K107 The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

K107 The Owl and the Pussy-Cat

for voice and piano – Die Eule und das [Mieze-]Kätzchen für Stimme [Sopran] und Klavier – Le Hibou et la minette pour chant et piano – La Civetta ed il Gattino per voce [soprano] e pianoforte

Summary: (I:) An owl and a pussy-cat go to sea in a glowing green boat. They have some honey and plenty of money with them, which is wrapped up in a five-pound note. The owl looks up at the stars and sings along to a guitar how beautiful the pussy-cat is. – (II:) The pussy-cat marvels at how beautifully the ‘elegant fowl’ sings and suggests that they wait no longer to get married; however, they have no ring. They therefore sail on for a year and a day until they come to the land where the bong-tree grows. There they find a pig in a forest with a ring on the end of its nose. – (III:) The pig is prepared to sell them the ring and they are married on the next day by the turkey. Finally they eat slices of quince and they dance on the shore of the sea in the light of the moon.

Source: The poem is by Edward Lear (London 12/5/1812 – San Remo 18/1/1888), the master of English ‘nonsense poetry’ and black humour, viciously critical of society; above all, he popularized the limerick, which probably came from Ireland and was originally verses sung extempore , making it into a typically English, five-line verse form. The cuteness and popularity of his Owl and the Pussy-cat poem captures only a small part of Lear’s personality as a poet, and he was both a poet and a painter. The Owl and the Pussy-cat is not a limerick, but a three-verse text with artful structure. Each verse has 11 lines, of which the second and fourth as well as the sixth and eighth lines rhyme, and there are also rhyming pairs inside the lines. The two final words of the eighth line are emphatically repeated in the ninth and tenth lines, after which eighth line is repeated to make the eleventh line to complete the verse. The verses are in fact made up of eight lines, of which the eighth and the final line becomes a sort of refrain by means of the repetition of lines with identical endings (line 8 with lines 9, 10 and 11). Apart from this, the eight lines are linked together by iambs and anapests alternating with four-and three-footed meter, and, in the first verse, by means of cross rhyme. In verses two and three, the scheme is changed: now, only lines two and four as well as six and eight rhyme, not one and three, five and seven any more, in which there are, differently from the first verse, three caesuras and inner rhymes between the different parts of the lines.

Translation: The French translation is by Francis Steegmuller.

Construction: This song with piano is without bar lines and syllabically set with a range from d1 to d#2 without key signature and without metric indications in mostly 3/8 and 12/8 structures, and is through-composed serially; the metronome mark is circa quaver = 140.

Row: d-e-b-c#1-a#-g#-g-a-c1-d#1-f#1-f1.

Style: The vocal part is in a recitative and cantabile style. The piano part is without pianistic intent with one part in both hands, and is mostly in unison. The openings to the three verses use identical material. This original and idiosyncratic work, like no other Strawinsky song, sounds like a never-ending form which could be composed further. The technique of often placing the piano note between the sung notes creates a sound world in the style of pointilliste serialism. The score sounds devoid of notes, but is structurally woven together very densely, and the melody and piano lines are linked together in an anticipatory manner.

Performance practice: The effect of the work depends on the singer’s skills of characterization and interpretation. One and the same interval combination must be executed differently according to the meaning of the text in the poem, because Strawinsky personified the protagonist animals and the resulting situations. The ‘miaow’ of the cat and its besotted purring are portrayed in the same way as the song with the guitar or the marriage dance. The grunting noise of the pig especially spoke to Strawinsky because Adrienne Albert removed this effect in the Strawinsky edition of 1967.

Dedication: > to VERA <*.

* Strawinsky.

Duration: 2' 32".

Date of origin: October 1966.

First performance: 31st October 1966 in Los Angeles, Monday Evening Concerts, Peggy Bonini (Soprano) and Ingolf Dahl (Piano).

Remarks: Strawinsky was a cat lover and shared this with his second wife, Vera de Bosset. Furthermore, she had got to know and come to appreciate Lear’s Owl and the Pussy-cat poem in England at her first English foreign language lecture on poetry at the time, and it had become popular in France; she later carried this love over to the French translation by Francis Steegmuller, which Igor Strawinsky had got to know before the English original. The poem, which Vera Strawinsky had learned by heart in her younger years, may be seen in the course of its scenario as a parallel to Igor and Vera’s relationship, and thus as a final proclamation of love by Strawinsky to his second wife: the beauty of the ‘cat’, the enchanting music of the ‘owl’, the year-long wait for the nuptial knot allows similarities, even physical parallels, to be drawn.

Significance: After the completion of this song, the productivity of Strawinsky, who was 84 years old at the time of composition, lapsed, so that, with the Owl and the Pussy-cat, Straw insky’s catalogue of self-standing works ends. Strawinsky orchestrated only two more spiritual songs by Hugo Wolf and four pieces from the Well-Tempered Clavier by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Versions: The song was printed in February 1967 by Boosey & Hawkes and was published in the same year. The publishing contract between Strawinsky and Boosey & Hawkes was settled on 7th December 1966. The later editions were published without an end mark, and above the main title, justified to the right, with the rights reservation, there appears in a box >IMPORTANT NOTICE / The unauthorized copying / of the whole or any part of / this publication is illegal<.

Historical Records: 18th August 1967, Adrienne Albert (Soprano) and Robert Craft (Piano) under the direction of Igor Strawinsky.

CD edition: VIII-2/37.

Autograph: The whereabouts of the autograph score appears to be unclear ; Robert Craft received the sketches on 31st March 1968 from Strawinsky as a present. Strawinsky and Craft met each other for the first time on 31st March 1948, the day on which Auden gave Strawinsky the libretto to the opera The Rake’s Progress , and they celebrated the 20-year celebration of their acquaintance in the presence of the writer and their friend, Christopher Isherwood.

Copyright: 1967 by Boosey & Hawkes; In the estate, there is the certificate for the copyright in 1966 in Strawinsky’s own name.

Editions

a) Overview

107-1 1967 v-p; e; Boosey & Hawkes London; 8 p. 4°; B. & H. 19521.

107-1^[67+]ibd.

b) Characteristic features

107-1 Igor Stravinsky / The Owl and / the Pussy-Cat / for voice and piano / Boosey & Hawkes // Igor Stravinsky / The Owl and / the Pussy-Cat / for voice and piano / First performance: Monday Evening Concerts, Los Angeles, October 31st, 1966. / Soprano: Peggy Bonini. Piano: Ingolf Dahl. / Boosey & Hawkes / Music Publishers Limited / London · Paris · Bonn · Johannesburg · Sydney · Toronto · New York // (Edition Chant-Piano sewn in red 23.4 x 30.9 (4°); sung text English; 8 [7] pages light red on green beige + 4 cover pages [front cover title, 2 empty pages, page with publisher’s advertisements >Igor Stravinsky<* production date >No. 40< [#] >7.65<] + 1 page front matter [title page] without back matter; title head >The Owl and the Pussy-Cat<; dedication below title head centre italic > to VERA <; authors specified 1. page of the score paginated p. 2 below title head flush right centred >IGOR STRAVINSKY / 1966< flush left centred >Poem by / EDWARD LEAR<; legal reservation 1. page of the score below type area flush left >© Copyright 1967 by Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd.< flush right >All rights reserved / Tonsättning förbjudes< p. 8 below page of the score centred in the middle >Application for permission to perform this work in public should be made to / The Performing Right Society Ltd., 29-33 Berners St., London, W.1.<; production indication 1. page of the score below type area below legal reservation flush right >Printed in England<; plate number >B. & H. 19521<; end mark >2.·67. E.<) // (1967)

* Compositions are advertised in two columns without edition numbers, without price informations and without specification of places of printing >Operas and Ballets° / Agon [#] Apollon musagète / Le baiser de la fée [#] Le rossignol / Mavra [#] Oedipus rex / Orpheus [#] Perséphone / Pétrouchka [#] Pulcinella / The flood [#] The rake’s progress / The rite of spring° / Symphonic Works° / Abraham and Isaac [#] Capriccio pour piano et orchestre / Concerto en ré (Bâle) [#] Concerto pour piano et orchestre / [#] d’harmonie / Divertimento [#] Greetings°° prelude / Le chant du rossignol [#] Monumentum / Movements for piano and orchestra [#] Quatre études pour orchestre / Suite from Pulcinella [#] Symphonies of wind instruments / Trois petites chansons [#] Two poems and three Japanese lyrics / Two poems of Verlaine [#] Variations in memoriam Aldous Huxley / Instrumental Music° / Double canon [#] Duo concertant / string quartet [#] violin and piano / Epitaphium [#] In memoriam Dylan Thomas / flute, clarinet and harp [#] tenor, string quartet and 4 trombones / Elegy for J.F.K. [#] Octet for wind instruments / mezzo-soprano or baritone [#] flute, clarinet, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets and / and 3 clarinets [#] 2 trombones / Septet [#] Sérénade en la / clarinet, horn, bassoon, piano, violin, viola [#] piano / and violoncello [#] / Sonate pour piano [#] Three pieces for string quartet / piano [#] string quartet / Three songs from William Shakespeare° / mezzo-soprano, flute, clarinet and viola° / Songs and Song Cycles° / Trois petites chansons [#] Two poems and three Japanese lyrics / Two poems of Verlaine° / Choral Works° / Anthem [#] A sermon, a narrative, and a prayer / Ave Maria [#] Cantata / Canticum Sacrum [#] Credo / J. S. Bach: Choral-Variationen [#] Introitus in memoriam T. S. Eliot / Mass [#] Pater noster / Symphony of psalms [#] Threni / Tres sacrae cantiones°< [° centre centred; °° original mistake in the title].

107-1^[67+] Igor Stravinsky / The Owl and / the Pussy-Cat / for voice and piano / Boosey & Hawkes // Igor Stravinsky / The Owl and / the Pussy-Cat / for voice and piano / First performance: Monday Evening Concerts, Los Angeles, October 31st, 1966. / Soprano: Peggy Bonini. Piano: Ingolf Dahl. / Boosey & Hawkes / Music Publishers Limited / London · Paris · Bonn · Johannesburg · Sydney · Toronto · New York // (Edition Chant-Piano stapled 23.4 x 30.9 (4°); sung text English; 8 [7] pages brown-red on green-beige + 4 cover pages [front cover title, 2 empty pages, page with publisher’s advertisements >Igor Stravinsky<* production date >No. 40< [#] >7.65<] + 1 page front matter [title page] without back matter; title head >The Owl and the Pussy-Cat<; dedication below title head centre centred italic > to VERA <; authors specified 1. page of the score paginated p. 2 below title head flush right centred >IGOR STRAVINSKY / 1966< flush left centred >Poem by / EDWARD LEAR<; legal reservations 1. page of the score above title head flush right in the text box contains >IMPORTANT NOTICE / The unauthorized copying / of the whole or any part of / this publication is illegal< below type area flush left >© Copyright 1967 by Boosey & Hawkes Music Publishers Ltd.< flush right >All rights reserved / Tonsättning förbjudes< p. 8 below type area centre centred >Application for permission to perform this work in public should be made to / The Performing Right Society Ltd., 29-33 Berners St., London, W.1.<; production data 1. page of the score below type area below legal reservation flush right >Printed in England<; plate number >B. & H. 19521<; without end mark) // [1967+]

K Catalog: Annotated Catalog of Works and Work Editions of Igor Strawinsky till 1971, revised version 2014 and ongoing, by Helmut Kirchmeyer.
© Helmut Kirchmeyer. All rights reserved.
http://www.kcatalog.org and http://www.kcatalog.net