly at the mercy of such a

design. Themes, fragments, and motives may be introduced within anestablished metrical hierarchy, to be sure, acquiring, as a result of thatintroduction, a strong sense of placement (or location). Yet the processes

themselves are reciprocal and work both ways. If alignment emerges frommeter, so, too, in the mind of the listener, does meter emerge from

alignment. The renewed parallel alignment of a given fragment may


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confirm and reinforce an established sense of meter, just as a change in

alignment (displacement) may disrupt that sense.47

At the first signs of change, in fact, confusion is likely to reign. Arepeated fragment familiar to the listener is treated in an unfamiliar way,

and the listener may be uncertain as to how to proceed. The specific natureof the change may not be known at first, but it may be sensed all the same.Figure 3 traces a possible response-pattern from an initial point of contact.

Lasting anywhere from a split second to the lifetime of a listener’s engage-ment with the context in question, an initial state of confusion is followed bya retrospective scramble to reestablish the lost frame of reference. Since the

feeling is indeed likely to be that of an assumption gone amiss, assumptions ingeneral are put to the test. Was the fragment’s earlier alignment correctly

inferred? Was the meter correctly inferred? Should it be sustained, allowingfor a perception of displacement? Alternatively, should it be interrupted,allowing for a parallel alignment? Much of this can pass in a few seconds.

What listeners seek is a relationship, a way of relating the old with thenew. Sought is a means of connecting the various placements, acknowl-edging all as part of a single train of thought.

At some point in their retrospective analyses, however, listeners are

likely to read through the repeated fragment conservatively or radically.An attempt of this kind is likely to proceed with a good deal of sensed

retrospectively

displacement Response No. 1

Listener

displacement Response No. 2

“radical”

doubt,

uncertainty,

disruption

displacement;

meter is

sustained

continued

doubt,uncertainty

placement;

meter is

interrupted

“conservative”

Figure 3. Responses to Replacement.


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opposition, however. One response is likely to qualify the other.48 And

although retrospective analyses can facilitate subsequent readings, the

stages outlined in Figure 3 are unlikely to be eliminated altogether. Listenersmay proceed in an automatic, unconscious, or “bottom-up” way,49

according to which they are free to renew their initial experiences, includ-ing those of displacement and its disruption. They may proceed free ofconscious memory, in other words, and in a way that allows them to go

through “pretty much the same motions” from one hearing to the next, asRay Jackendoff has phrased it in a related study of the cognitive implica-tions of renewed hearings; listeners can continue to hear the piece “as if

for the first time.”50 Hearings of this kind stand in contrast to “top-bottom”approaches, in which prior or immediate learning intervenes. Two systems

of listening are thus at stake, each interacting yet independent of theother.51

And so the timings of the various stages outlined in Figure 3 are leftopen. They are likely to vary considerably not only from one context to

the next, but from one listener to the next as well. Some displacementsmay be sensed fairly readily. Evidence in their support may be overwhelming,and the listener’s initial doubt may be momentary and scarcely conscious.

At other times, however, considerable thought and analysis may berequired before the listener, retrospectively and with repeated hearings,“live” as well as “in his or her head,” is able to arrive at a conservative or

radical reading, an integration of the disputed passage with an evolvingsense of structure. (Worst-case scenarios involve outright dismissals, cases

in which a passage of disruption is never made a part of such an emergingsense. Radical responses can often arise by default in this way, the result ofa listener’s inability to follow through conservatively by sustaining an

established meter against the forces of parallel alignment.)So, too, details are likely to vary from one listener to the next. The

same listener may react conservatively to one context, radically to

another. And still another listener may switch in midstream, succumbing

quite suddenly to the conflicting evidence that, up to that point, hadserved merely as a form of opposition. And the possibility of a conservative

or radical predisposition cannot be discounted either. The degree towhich steady meters are internalized and made physically a part of thelistener (the degree to which they are entrained, to use the terminology ofthe psychologist,52 synchronized with our biological and cognitive func-tions, our “internal clock mechanisms”),53 may vary. Some listeners maybe more susceptible than others in this regard. And their conservative

responses may be a function of that susceptibility. Quite apart from themusical context in question, in other words, listeners may be predisposed

to respond in the way they do. Figure 4 takes this possibility into account,


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rearranging Figure 3 accordingly. Listeners arrive on the scene inclined to

react conservatively or radically, to sustain an established meter or to yieldin this respect.

The variables are numerous and complexity interwoven. Firmly

established metrical frameworks favor conservative reactions, obviously,while literalness in the displaced repeat of a theme, motive, or chord willtend to favor the radical alternative, metrical parallelism and an interrup-

tion of the meter. Size can make a difference, too. With lengthier fragments,the difficulties in adjusting to a new metrical alignment are likely toincrease: displaced chords are more easily assimilated. Tempo plays a

decisive role in the disruptive potential of a displacement, as does metrical

location. And both these factors are open to measurement.Figure 5 shows a way of classifying displacements on the basis of

their location within a given metrical hierarchy or grid. (The given hier-archy here derives from the opening allegro of Renard. The signature is 2/4,and the likely tactus is the quarter-note beat with a marking of 84). Loca-

tion is defined by two interacting levels of pulsation, a slower level that“interprets,” “groups,” or marks off the beats of a faster, “pulse” level.54 The pulse level is the highest level at which the placed and displaced

entrances of a given fragment are beats, while the interpretative level isthe next highest level at which those beats are marked off as onbeats or

offbeats. In this way, displacement follows meter.55 At least two levels of

retrospectively

displacement “conservative”

displacement “radical”

doubt,

uncertainty,

disruption

displacement;

meter is

sustained

continued

doubt,

uncertainty

placement;

meter isinterrupted

Figure 4. Responses to Displacement (with predisposition).


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pulsation must interact to meet its conditions, even if the effect of agiven displacement may be felt at levels above and beyond that initial

interaction.The levels of pulsation in Figure 5 are grouped in overlapping twos.

At a degree marked 0, beats at the level of the tactus “interpret” beats at

the subtactus level just below. Here, the potential for disruption is at itshighest: repeated fragments fall on and off the tactus, specifically in Figure5, the quarter-note beat. At the degree marked +1, beats at the level just

above the tactus “interpret” the tactus. Here, repeated fragments fall onand off the half-note beat rather than the quarter-note beat. In Example3a, entrances of the clarinet fragment are defined in this way, falling on

and off the half-note beat (or bar line). Beats of the half note rather thanthe quarter note are subject to interruption (quarter-note beats may con-tinue uninterrupted), the disruptive effect of which is likely to be milder.

This concerns time and timing as well as human psychology. The actualdisturbance of the half-note beat at the degree of +1 may equal that of thequarter-note beat at the degree of 0. At a slower pace, however, displace-

ment or the radical alternative of adding “extra” beats to the meter maybe negotiated with greater ease.

Traditionally, too, this is where meter is centered, namely, with theregularity of the tactus and the identification of that regularity with the

human pulse. This where “the beat” is, so to speak, where the sense of asteady alternation between downbeats and upbeats or onbeats and off-beats is likely to be most vivid. Meter’s internalization is likely to be at its

most sensitive, with immediate contact of this kind manifesting itself

Levels of pulsation location

1/16 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

-1

1/8 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

0

tactus ¼ . . . . . .

+1

1 measure ½ . . .

+2

2 measures 1 . .

Figure 5. Displacement and Metrical Location (Renard, Nos. 0–9).


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outwardly as well; at the level of the tactus or just above, with beats

synchronized with the “rhythmic” character of biological or cognitive

processes, feet are tapped, steps taken, and so forth.Then, as this acute sense of meter fades when moving away from the

tactus, displacement fades, too. Extended beyond the degrees of 0 and +1 inthe direction of hypermeter, displacements are felt less keenly. Internalizationor entrainment is less marked, so that when a fragment is displaced and the

meter threatened or interrupted as a result, the sense of disruption is lesssevere. With more time, the listener is likely to have less of a struggle withwhat may indeed have become entrained, made physically a part of him or her.

Conservative or radical adjustments or readjustments are made more easily.Examples 4a–d show the displaced repeats of another fragment from

the opening allegro in Renard, arranged here according to the graduatedscale of locations of Figure 5.The initial placement is followed by three displacements at increasinglyshallow locations: introduced on the beat of a two-measure span in Exam-

ple 4a, the fragment falls off the beat of that span in Example 4b, off thehalf-note beat or bar line in Example 4c, and finally off the quarter-notebeat in Example 4d. While the last of these alignments is purely analytical

in conception, the first three do indeed occur in Renard, and in the ordergiven in Examples 4a–c: following the initial placement, the degrees areprogressively shallower, the displacements themselves progressively more

disruptive in their potential.

Rebuttals

But is there no interaction at all between the style of developing variationand that of metrical displacement? Is the music of Schoenberg andStravinsky wholly antithetical, as Adorno implies? And are Adorno’s

“convulsive blows and shocks” altogether unforgiving? Is there no merit in

displacement and the disruption it can cause?Even in the passage quoted from The Rite of Spring (see Ex. 1), where

displacements in the repetition of the horn fragment A–D–C–D are likelyto be disruptive of the meter, the experience can be mixed. Introduced offthe half-note beat at rehearsal no. 67, the A–D–C–D fragment falls on the

beat just before no. 68. Assuming that the shock of this initial shift can beabsorbed without too much hesitation (assimilated either as a form of dis-placement or, by interrupting the meter with an “extra” quarter-note beat,

as a parallel alignment), a second displacement on the beat a few barslater is likely to be more destructive. The uncertainty caused by the initial

shift is likely to be renewed and strengthened. The possibility of such a


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second displacement is likely to be questioned first; the meter underlyingit, second. While the quarter-note beat (here, at the pulse level) may con-tinue uninterrupted, its interpretation by the half-note beat is likely to be

the subject of a breakdown, with the distinction between onbeats andoffbeats lost. In the listener’s scramble to reestablish his or her bearings (toreclaim, above all, a sense of the interpreting half-note beat), even the

metrical character of the accompanying tuba fragment, otherwiseconsistent and in phase up to this point, is likely to be questioned. Indeed,the breakdowns are likely to continue through much of this passage.

Introduced off the beat and on the fourth quarter-note beat of the 4/4 bar

Example 4a–d. Stravinsky, Renard, opening allegro.


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line, the horn fragment shifts to the first, third, and second quarter-note

beats, respectively. Although effectively “spotting” each quarter-note beat

in this way, the displaced repeats are not strictly cyclical in relation to thebar line, and the spans they define are highly irregular (see the brackets in

Ex. 1).Yet the disturbances may remain temporary. Although irregularly

spaced at first, repeats of the horn fragment reach the stable duration of

eight quarter-note beats at rehearsal no. 70; seven successive repeats fol-low off the beat and on the second quarter-note beat. (Although thenotated meter shifts to 6/4 at this point to accommodate a number of con-

flicting periods in the accompanying parts, the 4/4 framework is likely topersist in the mind of the listener.) And the accompanying tuba fragment

is stabilized even earlier, with repeats reaching the duration of sixteenquarter-note beats. Something of a resolution is thus forged as the twodance movements in question draw to a close. Alignment and harmoniccoincidence are stabilized, with the disruption of the earlier bars

(Adorno’s “shocks”) capable of being heard and understood as part of alarger plan of action, one with a beginning and an end. Far from being iso-lated and isolating, the disturbances may be reconciled within a larger,

evolving structure.More specifically, at rehearsal no. 70, the final placement on the sec-

ond quarter-note beat of the 4/4 bar line may be heard and understood as

the “correct” reading of the horn fragment A–D–C–D. In turn, earlieralignments on the fourth, first, and third beats, respectively, may be read

as displacements. Crucial here is the fragment’s concluding pitch D andthe agogic accent of this pitch. The final placement on the second quar-ter-note beat allows D to fall on the downbeat of the 4/4 bar line, and in

this way to acquire the metrical acknowledgment and support withheldfrom earlier repeats at rehearsal nos. 64–70. This, too, may contribute tothe sense of resolution at rehearsal no. 70. It is as if, after much trial and

error, the horn fragment had finally stumbled into place, finding the met-

rical location from which a maximum degree of stability could be derived.Indeed, displacements in Stravinsky’s music are not typically as dis-

ruptive in their potential as the ones cited in Example 1. Examples 5a–cshow thematic statements from three works of the Russian era. Each ofthese statements consists of a displacement, whether notated or concealed

by the radical notation; a short motive falls first on and then off thelikely tactus, the half-note beat in Example 5a, the quarter-note beat inExamples 5b and 5c. And despite the shallowness of the location and the

disruptive potential (the degree of location is 0 in all three cases), aconservative reading is likely to fare with little resistance, with the

displacements read as a form of syncopation.


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There are qualifications, no doubt. In Examples 5a and 5c, not onlyare the displaced repeats concealed by the radical notation (which retains

a single, fixed alignment for the repeated fragments), but the repetition isalso somewhat shortened. In Example 5c, the motive D–D–D–B is shortenedto D–D–B. And instead of a series of displacements, there is but one

immediate shift. Yet the radical resistance to a conservative reading is stilllikely to be minimal. The evidence can still seem to be tipped heavily infavor of the effect of syncopation. And this has mainly to do with thestrength of the meter that may be inferred in each case. In Example 5c

from the opening of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, the 2/4 meter of

Example 5a. Thematic Statements. Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring (1913), autograph.

Example 5b. Thematic Statements. Stravinsky, Les Noces, IV (1917–23).

Example 5c. Thematic Statements. Stravinsky, Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920; 1947 version).


25/42


the rebarred, conservative reading is above all a product of the bell-like

repetition of the pitch D in the opening bars. The regularity of this attack-

pattern could not have been more forceful in this respect.56

In fact, the displacements in Examples 5a–c are more likely to be

binding than disruptive. The syncopation is likely to allow for a smootherand more continuous connection between the motives and their subsequentrepeats. With the initial spans of the three motives reduced to seven beats

(see the brackets in Ex. 5a–c), the repeats arrive “too soon” and may actu-ally have the effect of increasing the listener’s anticipation of the bar line.The reduced and irregular spans are a part of a process of compression.

Examples 6a–d show an analysis of the opening statement of the

Symphonies alone. Example 6a reproduces the notated barring of Example

5c; Example 6b rebars the statement conservatively with a steady 2/4meter, exposing the displacement concealed by the irregular barring (themotive [D]–D–D–B falls first on and then off the quarter-note beat);Example 6c eliminates the displacement by adding an eighth-note beat to

the initial span (expanding the span from seven to eight quarter-note beats);and Example 6d eliminates both the displacement and the shortening of

Example 6a–d. Stravinsky, Symphonies of Wind Instruments, opening.


26/42


the repeat. With the repetition of the bell-like motive stripped of its

invention in this way, something of the nature of that invention is

revealed. The displacement of the motive may be heard and understood asa departure from an underlying stereotype, a variation in this respect. Sig-nificantly, too, at the end of the thematic statement at m. 6 (see Exx. 6aand 6b), the conservative reading arrives “on target” with the radicalnotation, a point of intersection that is likely to enhance the sense not

only of a downbeat, but of an arrival as well. The pitch D returns at thispoint, with E likely to be interpreted as a metrically accented neighbornote. The syncopation of the repeat can heighten the listener’s sense of

anticipation as the thematic statement as a whole draws to a close.Indeed, why not interpret the displacements in Examples 5a–c as

variations (even as developing ones), metrical alignment itself as a feature ofthe motive along with other such features identified in Schoenberg’s

Fundamentals of Musical Composition?57 Conservative responses wouldseem to invite such a consideration, in any case, the idea of a motivic

profile followed by its variants (displacements, in this case). The psychol-ogy of the conservative response would seem to correspond to that of themotive and its apprehension: reading through the displacement of a

motive as it relates to an earlier alignment, listeners are likely to be struckabove all by the change or relationship itself, not necessarily by thealignments considered separately or in an idealized adjacency or juxtaposition.

Something of the transformation itself is sensed automatically(effortlessly), and this is what is likely to excite and to direct their

attention conservatively. In these respects, the experience is littledifferent from what we know of the phenomenology accompanying theperception of more traditional motivic relations.58

No doubt, there are qualifications here as well. In a lengthy study ofmetrical nonparallelism and the varied repetition of motives in traditional,tonal contexts, David Temperley has compared the difficulties of the

former with the fast, automatic way in which ordinary motivic relation-

ships are assimilated.59

When reinforced metrically by parallelism, motivicrelationships “tend to be detected automatically,” he concludes, while,

when not so enforced, they tend to be detected “only with difficulty” if at all.60 J. A. Fodor’s theories of perception are invoked as a means of explanation,the idea being that the detection of nonparallel relationships is “non-

modular” in character; that of parallel relationships, “modular.”61 Yet the analogy with ordinary motivic variation is difficult to dispel.

In the listener’s attempt to read through the displacement of a motive as it

relates to an earlier placement (doing so by sustaining the meter againstthe forces of parallelism), it would indeed seem as if he or she were

attempting to read through the displacement as a variation or modification.


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Attempts of this kind are difficult to explain in terms other than these.

The displacement is read through motivically, in other words, as if metrical

placement were indeed a feature of the motive. And to interpret a dis-placement conservatively in this way would indeed seem to be to interpret

it motivically.With Adorno’s negative account of disruption generally, however,

the concern is less with the variety of displacements in Stravinsky’s music

and the severity of the disruption than with the nature of the experienceitself. If meter is a “mode of attending,” as one theorist has claimed,62 away of focusing the listener’s attention, what are we to make of its disrup-

tion? If there is satisfaction in letting go, in giving up and breaking awayfor a time (allowing, radically, for the regularity of a higher level of pulsa-

tion to take effect), what of the initial confusion of displacement, thedisorientation into which, with varying degrees of intensity, the listenermay be plunged?

Theorists engaged with perceptual/cognitive issues have long

stressed the emotional arousal that expectation can bring when inhibitedor interrupted. And it has been some time now since Leonard Meyer firstbegan discussing the affective experiences that “the deviation of a particu-

lar event from the archetype of which it is an instance” can cause.63 Surelythe disruption of an established meter fits behavior of this kind.

At the same time, however, the larger psychological and aesthetic

question has to do not with arousal as such, not with the state of alertnessto which the listener may be propelled, but with the nature of the emo-

tions stirred in one way or another. Are Stravinsky’s displacements andthe disruption they can cause traumatic and psychologically damaging, asAdorno insists, or can they be “exciting” and a “delight,” as Meyer

contends in his description of implication and delay more generally?64 And if displacement can be a “delight,” why should this be? Why shouldlisteners of Stravinsky’s music be attracted to processes of displacement

that disrupt their metrical bearings?

Not just meter but meter internalized is the subject of the disruption.That to which meter attaches itself physically is affected and, in this way,

brought to the surface of consciousness. (As we have suggested, even ifthe source of the disturbance is not known at first, it is likely to be sensedand felt all the same.) And this may be what alertness is, of course: the

heightened sense of engagement brought about by disruption. By means ofdisruption, we are brought into closer contact with what we are internally,so to speak, with what we are, deep, down, and under.

Meyer’s theory of arousal in music was derived in large part from John Dewey’s “conflict theory” of human emotion.65 The idea here was

that emotion in music arose from the same general set of circumstances,


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namely, from the blocking of expectations, implications, or tendencies.

Accompanied by a belief in the eventual resolution of the conflict (or

clarification of the ambiguity), the inhibition, blockage, or arrest had theeffect of heightening a sense of anticipation and suspense.66 “Delay plea-

sures play,” Meyer reasoned.67 “Expectation and reverie” could indeed beimagined as being “better than actuality.”

In much music of the nineteenth century, delay can seem to have

taken on a life of its own. The ways in which completion or closure isaverted, suspense sustained, can seem to have grown ever more elaborate,and from both a harmonic and melodic standpoint. In poetic terms, the

outwardly fragmentary and incomplete nature of much music of thisperiod can be identified with a yearning that is endless, “longing eternally

renewed,” as Charles Rosen has expressed it in his discussion of the open-ing song of Schumann’s Dichterliebe.68 The emphasis on the purelynegative side of pleasure (“negative pleasure,” as some have termed it)69 can seem sadistic or sadomasochistic as well. Pleasure is derived from the

inhibition or blockage itself, the pain of want and desire, in other words,the withholding of a sense of arrival, completion, resumption, or release.Adorno himself acknowledged the “sadomasochistic” strains in Stravin-

sky’s music,70 in the composer’s “perverse joy in self-denial,” and in theshocks of his metrically displaced accents.71

Implications of this kind have doubtless been a part of music in the

Western art tradition since, at the very least, the dawn of tonality itself.And there has been no dearth of acknowledgment. Heinrich Schenker

likened the circuitous routes of his linear progressions to real-life experi-ences of “obstacles, reverses, detours, retardations, interpolations, andinterruptions”;72 famously, the half-cadence at the close of an antecedent

phrase was dubbed an “interruption” in the progress of such a progres-sion.73 In recent studies of the psychology of anxiety, emotions have beenidentified more generally as “interrupt phenomena” that arise from the

“interruption (blocking, inhibiting) of ongoing, organized thought or

behavior.”74

More specific versions of this equation involve not one butsimultaneously aroused and conflicting tendencies.

Here, of course, the fit could not be tighter. Settings of metricaldisplacement in Stravinsky’s music involve the opposition of irreconcil-able forces, those of meter and metrical displacement on the one hand,

metrical parallelism on the other. To inhibit, arrest, block, delay, orinterrupt one of these forces (an “ongoing thought or behavior”) is to stirthe emotions. To displace a repeated theme, motive, or chord metrically is

to thwart implications of parallelism and to disrupt the meter. It is toinvite the “convulsive blows and shocks” to which a sizable portion of

Adorno’s more specific criticism is directed.


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And so the question arises: if interruption and inhibition can be an

accepted and even expected part of the listening experience of the tonal

(or atonal) repertory to which Adorno adheres, why can it not be of theexperience of Stravinsky’s music? Even if we grant the distinction in

application—the emphasis on pitch structure in the tonal repertory, onrhythm and meter in Stravinsky’s—the processes substantiate the samegeneral psychology. Moreover, metrical disruption is not unique to

Stravinsky’s music. The disruption is less relentless in tonal works, as wellas less immediate. There are fewer displacements, which in turn tend tobe confined to less immediate levels of metrical pulsation, specifically to

the bar line and above. Crucially, too, conflicting alternatives to meterand its continuation tend to surface in the form of alternative meters,

ones that are often hemiola-related, while in Stravinsky’s music alterna-tive meters of this kind are seldom an option, the conflict materializing inthe form of an outright disruption or interruption of a prevailing scheme.A series of displaced repeats is invariably patterned and regular in earlier

contexts, while in Stravinsky’s music it is often highly irregular (as it is inthe passage from The Rite of Spring quoted in Ex. 1). And the repetitionis far less literal in earlier settings; motives are transposed and varied

melodically and harmonically as part of a more extensive process ofdeveloping variation.

In the opening theme of the “Minuet” in Mozart’s Eine kleine Nachtmusik, K. 525 (see Ex. 7a), a rising two-note motive, straddling the3/4 bar line at mm. 1–2 and 2–3, is displaced at m. 3.

Example 7a–b. Mozart, Eine kleine Nachtmusik, Minuetto.


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In the consequent phrase at mm. 5–7, the same motive, entering

once again on the third quarter-note beat of the 3/4 bar line, is subjected

to a cycle of displacement as part of a hemiola cadence (see the bracketsin Ex. 7a). (Hemiolas in traditional contexts are often punctuated in this

way by cycles of displacement.)75 In the “Preambule” from Schumann’s

Carnaval, another two-note motive, starting on the downbeat in the lefthand of the piano part, runs through two full cycles of displacement (see

the brackets in Ex. 8).76 And in Example 9, from the second movement of Brahms’s Piano

Quartet, op. 25, no. 2, a thematic phrase introduced and repeated on the

third dotted quarter-note beat of the 9/8 meter (the likely tactus; seeEx. 9a) is subsequently displaced to the second beat (Ex. 9b) and to the

first (Ex. 9c).In this third illustration, the displaced repeats do not make for an

immediately patterned sequence, as they do in Examples 7a and 8. Yetthey exemplify large-scale development all the same.77 The ambiguity of

the tonic harmony over the bar line at mm. 1–2 (see Ex. 9a; the pitchB on the downbeat is most likely nonharmonic) is clarified by the motive’ssubsequent displacement to the second beat of the 9/8 bar line (see Ex. 9b),

a variation accompanied in turn by a modulation. Accordingly, extensivemelodic and harmonic changes accompany the metrical dislocation, serv-ing in this way as a form of mediation. There are mitigating circumstances,in other words, with metrical alignment, but it is one of many featuresaffected in a more comprehensive process of development.

In all three of these examples, the repetition, apart from the dis-placement itself, is far from literal. The motive is transposed and subjectedto a variety of melodic and harmonic changes, all in keeping with an

overreaching pattern of development and growth. In Example 7a, thecycle of displacement in the consequent phrase of the theme is a furtherdevelopment of the earlier motivic occurrences at mm. 1–2 and 2–3.

More specifically, the earlier occurrences are compressed. As can be seen

by the Schenkerian graph in Example 7b, the cycle defines a descending-third

Example 8. Schumann, “Preambule,” Carnaval.


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progression from scale degree 3 to 1, a B–A–G passing motion that, inter-

rupted by the half-cadence of the antecedent phrase, is completed by theconsequent. The descriptive terms here are in themselves reflective of thelarger distinctions that can be brought to bear.

At the same time, however, and notwithstanding differences of this

kind, the many points of overlap cannot be ignored. Processes of implica-tion, inhibition, and delay are as much a part of Stravinsky’s displacementsas they are of the world of developing variation. As we have seen, significant

overlapping occurs even in matters of metrical displacement. The effect ofsyncopation that typically accompanies hemiola patterns such as those illus-trated in Examples 7a and 8 may accompany Stravinsky’s displacements as

well. Displacement, read conservatively, can be read motivically, in other

Example 9a–c. Brahms, Piano Quartet, op. 25/II.


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words, as a form of variation. A pattern of displacements, even when highly

irregular, as with the lengthy passage from The Rite of Spring in Example 1,

can map out a form of development of its own, one capable of creating asense of initial stability, departure, conflict, and resolution.78

So, too, just as with Adorno’s critical verdicts, the larger philosophi-cal and sociopolitical images can often be set aside and reversed. They,too, are among the attached yet detachable components of his analytical

description. The same features deplored and dismissed can be interpretedin a positive light. If the lack of expressive timing in the performance ofStravinsky’s music can spell coldness and indifference to the plight of the

individual (Adorno’s musical subject), then it can spell directness andunsentimentality, too, a determination to confront the world “as it is.”

And if the lack of variation can imply intractability as well, the refusal of acollective voice to give way to the variations of the individual (a state ofunfreedom, as Adorno understands it), then it can also reveal somethingof the hardness of the outside world, doing so without compromise or falsi-

fication. The possibility of such a “negative truth” was entertained brieflyby Adorno himself in a later confirmation of the Philosophy.79 He askedwhether, in the face of our “impotence” in confronting “the murderous

collective,” a state of affairs “in which everyone is reduced to the status ofpotential victim,” a direct statement “about the way things are” would notbe more persuasive than any “expression of musical subjectivity,” any

“vain lament”:80 “Critics might insist that . . . the spirit of the age is deeplyinscribed in Stravinsky’s art with its dominant gesture of ‘This is how it is.’

A higher criticism would have to consider whether this gesture does notgive shape to an implicit truth which the spirit of the age denies andwhich history has rendered dubious in itself.”81

The cool objectivity (Sachlichkeit) so often attributed to Stravinsky’sneoclassicism was, of course, seen early on as a reaction to the nineteenthcentury, to the optimism and sense of belief that by the time of the Great

War had grown suspect and even intolerable. Even later in the century,

Lawrence Morton, Stravinsky’s friend and benefactor in Los Angeles,wrote of the spirit of contrariness in the composer’s music, the deflation-

ary effect of its economy and concision.82 Instrumentation was a key issuehere. The heavy pedals and doublings of Wagner’s orchestras (andDebussy’s) had been avoided even in relatively early works such as the

finale of The Firebird and Petrushka, and replaced by the bouncy, soloistic,and transparent approach that would become Stravinsky’s trademark.

Could Stravinsky’s lifelong recoil from the personal in music, from

traditional notions of the self and self-expression (his “perverse joy in self-denial,” as Adorno phrased it),83 signal a recoil from vanity and its con-

ceits? Could the static quality of his music announce a more sober view of


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humankind and its prospects? And could the collective authority Adorno

professes to hear so resoundingly in Stravinsky’s music, the collective will

heard over against that of the individual, be that of an enduring truth or ademanding God rather than that of a fascist?

Again, ideas similar to these were entertained briefly by Adorno, butrejected all the same. No sense of an awareness of this predicament couldbe detected by Adorno on the part of the musical subject.84 And the static

implications of Stravinsky’s invention are for Adorno not just a style fea-ture, but the negation of the medium of music itself. Being a temporal art,music must commit itself to “succession,” he insists, to becoming some-

thing new, to “developing.”85

What we may conceive of as musical transcendence, namely, the fact thatat any given moment [music] has become something and something otherthan it was, that it points beyond itself—all that is no mere metaphysicalimperative dictated by some external authority. It lies in the nature of

music and will not be denied. . . . [Stravinsky] is beset by the crisis of thetimeless products of a time-based art which constantly pose the question ofhow to repeat something without developing it and yet avoid monotony. . .

The sections he strings together may not be identical and yet may never beanything qualitatively different. . . . [Stravinsky] permanently wrote music

about music, because he wrote music against music.86

As we continue to insist, however, the distinctive features of

Stravinsky’s style are not so easily or so straightforwardly defined. Thecontrasts afforded by the model of developing variation, however insight-ful, are more often a matter of emphasis than of outright polarity or

antithesis. They involve stress and frequency of occurrence. The literaland relentless nature of the repetition is not without parallel in nine-teenth- and twentieth-century music, and there are a great variety of dis-

placements in Stravinsky’s music, not all of which involve the disruptionof an established meter. As we have seen, some may actually contribute to

a sense of anticipation and engagement (see Exx. 5a–c).If Adorno’s approach to Stravinsky and his music can serve as a

reminder of the hazards general observation is likely to incur when notsufficiently buttressed by analysis that is sufficiently concrete, then it can

say something of the rewards of immediate impressions as well, of instinctspursued to the fullest. Displacement and its disruption are more variedand complicated than Adorno cared to admit. And the relationship

between the developmental style and that of displacement in Stravinsky’smusic is not as polarized as he imagined (or as he may have exaggerated,quite possibly for the sake of the argument). Rarely missing from his

account, however, is a sense of struggle with what Stravinsky’s music is on


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an immediate level of contact, a determination to come to terms with that

level. And it is this that is likely to excite and move the reader-listener to

further reflection.Today’s tendency has been to applaud Adorno’s philosophy and

sociology as sophisticated and radical, and to reject his analyticaldescriptions as half-hearted, crude, and dated.87 This is in part a reflec-tion of postmodern trends in musicology. As it concerns Stravinsky and

the Schoenberg-Stravinsky divide, however, the equation could bereversed. A motivic approach to music of the developmental style canhardly be judged inappropriate, and not all of Adorno’s analytical

attempts along these lines are as piecemeal as those in the Philosophy orthe later Stravinsky article.88 Surely the atonal and twelve-tone reperto-

ries of Schoenberg and his immediate predecessors can be viewed asintensely motivic in conception. And the juxtaposition of that style withprocesses of metrical displacement in Stravinsky’s music, qualified bythe reservations noted here, is surely an appropriate way of proceeding

analytic-theoretically.In contrast, what can seem old-fashioned and even absurdly naive in

Adorno’s writings about Stravinsky is a critical judgment that fixes musical

value with a single style (with all other styles weighed accordingly),verification with a single method of analysis (drawn from the single style),and musical expression with the terms and concepts laid down by that sin-

gle style. Add to this a view of metrical displacement and its implicationsthat are invariably one-sided (Adorno is steadfastly a radical interpreter of

Stravinsky’s music, never a conservative one), and an aesthetics and soci-ology that, even if ultimately detachable from his critical judgments,purport to be founded on those judgments all the same, and the making of

a large critical and aesthetic edifice in deep, wobbly trouble is surelyunmistakable.

Here again, however, the music to which Adorno refers may end up

rescuing both the criticism and the philosophy. As long as the music con-

tinues to wield the sort of magic it has in the past, the speculative sidesof his account are likely to be of interest and concern. This is not how

Adorno himself might have envisioned the future, but for anyone lessconvinced about the nature of music’s sociopolitical content, it may bewhat we end up with all the same. For it allows an appreciation of both

the music and Adorno’s analytical descriptions, setting aside all the whilethe necessity of having to subscribe to the larger sociopolitical convictionsor to a belief in their musical embodiment (precisely what, as has been

argued here, the coming years are likely to find increasingly problematic).Such an outcome can only work to the benefit of both music and its

critical reception.


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Notes

1. Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Conversations with Stravinsky (New York: Doubleday,

1959), 11.

2. Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and

Wesley V. Blomster (New York: Seabury, 1973), 154.

3. See Arnold Schoenberg, Fundamentals of Musical Composition, ed. Gerald Strang and

Leonard Stein (London: Faber and Faber, 1967), 8. In Schoenberg’s analyses, “motivic-

forms” were the varied forms of a basic motive resulting from development. “Through

substantial changes,” Schoenberg wrote, “a variety of motive-forms are produced.”

4. Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, 178.

5. Theodor W. Adorno, “Stravinsky: A Dialectical Portrait “(1962), in Quasi una

Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, trans. Rodney Livingstone (London: Verse, 1998), 152.6. The unsystematic nature of Adorno’s approach is discussed in Max Paddison,

Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 19–20. See

also Julian Johnson, “Analysis in Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music,” Music Analysis 14, nos.

2–3 (1995): 296–97.

7. See Johnson, “Analysis in Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music,” 298.

8. See Paddison, Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music, 19. “The academic treatise was rejected in

favor of the idea of a ‘constellation’ of fragments,” Paddison writes, each of these

fragments “equidistant from an unstated center, the object of the inquiry.” Adorno’s

resistance to the idea of a “whole” in musical works and in systems of explanation gener-

ally (the equation of such a “whole” with “truth”) is at work in these predispositions for

the fragment and the fragmentary, and this seems to have been the case even with the

very earliest of his publications in the 1920s.

9. Paddison, Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music, 169.

10. See note 2.

11. See note 5.

12. Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, 5.

13. Concerning the “inseparability” of the various components of Adorno’s argument,

see Johnson, “Analysis in Adorno’s Aesthetics of Music,” 296–97. The “interdiscipli-

nary character” of Adorno’s writings is addressed at length in Paddison, Adorno’s

Aesthetics of Music; see esp. 16–17. Common assumptions about the “self-sufficiency” of

analysis in relation to aesthetics and sociological interpretation generally are ques-

tioned by Adorno in T. W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. C. Lenhardt (London:

Routledge, 1989), 477–78. Left unclear in Adorno’s remarks in Aesthetic Theory,

however, is the precise nature of the “inseparability” that he alleges, the dependence of

“technical” or “immanent analysis” (Adorno’s term) on social awareness and thought.

Does analysis automatically presume sociopolitical awareness of this kind? Or does it

merely invite philosophical or sociopolitical speculation? Left alone, analysis is

“narrow-minded,” Adorno asserts, “positivistic” in its implications. Specific

questions of this kind are addressed more fully in Julian Johnson, “The Nature of

Abstraction: Analysis and the Webern Myth,” Music Analysis 17, no. 3 (1998):

267–71.


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14. See Schoenberg, Fundamentals, 8: “Homophonic music can be called the style of

developing variation. This means that in the succession of motive-forms there is some-

thing that can be compared to development, to growth.” Or see the description of

“developing variation” in Arnold Schoenberg, Style and Idea: Selected Writings of Arnold

Schoenberg , ed. Leonard Stein, trans. Leo Black (Berkeley: University of California Press,

1984): “Criteria for the Evaluation of Music,” 129–31. Ideas encompassed by Schoen-

berg’s use of the term “developing variation” underlie Carl Dahlhaus’s understanding not

only of Schoenberg, but of tradition and the classical or “homophonic” style generally; see

for example Dahlhaus, “What is ‘developing variation’?” in Dahlhaus, Schoenberg and the

New Music, trans. Derrick Puffett and Alfred Clayton (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1987), 128–34; and Dahlhaus, Between Romanticism and Modernism, trans. Mary

Whittall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 40–52. The concept is further

explored in Walter Frisch, Brahms and the Principle of Developing Variation (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1983). Its continuing relevance in Schoenberg’s twelve-

tone music is examined in Jack Boss, “Schoenberg’s Radio Talk on Opus 22, andDeveloping Variation,” Music Theory Spectrum; and Ethan Haimo, “Developing Variation

and Schoenberg’s Twelve-Tone Music,” Music Analysis 16, no.3 (1997).

15. See Leonard Meyer, Emotion and Meaning in Music (Chi

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