You might be wondering why this particular composition should be featured in a Zeuhl bulletin... It is well known that Carl Orff's early works: including 'Carmina Burana' and 'Triomphe d'Aphrodite' were a strong influence on the music of Christian Vander. It is also fairly common knowledge that he admires and borrows from Igor Stravinsky at times too. The actual composition that is most rhythmically reminiscent of 'Mekanïk Destruktïw Kommandöh' however is 'Les Noces', a four part work lasting about 22 minutes in total. Check the classical CD racks for [D][D][D] compilations of Stravinsky's work and look for 'The Wedding' or 'Les Noces'. You should try to get a copy where the lyrics are sung in Russian, because in places it sounds very similar to Magma singing in Kobaïan. There is also a double CD of Orff's 'Catulli Carmina' and Stravinsky's 'Les Noces' but that is not easy to locate. - Ed.
Stravinsky's "Neo-Classical" period began in 1919 with 'Pulcinella', but came to fruition only four or five years later. In the meantime Stravinsky published two works which belong to the "Russian " period and mark the end of his compositions in this manner - the comic opera 'Mavra', written in 1921, and the choreographic scenes entitled 'Les Noces' (The Wedding, Svadebka), completed in their orchestral form in 1923. (The first performance took place in Paris, June 13, 1923).
Stravinsky first conceived the idea in 1914, shortly after finishing the composition of 'The Rite of Spring'. Indeed, if we consider the two works together, 'Les Noces' may be regarded as the second panel of a diptych taking its inspiration from the pagan rites practised in ancient Russia. 'The Rite of Spring' celebrated the rebirth of nature. The music seemed to express the release of sinister earth forces, reducing mere man to a state of panic-stricken terror. 'Les Noces' describes the matrimonial rites of the Russian peasants. Here mere man will not be silenced; he sings and sings, hardly giving the instruments a single phrase of their own, except for the pealing of bells in the final bars of the work.
Stravinsky was never quite certain how to describe the work, but he insisted it was not a ballet. Early performances around 1919 were officially subtitled "a divertissement... in two parts with soloists and chorus and an ensemble of several instruments." He also described the orchestral 'Les Noces' as "Russian dance scenes with song and music".
Here is what he had to say of the underlying conception of the work: "According to my idea, the spectacle should have been a divertissement, and that is what I wanted to call it. It was not my intention to reproduce the ritual of peasant weddings, and I paid little heed to ethnographical considerations. My idea was to compose a sort of scenic ceremony, using, as I liked those ritualistic elements so abundantly provided by village customs, which had been established for centuries in the celebration of Russian marriages. I took my inspirations from those customs, but reserved to myself the right to use them with absolute freedom".
There are four scenes following each other without a break. The words of the songs sung in this series of "stage cantata" are taken from the folk-tales brought back by Stravinsky from his travels in Russia a short time earlier. In preparing the libretto for 'Les Noces' Stravinsky made use chiefly of material from a book by Kirievsky. It is interesting to note what Stravinsky has to say about it: Incidentally, Kirievsky had asked Pushkin to send him his collection of folk verse and Pushkin sent him some verses with a note reading: "Some of these are my own verses; can you tell the difference?" Kirievsky could not, and took them all for his book, so perhaps a line of Pushkin is in 'Les Noces'. The melodic themes, on the other hand, are all Stravinsky's own, with one single exception, namely the setting of the words "jusqu la ceinture j'ai de l'or qui pend", which is a popular melody commonly heard in the factories in Russia.
Although the music of 'Les Noces' was composed between 1914 and 1917, six years elapsed before Stravinsky finally orchestrated it. For several years after the composition of 'The Rite of Spring' he had shied away from the conventional orchestra. His original idea in 'Les Noces' had been to bracket together with the solo voices and the chorus two diametrically opposed bodies of instruments, one consisting of brass and the other of strings, some playing pizzicato only. He abandoned the device after writing a few pages of the score and started off on a new draft. In the second version the brass was replaced by a harmonium and the strings by a pianola and two gipsy cymbaloms. Both the pianola and the harmonium were to be electrically operated. This plan turned out to be impracticable owing to the difficulty of synchronizing the mechanical instruments and those of the orchestra.
Work on 'Les Noces' was constantly interrupted, but Stravinsky settled down to it again in 1921. Two more years passed, however, before the score was ready in its final form. The orchestration of the final version was four pianos and a large group of percussion instruments: four timpani, xylophone, bells, two tenor drums, two side drums, tambourine, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, and two castanets. For practical purposes the instrumental ensemble consists of percussion - even the pianos are used throughout with a hammering action. The sound effects produced by this unusual group of instruments are of incomparable splendour and brilliance.
There is some justification in the comparison of the sonority of the instrumental ensemble of 'Les Noces' with Javanese and Balinese music, which is also based on the percussive and resonant qualities of melodic instruments (xylophones) and others which produce "pedal" effects (bells, gongs, anvils, etc.).
No less incomparable is the vitality of this music. But the irresistible, scintillating, and at times orgiastic exuberance, far from hiding the underlying tragic note, throws it into relief. It is as though the participants in these rites were singing, in fact shouting, so loudly in order to cover up the sense of misery and anguish they feel. All the characters involved play out their own drama: in the first scene the betrothed, weeping at having to leave her home and her companions; in the second scene the parents, with nothing further to live for, grieving over the loss of their daughter; then the bridegroom, seeking his father's blessing in a musical figure which is very reminiscent of a Byzantine liturgy:
An early reviewer maintained that this theme is based on liturgical motives taken from a collection of Russian Christmas chants. This would mean that Stravinsky "borrowed" two themes for 'Les Noces' and not one, as he himself claimed. On the other hand, in the case of the liturgical motif Stravinsky probably transformed it to such an extent that he felt justified in claiming it as his own.
In the third scene, after the bride and bridegroom have left, the two mothers sing a lament imploring their children to return home; and in the last scene, after the Saturnalian music of the banquet, the bride and bridegroom express, along with the joy and emotion of a newly-wedded couple, their profound awe and trepidation at the thought that life must be renewed through them. This disquiet in the face of the twofold mystery of life ending and life beginning is the most significant feature of 'Les Noces'. In this respect it resembles 'The Rite of Spring', a significant component of that work also being the expression of the pain, which overtakes mankind at the contemplation of the dreaded forces by which it is surrounded.