Lynne Rogers' Research on Stravinsky's Mature Serial Works Included A Four-Month Stint in Basel, Switzerland Story by Claire Chase Lynne Rogers' Portrait by John Seyfried
			Lynne Rogers, assistant professor of music theory, recently returned from a year-long academic leave that included a four-month stint in Basel, Switzerland, during which time she researched harmonic and contrapuntal aspects of Igor Stravinsky's mature serial works. Sponsored by Oberlin College, a fellowship from the National Endowment for Humanities, and an additional stipend from the Paul Sacher Foundation, Rogers spent four months in Basel pursuing her research at Europe's largest archives for twentieth-century classical music, the Paul Sacher Foundation. "I have been fascinated by Stravinsky's counterpoint and harmony for a long time," remarks Rogers, who began her investigation of Stravinsky in graduate school with a dissertation on counterpoint and layered textures in works of the composer's Russian and Neoclassical periods, studying Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, the Violin Concerto and Symphony C, among many other works. Rogers' recent appointment in Switzerland provided the opportunity for an intensive study of works written from 1959-1966, the last portion of Stravinsky's Serial Period. Serialism refers to the revolution in composition pioneered by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920's in which music's traditional tonal organization was replaced by new procedures and principles. In serial composition, a series of notes--generally an ordering of the 12 tones of the equal-tempered chromatic scale--constitute the source for pitch materials in the composition. "The issue of serial harmony is an important one because there are no 'rules' about how to derive harmonies that make sense in a serial work. Composers must establish their own rationales for what constitutes appropriate harmony," explains Rogers. After decades of opposition to serialism, Stravinsky, in the early 1950's, began to adopt and assimilate the principles of serialism into his compositional procedures. "By 1959," Rogers says, "Stravinsky had devised his own, unique approach to serialism." Rogers' research, which was performed at Oberlin during the fall semester and continued at the Stravinsky Archive of the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel during the spring semester, focused primarily on Stravinsky's harmony, counterpoint, and his compositional process in the serial music. She also studied texture and the question of diatonicism in this repertory. The Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland "I examined manuscript materials in order to understand Stravinsky's compositional techniques for creating serial harmonies and for composing serial music in general." While at Oberlin, Rogers studied scores and read the latest analytical literature available on the subject. While in Basel, she viewed Stravinsky's sketches and drafts for works, as well as correspondence between Stravinsky and his contemporaries. Almost none of this material is available outside of the Foundation. Because the Paul Sacher Foundation prohibits photocopies of any library material, Rogers had only a general idea about what to expect before arriving in Basel. "The Foundation doesn't send out microfilms, for example, so I didn't actually know if the musical passages of greatest interest to me appeared in Stravinsky's sketches." Once she began to delve into the available material, which, she admits, she could spend " at least five years" studying, Rogers "ended up focusing on the larger mature serial works that have vocal parts," most specifically: The Flood, a work commissioned for CBS television broadcast in 1962 ; Abraham and Isaac, a sacred ballad for baritone and small orchestra, written 1962-3; and The Requiem Canticles, Stravinsky's last major composition, written in 1965-6. "The main subjects of my study were sketches and drafts--short, fragmentary bits of music that could be half a measure to five measures long, and might have only one or two lines--early ideas, typically." Because Stravinsky composed at the piano, however, and did not document each compositional step, Rogers found the "complete story" of a piece or passage often difficult to ascertain. Nonetheless, significant aspects of Stravinsky's compositional process were revealed through the study of the sketches. The sketches themselves, she added, "required interpretive skills to decipher." To augment her theoretical research, Rogers surveyed Stravinsky's correspondence with colleagues including George Balanchine and Nicholas Nabokov, and read business mail, personal letters and an "unbelievable amount of fan mail, some of which was hysterically funny." Rogers also examined Stravinsky's own library of books and scores. Rogers' research will eventually culminate in a book based on her work in both Oberlin and Basel. In the meantime, she is writing an article on a series of sketches for The Flood, and will offer a lecture on another aspect of her research this November at the national meeting of the Society of Music Theory, for whom she has presented several papers in the past. "I'd enjoy returning to Basel sometime in the future to continue my research, perhaps for a month in the summer." Rogers will teach a Stravinsky course in the Conservatory in the spring of 2000, the curriculum for which will be "primarily analytical, and will cover all three periods--Russian, Neoclassical and Serialist--of the composer's work." Of the academic leave experience, Rogers affirms, "It's wonderful to be a part of a school that will support individual research. Oberlin really goes out of its way to make sure its professors can pursue their research interests."
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