ABSTRACT
Some people search for the unusual chord, the striking harmony, the new system. There are some composers who have created their own syntax; others have arranged known materials in a new order, that's all. They include Wagner, Debussy, Ravel, Igor Stravinsky and Schonberg in the first category; Haydn, Schubert, Liszt and Mozart, particularly Mozart in the second. Singularity of language is a modern achievement. It is the most spontaneous tribute to banality and it's because of its performance this month. People hope in any case that in this offering to a neglected goddess they have not fallen short of the idea. Espana is not banal in a pejorative sense since Chabrier was quite straightforward about it. In music, Stravinsky, as always the greatest, has left to others the cult of the bizarre that appeared unexpectedly in a part of his work, and has attained an entirely white, entirely pure perfection, that of Racine, in his most recent work, Persephone.
