Igor Stravinsky's Three Pieces for String Quartet: Analysis 

Actually, the viola drone is on the G-string, as the pizzicato stave says "sul Ré" (on the D-string). Also, playing left-hand pizzicato D on the G-string is really difficult.

what a fantastic resource for someone like myself who manges only to scratch at the surface of many of the classical works I come across. thank you.

The sort of effect you mention at 22.20 or so is exactly the sort of thing - as a listener - that I enjoy so very, very much. Organizing musical material in that there are coherent and incoherent (from a listeners immediate perception, not an analysts) elements together: a strong sense of hearing coherent material that is self-similar and yet organized in some way that constantly takes the perceptual feet off your ground. I love this in the rhythmic sense - especially well done rhythm music manages this sometimes - and also in terms of harmony, melody, structure, whatever. This dual existence of hearing order and chaos at the same time is amazingly pleasurable for me.

Outstanding video. I can see a big leap forward in terms of production quality, too! I think it would be good to always mention a recommended recording of the piece at the end of each video (much like you did with Boulez's 2nd Sonata).

I would look at it as the C, Db in the cello with the C#, D#, E, F# in the Violin II are 5 notes in the same octatonic scale starting on C.

Fantastic channel. Hope you get time to continue this in the future!

so glad i found your channel! Great work, Maestro 🙏🏽

Keeping me company/ educated / and entertained during quarantine! Thanks!! --Tyler Vrooman

This was also a very great analysis, thank you so much for this channel! I'm looking forward to whatever videos you do next, I'll check out your own compositions now :)

I believe I hear some of these same layering techniques in the Little Concert and other parts of The Soldier's Tale, and in Symphony of Psalms. Interestingly, one of the themes in the second movement of Three Pieces becomes the fugue subject of the second movement of Symphony of Psalms. Perhaps the techniques you discuss can be compared to recent "phase" and "Minimalist" music, although in the case of Phillip Glass I suspect you might listen for 20 minutes and be able to explain it all in 1 minute. Thanks for the great analysis.

I have in front of me a copy of "Poetics of Music: In the form of Six lessons" by Stravinsky. I recommend it to anybody who enjoys his work or inventive music in general. What a great mind! this is a new piece for me, so thanks for covering it. To think that Leonard Bernstein conducted the Rite of Spring from memory.... it's quite a thing to watch on youtube. Stravinsky, like Nabokov for writers, sometimes makes a musician wonder why he bothers! Great video.

Just found out that there is an orchestral adaptation of this. It's interesting to compare the two.

It's one of the my favorite pieces :-) thanks for uploading

Thank you so much for these videos. Love the content and I wish you would keep it up! If I may, I'd love to see a video about Arvo Part!

Very nice analysis of the music. But, to the best of my knowledge, it is not all three movements which were inspired by Little Tich; it was only the second movement, Excentrique. The pieces were titled when Stravinsky later arranged them -- plus a piece originally for player piano -- for orchestra and called the result Four Etudes. The first piece, the one in this video, got named Danse, and the third, slow piece, got named Cantique (Canticle). The fourth piece was -- already, I think -- named Madrid. I have loved Stravinsky most of my life -- even choreographed some. When I learned that Excentrique was inspired by Little Tich, as a choreographer I thought it would be fun to discover his style and choreograph a variation on it, to this music. All of my many circus friends knew about Little Tich ... but none of them could find any photos or films of him. And then the Internet came along ... and one day, there was the only film ever made of Little Tich -- the one you use. And a couple of years later, there was the only *other* film made of him (not much different from this one.)

As someone who loves listening to music, but doesn't know much at all about theory, it would really help to hear samples of each part before, during, or after you talking about them. I subscribed and am interested in hearing more.

Thank you for this interesting analysis, I admire you so much

Lightly dancing over the Chaos... Very Cool, Thank you.

Спасибо! Отличный анализ.

I’d love to hear your análisis on the other two pieces

You opened a new world for me.

Hello Samuel Andreyev! Thank you for your dedication to RU-vid, as a composer myself, I find your channel very curious and interesting. I'd like to hear your thoughts about the way World War I changed the music of Maurice Ravel. I love Ravel, but I don't have a very clear idea about how that change was processed, and if it was, like, a change of paradigm in his music. I've been thinking about this since I heard one teacher of mine raising these questions on La Valse. I think it's a very interesting topic to explore, since Ravel's music is one of great sensibility, charm, color, and had to survive the cruelty of war... Cheers!

Thank you. Very clearly put. If I may suggest it, maybe change the video title to ....analyses "the first of" three ...

Thanks, you've just fulfilled my class assignment :-)

Thank you!

Very interesting analysis, thanks. Can I ask, don't you feel that the two diatonic scales the violins are working with, feel a bit more like C# minor, and C major? (Rather than C# minor and G major?) I understand how it could be interpreted either way, but I thought I'd mention it. With my interpretation, the two scales, one ascending and one descending, are both heading towards the tonic of their respective scales. One other thing that tends to make me view it my way, is that I've noticed that Stravinsky seems to have a fascination with the major 7th of scales in a lot of his works, emphasizing this note. And this violin fragment, if it were to be understood as a fragment of a C major scale, does indeed linger on the leading note.

About the first piece, I remember my analysis professor Jean-Marie Rens, explaining to us that what makes the periodicity very present but at the same time very impalpable (you know it's there but you can't anticipate it when hearing it, you keep searching for the begining of the "loop") is the superposition of different "periodicities" between the instruments where each instrument has in fact a cycle based on prime numbers. E.g. the first violin has a cycle of 23 beats, the cello has a cycle of 7 beats (which stravinsky takes as a reference when he chose the alternating time sig of 3/4 + 2/4 + 2/4)...Etc. This feature links all four parts. One of the key characteristics of prime numbers is of course their unpredictbility. I tend to use this technique in my own music now.

Thank you very much, very interesting ! Perhaps somebody already asked : would it be possible to have your analysis of the two other pieces ?

Hello Samuel, thank you for this helpful video! Isn't the second violin's pitch group octatonic?

Thanks!!!

The story of Stravinsky's musical language lies in the octagonic scale, even in his later row manipulations.

Haha, I had to rewind the video between 5:25 and 6:00 because I was too captivated by Little Tich's performance to listen to what you said.

the viola plays on two different strings. The opening double-stop,played on adjacent strings (C, G), makes that clear, so that the D pizz is played on the D...

Hi Samuel, thank you very much for this and all your other videos! At the moment I very much delve into the piece in question and so your statement that it was inspired by a performance by Little Tich cought my attention. I see you uploaded this video some years ago but can you recall the source of this information?

excelent !!

@Samuel Andreyev This is more of a technical question: you use the term superposition rather than superimposition, is there a difference?

As "far out" and serial as IS could sometimes be, it still sounds like IS, which is significant.

May I suggest that C# is not the same pitch as Db for the string quartet, as his intentions are tonal and not equal temperament.

the second and third pieces are even more involved.

This piece & its techniques remind me strongly of the work of Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band, for instance "Hair Pie." I wonder to what degree Stravinsky was an influence on Beefheart's style.

The violin part seems to have some metrical similarity; 35 eighth notes to 14 in the cello share a common multiple of 7

Dear Samuel, in the minute 2'14 you can listen where the second violin motif is coming from. Thank you for the analysis! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-3Jpq0D8zsgo.html

I am avidly watching your channel

Hi Samuel! Nice video, but I think you're mistaken about Stravinsky hiding from world war, it was Russian Revolution that made him escape his home and mov to Switzerland

For another take on this work you should check out this guys video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mm8HWupcNxw.html

時系列の繋がりで和声と変奏と各声部を説明することは、かなり難しい さらに大形式の視点からも細部を説明しなければならない

C sharp minor???? Really?!