PULCINELLA: Stravinsky, chagrin d'amour, and CLOWNS!🤡

 

Pulcinella is a ballet by Igor Stravinsky based on an 18th-century play—Pulcinella is a character originating from Commedia dell'arte. The ballet premiered at the Paris Opera on 15 May 1920 under the baton of Ernest Ansermet. The dancer Léonide Massine created both the libretto and choreography, and Pablo Picasso designed the original costumes and sets. It was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev.

OK, enough Wikipedia (and I only use it because I'm too lazy to put it in my own words). This video is hardly the ideal Pulcinella, but the ideal Pulcinella may exist only in my own mind. It was one of the recordings I grew up with, and we played the spots off it, mainly because my father was on a Stravinsky kick and wanted to hear everything he ever wrote. I remember the music vividly, but not the conductor, the orchestra or the record label (else I might be able to track down a reissue).

As a kid, I suppose I knew a little bit about the ballet, something about clowns jumping around in those white outfits they wear in Europe, but of course I had never seen it. I still haven't seen it. I've never even heard a live performance of the whole work, only the ubiquitous suite. But always I had an echo in my brain of that first recording. I own five Pulcinellas now, and I don't listen to any of them because that first one spoiled me for anything else.

Why? The voices. The three singers, tenor, baritone and mezzo-soprano, are the spirit of the piece, and all too often they sound wooden, as if they just don't get it and are only singing the notes. The piece has to be conducted with a certain irony and even satire, a sour edge contrasting with lamb-gambolling sweetness. The music is often at odds with the odd-sounding words, which in fact have nothing to do with Pulcinella and the commedia dell'arte. The words are more like medieval sonnets about thwarted love. And yet they are splashed against this odd rococo backdrop, this motley set painted by Picasso.

There were a few Pulcinellas on YouTube, and a while ago I tried to find a good one. There is a rare performance of the ballet, but it's chopped up into 10-minute pieces. A more complete one exists, but someone has recorded it with atrocious sound distortion, as if they didn't even notice the music. What is the matter with people today??? I doubt if I will ever find the perfect combination, and besides, all those clowns jumping around is distracting when I would rather concentrate on the melancholy sweetness of the music.

Anyway, it took a hell of a long time to find a translation of the Italian words, and it wasn't on the internet either, but on a set of CD liner notes, with type so small you had to take a magnifiying glass to it. It had the Italian on one side and the English on the other, like a menu.(I once bought Coles notes for a Chaucer class, and it was the same deal) I had to transcribe the words line by line, and it took a while. I thought I posted something about it already, after all that work, but I can't find it. If this is repetitious, please forgive me.

Since I decided against the ballet version, which in fact was pretty silly, I had to make a few (gulp) gifs to fill the gap. I was trying to get something across which, as usual, I didn't quite. When you look up pulcinella, you get punchinello, a nasty little creature in a Milky the Clown-style puffy white suit, a conical hat and a nasty bird-beak. He's menacing, is what he is. He'd scare little children. But wasn't the commedia the thing that brought us Punch and Judy? Maybe they called it something else back then.

Pulcinella  

by Igor Stravinsky

(Tenor)

While on the grass

the lamb grazes

alone, alone

the shepherdess

amid the green leaves

through the forest

goes singing.

(Soprano)

Content perhaps to live

In my torment I might be

If I ever could believe

That, still far away, you were

Faithful to my love,

Faithful to this heart.

(Bass)

With these little words

So sweet

You rend my heart

To the depths.

Fair one, stay here,

Since if you say more

I must die.

With such sweet

Little words

You rend my heart

I shall die, I shall die.

(Soprano, tenor, bass)

I hear say there is no peace

I hear say there is no heart,

For you, ah, no, never,

There is no peace for you.

(Tenor)

Whoever says that a woman

Is more cunning than the Devil

Tells the truth.

(Soprano, tenor)

There are some women

Who care for none

And keep a hundred on a leash,

A shabby trick,

And have so many wiles

That none can count them.

One pretends to be innocent

And is cunning,

Another seems all modesty

Yet seeks a husband.

One clings to a man

And has so many wiles

That none can count them,

None can number them.

(Tenor)

One pretends to be innocent

And is, and is cunning

Another seems all modesty

Yet seeks a husband,

There are some

Who care, listen, for none.

Who cling to a man

And who flirt with another

And have a hundred on a leash

A shabby trick,

And have so many wiles

That none can count them.

(Soprano)

If you love me, if you sigh

For me alone, gentle shepherd,

I have pain in your suffering,

I have pleasure in your love,

But if you think that you alone

I should love in return,

Shepherd, you are easily

To be deceived.

A fair red rose

Today Silvia picks,

But pleading its thorn

Tomorrow she spurns it.

But the plans of men

I will not follow.

Because the lily pleases me,

I will not spurn other flowers.

(Soprano, tenor, bass)

Sweet eyes, bright with love,

For you my heart languishes.

BLOGGER"S NOTE! This is a summer repeat from something I posted in 2014. I received so many cool comments from people over the years, including one that I got just today! So I'm re-posting them here.

11 comments:

Unknown August 6, 2021 at 1:40 PM

Thankyou so much for your wonderful online posting that I found when searching for lyrics to Stravinsky's Pulcinella. Wherever you are at present...I hope you might access the BBC audio broadcast from London's Royal Albert Hall tonight (6th August 2021) ...part of the Promenade Concert Series. I've been listening at home in Somerset, England on a digital radio...but searching on my laptop for something audiovisual. Your series of dancing clown 'clips' completed my understanding of the spirit of this piece. 

Replies

Margaret Gunning August 6, 2021 at 3:44 PM

Thank you so much! I'd forgotten I posted this SEVEN years ago - my formatting wasn't so hot then (I'll try to fix it!). I no longer run ads for my novels either! I may be able to pick up the concert on YouTube, maybe after the fact. I've seen some of the Proms videos before, my favorite being the Saint-Saens Organ Symphony. Glad you enjoyed this blast from the past!

Reply

WanderMonkey January 31, 2022 at 6:26 PM

Many thanks for posting the lyrics. When I was younger, I preferred the suite version, with no singing. But now well into middle age, and become more fascinated with the Commedia Dell'arte, I have a much bigger appreciation for the full ballet and its plot. But I still don't know Italian, so this is very useful!
Replies

Margaret GunningJanuary 31, 2022 at 8:00 PM

Pulcinella was part of the background music of my youth. Though I was raised with (so-called) "classical" music, my Dad's taste in recordings was eclectic, and included the "modern stuff" (Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Barber, Shostakovich, and even Gershwin) which many of his confreres disdained. When we first listened to this work, we all laughed at the second-to-last movement with its goofy trombone-slides and double-bass stretches played in the highest register, an earthy and clownish effect. Stravinsky runs the gamut, as far as I am concerned, and can be tender, satiric, eccentric, mercurial, savage, and very funny. His Ragtime piece makes me laugh out loud, for some reason, maybe because it sounds so dire! Thank you for taking me back to this nearly-forgotten post.

Reply


AnonymousOctober 3, 2022 at 5:12 AM

Thank you for the info! 

Replies

Margaret GunningOctober 3, 2022 at 10:19 AM

You're welcome! I may re-publish this one some time, as I sometimes do, given the fact I've kept this blog going for TWELVE years now - and if I don't remember the piece, no one else will either. It pays to recycle!

Reply

Joe Cooke December 6, 2023 at 3:06 PM

I learned about Igor Stravinsky by reading a book by Aaron Copland. The first piece I heard was the Rite of Spring, but I found that I preferred Petrushka and Firebird. I realized then that Stravinsky was constantly re-inventing himself and always trying new things. I got interested in his neoclassical period through Capriccio. Later I heard the Serenade, which I eventually got in score, for study. Pulcinella was something I added to my Spotify playlist. I'd heard it before, but moved past it for the Symphony of Psalms. I just watched Pulcinella on YouTube. The one I watched was: Basler Ballett, Academa of St. Martin in the Fields, cond. Sir Neville Marriner, choreography Heinz Spoerli Vers. 1980. It was magnificent! It makes much more sense to me as a ballet, because that's what the music was written for. Stravinsky's preference for orchestral versions seems to derive from the disastrous debut of the Rite, but he wrote beautifully, and from the heart, for the ballet, and knowing that, I find I appreciate his work so much more.

Replies

Margaret Gunning December 7, 2023 at 11:59 AM

Thank you for your comments! It delights me to see that people are finding this post after nearly ten years. I'll be looking up that video for sure.


Christina HilaSeptember 8, 2024 at 7:28 PM

In July 2024 I saw an orchestral and voice performance of Pulcinella at Lincoln Center, NY. I love Stravinsky and his ballets and was privileged to see him conduct in person in Italy in 1962. I had never heard more than the first piece of Pulcinella. I was, however, disturbed by the English translation . I felt that it did not express the sarcasm and tongue and cheek which is so essential to the Commedia dell’arte. Perhaps the ballet would express it better. It was fun however that the Philharmonic did the piece.

Margaret Gunning September 9, 2024 at 11:07 AM

Wow, you're really fortunate you got to see him! We had an album of just the suite in the 1960s and played the grooves off it. I never had any idea what the words meant, but I noticed some oddities. There did seem to be some clever verbal twists in it, such as:
Mentre l’erbetta
pasce l’agnella,
pasce l’agnella
To me, "pasce agnella" sounded a lot like "Pulcinella", so I wondered if it was a clever Stravinskyan pun.
Then there was this:
tra fresche frasche
per la foresta
cantando va.
tra fresche frasche
cantando va
per la foresta
cantando va
cantando va
cantando va
Oh, surely this repeating and repeating of "la fresche frasche" was meant to be satiric, as it sounded like "music/shmusic" or some such clever pun. "Cantando va" sounds a bit silly when sung over and over again.
I am sure any translation would be inadequate, as musical jokes don't translate that well, but I surely see some sly in-jokes here and there. I still love that clownish, almost cartoonish passage towards the end with the sliding trombones, before that incredible final chorus with all the singers, which actually makes me cry.
I'm far from a musicologist, but as a child I was saturated in "classical" music. I did get to hear and see Leonard Bernstein in 1967 (first performance at Centennial Hall - I remember every part of it!), and at some point I saw and heard George Szell, but he didn't interest me too much and I called him George Sizzle. But then, I was something like ten years old!

Margaret Gunning September 9, 2024 at 3:01 PM

I just thought of another one that always struck me as funny:
Bella, restate qua,
restate qua,
ché se pit dite appresso,
se dite, dite appresso,
io cesso moriro,
cesso moriro, moriro, etc.
These lines are full of the playful repetition that makes the words sound kind of silly. I particularly like the "etc." here, and the "moriro, moriro, moriro, moriro" ("I will die, I will die, I will die, I will die") is sung in a jaunty, cheerful way!

Stravinsky: Pulcinella (complete)

Pulcinella is a ballet by Igor Stravinsky based on an 18th-century play—Pulcinella is a character originating from Commedia dell'arte. The ballet premiered at the Paris Opera on 15 May 1920 under the baton of Ernest Ansermet. The dancer Léonide Massine created both the libretto and choreography, and Pablo Picasso designed the original costumes and sets. It was commissioned by Sergei Diaghilev.

OK, enough Wikipedia (and I only use it because I'm too lazy to put it in my own words). This video is hardly the ideal Pulcinella, but the ideal Pulcinella may exist only in my own mind. It was one of the recordings I grew up with, and we played the spots off it, mainly because my father was on a Stravinsky kick and wanted to hear everything he ever wrote. I remember the music vividly, but not the conductor, the orchestra or the record label (else I might be able to track down a reissue).

As a kid, I suppose I knew a little bit about the ballet, something about clowns jumping around in those white outfits they wear in Europe, but of course I had never seen it. I still haven't seen it. I've never even heard a live performance of the whole work, only the ubiquitous suite. But always I had an echo in my brain of that first recording. I own five Pulcinellas now, and I don't listen to any of them because that first one spoiled me for anything else.

Why? The voices. The three singers, tenor, baritone and mezzo-soprano, are the spirit of the piece, and all too often they sound wooden, as if they just don't get it and are only singing the notes. The piece has to be conducted with a certain irony and even satire, a sour edge contrasting with lamb-gambolling sweetness. The music is often at odds with the odd-sounding words, which in fact have nothing to do with Pulcinella and the commedia dell'arte. The words are more like medieval sonnets about thwarted love. And yet they are splashed against this odd rococo backdrop, this motley set painted by Picasso.

There were a few Pulcinellas on YouTube, and a while ago I tried to find a good one. There is a rare performance of the ballet, but it's chopped up into 10-minute pieces. A more complete one exists, but someone has recorded it with atrocious sound distortion, as if they didn't even notice the music. What is the matter with people today??? I doubt if I will ever find the perfect combination, and besides, all those clowns jumping around is distracting when I would rather concentrate on the melancholy sweetness of the music.

Anyway, it took a hell of a long time to find a translation of the Italian words, and it wasn't on the internet either, but on a set of CD liner notes, with type so small you had to take a magnifiying glass to it. It had the Italian on one side and the English on the other, like a menu.(I once bought Coles notes for a Chaucer class, and it was the same deal) I had to transcribe the words line by line, and it took a while. I thought I posted something about it already, after all that work, but I can't find it. If this is repetitious, please forgive me.

Since I decided against the ballet version, which in fact was pretty silly, I had to make a few (gulp) gifs to fill the gap. I was trying to get something across which, as usual, I didn't quite. When you look up pulcinella, you get punchinello, a nasty little creature in a Milky the Clown-style puffy white suit, a conical hat and a nasty bird-beak. He's menacing, is what he is. He'd scare little children. But wasn't the commedia the thing that brought us Punch and Judy? Maybe they called it something else back then.

Pulcinella  

by Igor Stravinsky

(Tenor)

While on the grass

the lamb grazes

alone, alone

the shepherdess

amid the green leaves

through the forest

goes singing.

(Soprano)

Content perhaps to live

In my torment I might be

If I ever could believe

That, still far away, you were

Faithful to my love,

Faithful to this heart.

(Bass)

With these little words

So sweet

You rend my heart

To the depths.

Fair one, stay here,

Since if you say more

I must die.

With such sweet

Little words

You rend my heart

I shall die, I shall die.

(Soprano, tenor, bass)

I hear say there is no peace

I hear say there is no heart,

For you, ah, no, never,

There is no peace for you.

(Tenor)

Whoever says that a woman

Is more cunning than the Devil

Tells the truth.

(Soprano, tenor)

There are some women

Who care for none

And keep a hundred on a leash,

A shabby trick,

And have so many wiles

That none can count them.

One pretends to be innocent

And is cunning,

Another seems all modesty

Yet seeks a husband.

One clings to a man

And has so many wiles

That none can count them,

None can number them.

(Tenor)

One pretends to be innocent

And is, and is cunning

Another seems all modesty

Yet seeks a husband,

There are some

Who care, listen, for none.

Who cling to a man

And who flirt with another

And have a hundred on a leash

A shabby trick,

And have so many wiles

That none can count them.

(Soprano)

If you love me, if you sigh

For me alone, gentle shepherd,

I have pain in your suffering,

I have pleasure in your love,

But if you think that you alone

I should love in return,

Shepherd, you are easily

To be deceived.

A fair red rose

Today Silvia picks,

But pleading its thorn

Tomorrow she spurns it.

But the plans of men

I will not follow.

Because the lily pleases me,

I will not spurn other flowers.

(Soprano, tenor, bass)

Sweet eyes, bright with love,

For you my heart languishes.

OMG: MORE new photos of Milky the Clown!

OK, so it isn't THAT great. Somebody put together a collage or montage of the few existing photos of Milky (unless someone, some day, discovers a cache of hundreds or even thousands of images of the Twin Pines clown, stashed away like reels of ancient movies from 1914). I did isolate two that I haven't seen:

I apologize for the bleariness of these, but this was another time. Meantime I did a little digging about the origins of Milky's "Pierrot" costume, which actually fits the category of a Pulcinella (in English, Punchinello, or Punch for short, a la Punch and Judy). Hard to believe that the original medieval clowns wore white. No rainbow wigs or slap shoes here.

Pulcinellas (or Pulcinellae, as I prefer to call them) were nasty little creatures in costumes made out of bedsheets, and this one seems to be holding a butter-churn (though most of them were troubadours and played lutes or flutes or whatever came to hand). They typically wore black masks with long curved beaks on them, raven-like. Like most clowns, like ALL clowns, there was a creepy element to them, and part of their mandate was to sneak up on people and scare the shit out of them.

When the Milkster dominated the airwaves in Detroit, the Pulcinella-style clown was rare, if not unheard-of. They're still pretty rare outside of Europe. But I think I figured it out: the Punch costume is white, like - well, like milk, of course! The only way a clown could wear a costume that matched the product he was flogging was to style himself like his nasty medieval forbears.  His dry cleaning bill must have been astronomical.