Introduction

The groundwork for an octatonic or octatonic-diatonic approach to pitch in Stravinsky’s music was laid even earlier in the past century by Arthur Berger. An account of the historical background of Stravinsky’s Russian period would have to await the publication in 1996 of the two hefty volumes of Richard Taruskin’s Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions. At hand are the mechanics of that most predictable of identifying features of Stravinsky’s music, metrical displacement. Such displacement, inherently a part of the polyrhythmic structures encountered already, assumes a much larger role when Stravinsky’s music is considered in its entirety. Crucially, expressive timing or rubato is associated with the human element. The deviation from the regular or the exact is the medium by which emotion is conveyed. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts discussed in the preceding chapters of this book.