"The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending"
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Stravinsky takes a swing at “endless melody” and, with it, at a whole Romantic faith: the idea that music should feel like an organism that grows because it must. His phrasing is almost surgical. “Perpetual becoming” sounds flattering until the blade turns: a music with “no reason for starting” and “no reason for ending” isn’t transcendent, it’s unaccountable. The jab lands because he doesn’t argue about beauty; he questions legitimacy.
The intent is polemical, and the context matters. Stravinsky built his public identity partly in opposition to the late-19th-century Wagnerian model, where melody dissolves into a continuous, intoxicating stream that promises emotional destiny. “Endless” here isn’t just a technique; it’s a worldview that treats time as a kind of enchanted fog. Stravinsky, famously allergic to sentimentality as a governing principle, frames that fog as aesthetic evasion.
Subtext: structure is ethics. If a piece can begin anywhere and end anywhere, then the composer has dodged the hard responsibilities of form: choosing boundaries, articulating contrast, making events earn their consequences. He’s defending music as made, not merely happened-to. That aligns with his broader modernist posture (and later neoclassicism): clarity over trance, construction over overflow, the audible pleasure of decisions.
Even the symmetry of the sentence performs his argument. It starts, loops, and snaps shut with a cool, almost juridical finality. He’s not just criticizing a style; he’s demystifying a cult of inevitability.
The intent is polemical, and the context matters. Stravinsky built his public identity partly in opposition to the late-19th-century Wagnerian model, where melody dissolves into a continuous, intoxicating stream that promises emotional destiny. “Endless” here isn’t just a technique; it’s a worldview that treats time as a kind of enchanted fog. Stravinsky, famously allergic to sentimentality as a governing principle, frames that fog as aesthetic evasion.
Subtext: structure is ethics. If a piece can begin anywhere and end anywhere, then the composer has dodged the hard responsibilities of form: choosing boundaries, articulating contrast, making events earn their consequences. He’s defending music as made, not merely happened-to. That aligns with his broader modernist posture (and later neoclassicism): clarity over trance, construction over overflow, the audible pleasure of decisions.
Even the symmetry of the sentence performs his argument. It starts, loops, and snaps shut with a cool, almost juridical finality. He’s not just criticizing a style; he’s demystifying a cult of inevitability.
Quote Details
| Topic | Music |
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