Those Great Inspirers: The Tactile Compositional World of Igor Stravinsky

All of Stravinsky’s music is piano music. Despite Stravinsky’s stunning innovations in instrumentation, orchestration, and timbre, the composer conceived his music on the keyboard and through the piano. Stravinsky did not simply compose at the piano; he left indelible imprints of the piano keyboard on all he composed. These imprints are of Stravinsky’s unique physicality, his unusually large hands that “shaped” his sense of harmony at the keyboard. It is no exaggeration to say that Stravinsky left his fingerprints on every bar; as Charles Joseph writes, “Literally, Stravinsky’s ‘hand’ is present as a distinguishing stylistic trait” throughout all his music.” This is one way to explain how Stravinsky’s music, despite its breathtaking range, always sounds so clearly like Stravinsky: the piano is behind it all, and behind the piano, the composer’s unique body. This corporeal duo forms the thread that runs through the composer’s entire output. My dissertation will investigate this thread, examining its origins in Stravinsky’s childhood and subsequent manifestations in Stravinsky’s tactilely-guided innovations in harmony, timbre and musical texture. While Stravinsky presented himself as enigmatic, when it came to the piano he was clear: “I compose at the piano, and I do not regret it.” He described his compositional process as inextricable from his physical relationship with the piano keyboard: “Fingers are not to be despised: they are the great inspirers, and, in contact with a musical instrument, often give birth to subconscious ideas which might otherwise never come to life.” Existing scholarship on Stravinsky has, if not despised, at least neglected to consider the fingers that created it. My dissertation aims to rectify this historical oversight; I will re-examine some of Stravinsky’s music from the viewpoint of the composer’s physicality at the piano keyboard as its primary generative force. I hope to show that much of what makes Stravinsky’s music unique and memorable is its origin as physical impulses in the composer’s body, and to continue to chart a fresh path of exploration into the composer’s work