L’Histoire Du Soldat – Igor Stravinsky Music Analysis

L’histoire du Soldat – Igor Stravinsky Music Analysis Stravinsky’s piece L’histoire du Soldat (The Soldiers Tale) has a melody which moves from the mid to high ranges throughout its entirety. Short notes are dispersed in flurries and repeated creating a fragmented feel. The phrases remain general short but there are some long phrases that also appear. The entire piece has a descending shape adding to a feel of evil. The Harmony has a march like feel presenting the story of the soldier and his fiddle. The bass line, which creates the march, uses ostinato to create constant momentum. The piece is built on a dissonant harmony with complex chord progression. It has a nondiatonic tonality and is not centered on a scalic movement adding a sense of suspense to the piece. The texture of the piece ranges from sparse to dense. It begins almost empty but builds to create a thicker sound. The percussion moves along the bottom, the other instruments all play separately moving together to play a large section before moving back to their separate sections. The instruments for the most part don’t overlap but rather overtake each other playing similar melodic parts. These varying textures add to the eerie mood placed throughout the piece. There is a strong steady pulse in the rhythm played by the percussion. The rhythmic patterns echo each other within a 2/4 time signature. The tempo is moderate and some of the notes are strongly accented again adding to the creepy feel of the piece. Some of the rhythms are shifting and irregular at some point. The piece contains strings – Violin, Percussion- Timpani, Tambourine, and drums. As well as Trumpet, Trombone Bassoon Clarinet and the Double Bass. The tone colour of the piece is brittle with and intense punchy feel. It changes from soft empty noises to an intense loud calamity. There is a shrill sounding clarinet with sustaining drums. The opening phrase sounds like a fanfare almost militaristic. During the piece the phrases develop over time. There is lots of repetition with solo sections constantly repeated by various instruments. There are both large and small sections echoed or ornamented by different instruments. The piece begins and ends quite similarly the mid-section has a high clarinet and there are times when many sections play together creating an intense sound. The dynamics of the piece range from loud to soft, it begins moderate, builds and then drops back before building again. In the sections where several instruments are playing the dynamics are significantly louder than the sections where there are less instruments. Fading sometimes occurs during the piece and there is

also thunderous percussion throughout. All these aspects add to the constant eerie effects in the piece.