Program Notes: Stravinsky The Firebird

MAURICE RAVEL 
Le Tombeau de Couperin  
BORN: March 7, 1875, in Ciboure, France 
DIED: December 28, 1937, in Paris, France 
WORK COMPOSED: 1917 
WORLD PREMIERE: April 11, 1919, in Paris (the piano version); February 28, 1920, in Paris (orchestral version) 

Visual artists throughout history have memorialized the casualties of war, courageous soldiers who died in service to their countries. But composers also have dedicated themselves to the horrors of combat, such as the Seventh Symphony of Shostakovich, Britten’s War Requiem and Penderecki’s Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima. 

One less obvious score is Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin, the title suggesting an ode to the celebrated Baroque composer Francois Couperin rather than armed conflict. Originally written as a pastoral set of piano pieces in 17th-century clothing, Ravel later orchestrated four of the six movements, with an emphasis on the woodwinds. He drew new life from such older forms as the prélude, forlane, menuet and rigaudon — the last three being French Baroque dances. 

Describing it to a friend as a “French Suite,” Ravel added, “It isn’t what you think. La Marseillaise will not be in it, but it will have a forlane; no tango, however.” 

Ravel completed the piano version in 1917 and two years later his publisher asked for an orchestration, but excluding the fugue and the toccata. After its first performance in Paris in 1920 by the Pasdeloup Orchestra, the critic Roland Manuel wrote, “This metamorphosis of piano pieces into symphonic works was a game for Ravel, a game played to perfection, so that the transcription outdid the original; it is a work of extreme economy.” 

Each section represents someone the composer knew who died on the battlefield. Ravel was an ambulance driver during World War I and saw plenty of bloodshed, but the music is abstract rather than explicit. The story of the last movement, however, is heart-rending: Ravel dedicated the music to the brothers Pierre and Pascal Gaudin, who were killed by the same exploding shell on their first day of conflict in 1914. 

An undercurrent of melancholy flows through this music, although it is by no means depressing. Rather, it seeks out the beauty in life that can be destroyed by human struggle, the things worth preserving. In response to criticism that his music wasn’t amply somber, Ravel said that “the dead are sad enough, in their eternal silence.’’ 

FRANCIS POULENC 
Stabat Mater 
BORN: Jan. 7, 1899, in Paris, France 
DIED: Jan. 30, 1963, Paris, France 
WORK COMPOSED: 1950 
WORLD PREMIERE: June 13, 1951, in Strasbourg, France, at the Strasbourg Festival 

Poulenc was a member of an ad-hoc group of musicians known as Les Six, composers who sought to free French music from foreign nationalism, and even the country’s own Impressionism movement. Influenced by the writer Jean Cocteau, their aim was to be anti- Romantic, to break away from Wagner, to take potshots at the musical establishment, to write with clarity and restraint — and most of all, to have fun. 

Poulenc was not only fun but serious and highly eclectic, hence a friend’s description of him as both a monk and a rascal. He composed in all the major musical genres, including film — the director Alfred Hitchcock used his Perpetual Motion No. 1 in the 1948 murder-mystery classic, Rope. His opera Dialogues of the Carmelites is a 20th-century masterpiece, praised for its profound exploration of courage and sacrifice.  

Poulenc loved the sound of wind instruments, in part because of how they mimicked the human voice, and many of his works are in fact vocal: the quietly spiritual Mass, the popular Gloria, and the work you will hear on this program, the Stabat Mater. 

The title comes from Stabat Mater dolorosa, a 13th-century hymn to the Virgin Mary at the cross of Jesus that means “the sorrowful mother was standing.” Poulenc originally intended to compose a requiem following the death of the painter Christian Bérard, but after visiting the shrine of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour in southwest France and returning to his Catholic roots, he chose the Stabat Mater text. The result is deeply personal music for soprano, mixed chorus and orchestra that Poulenc described as an expression of loss wrapped in childlike faith.  

The work is rich in contrast. Its movements are both complementary and disparate in their shades and dynamics, some diabolic and others serene and spiritual. The opening section draws us in through its solemnity, while the following section — marked “very violent” — suggests unbearable suffering. The fourth movement is joyous and could not be more different than the intense Vidit suum that portrays Mary watching her son die on the cross. Together, they form a coherent whole unlike anything Poulenc had composed. 

“Poulenc observed that when French composers write profound music, ‘it is leavened with a lightness of spirit without which life would be intolerable,’” said guest conductor Andrew Litton. “For me, his Stabat Mater, for all its penitence and mournfulness, is a work full of ravishing beauty and also joy.” 

The Seattle Symphony will perform Poulenc’s Stabat Mater for the first time, capturing the drama and variety inherent in the original score, from the sorrow of Mary to the peaceful, heartfelt conclusion for soprano and choir. 

IGOR STRAVINSKY 
The Firebird Suite (1945 revision) 
BORN: June 17, 1882, St. Petersburg, Russia 
DIED: April 6, 1971, New York 
WORK COMPOSED: 1910 
WORLD PREMIERE: The Firebird ballet premiered on June 25, 1910, at the Opéra de Paris. 

Like his contemporary Pablo Picasso, Stravinsky sought forms of expression that forced people to question the role and meaning of art. In doing so, his music constantly evolved, moving from its early Russian influence to the neo-classical to 12-tone serialism. Although he never stopped looking for new outlets, he slowly lost alliance with audiences. The later, “difficult’’ Stravinsky was admired but seldom loved, and despite his lifelong reputation as a maverick, it was the earlier work that endeared him to listeners. 

Of his three great ballet scores for Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes — The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring — the first is the most luminous and tonally brilliant, and suggests the influence of the great Russian orchestrator and teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. From start to finish, the music grips us with exoticism and intoxicating rhythms that Stravinsky would continue to refine. 

“Igor may be my pupil, but he will never be my or anyone else’s follower,” Rimsky-Korsakov said, “because his gift for music is uniquely great and original.” 

The score turned the 27-year-old Stravinsky into a celebrity — much later, in 1960, he was even given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — and established his status as a brilliant orchestrator of Russian folklore as well as a leading modernist composer. Diaghilev knew he had his man for future collaborations.  

“The Firebird was a magical concoction,” notes Alex Ross in his book, The Rest is Noise: Listening to the 20th Century. “Russian musical sorcery, overlaid with French effects, lit up by the X-factor of Stravinsky’s talent.” 

It was not so magical at the first Parisian rehearsals in 1910. Stravinsky had to explain the score to musicians confused by the strange sonorities that also caused ballet dancers to miss their entrances. But this was nothing compared to the premiere of Rite three years later, when a riot nearly broke out at the concert hall. Stravinsky was anything but predictable.  

The fairy tale plot describes a mystical bird that offers a magic feather to its captor, Prince Ivan, who, in a moment of compassion, has set the bird free. Ivan falls in love with one of 13 princesses under the spell of the evil Kastchei the Immortal, who battles Ivan and awakens the fowl’s magic. 

Today, Firebird is most often heard as a condensed suite, with about half of the original 23 sections performed in concert. Stravinsky arranged three versions, in 1911, 1919 and 1945, the latter containing more dramatic music from the ballet while serving to secure copyrights in the United States. Although the 1919 suite is the shortest — just five sections — Stravinsky personally liked the 1945 version above the others, and as a conductor made two recordings. You will hear that suite tonight. 

Highlights include the shimmering glissandos of the Introduction, the brutal and frenetic Infernal Dance of King Kastchei, and the haunting and serene Berceuse. But nothing in music compares to the Finale, one of music’s most dazzling crescendos, a tour-de-force designed to shake the rafters of any concert hall. In the late 1970s, the progressive rock group Yes used it to open its arena concerts, introducing a new generation of listeners to Stravinsky and the power of classical music.  

All notes by Kurt Loft © 2026.

Kurt Loft is a journalist and music critic who has written for various publications and arts groups for 45 years. A member of the Music Critics Association of North America, he lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.