İgor Stravinski’nin Petruşka Balesinin Orkestra Süiti İle Solo Piyano Uyarlamasının Karşılaştrılması

Abstract

Igor Stravinsky became one of the most important composers who shaped the twentieth century music with his extraordinary techniques, harmonic and rhythmic innovations that he used in his works. In each period of his music career he headed towards very distinctive styles and composed works in the light of these styles.

With his orchestra works being more than his solo instrument compositions in number, the ballets that Stravinsky composed in 1910, 1911, and 1913 are among his most important works and are also among the masterpieces in history of music. When staged, these compositions sometimes achieved great success and sometimes received rather harsh criticism as well due to featuring sharp contrasts with the musical understanding of the era.

Stravinsky joined Ballets Russes (Russian Ballets) as a composer in 1909, which was founded by Sergei Diaghilev and for which he employed very successful choreographers, stage designers and dancers in their fields. Stravinsky composed his three great ballet music for this corps de ballet. The second of these, Petrushka (1911) achieved great success with its costumes, stage design, choreography and new elements in its music when staged.

Petrushka, many of whose different adaptations have been made to this date, was transcribed by Stravinsky for solo piano in 1921. The fact that he used almost all of the orchestral elements of ballet suite in one instrument made this work one of the most difficult works of the piano repertoire.

In this study Stravinsky’s musical style, which is divided into three eras, and his most important works composed in these eras are dealt with. His collaboration with Diaghilev and Ballets Russes has been studied and a separate section has been written with the aim of giving a general opinion about his ballet music. The interaction between the theme of the ballet and the orchestral composition of the suite has been presented as a separate section by analyzing the emergence of Petrushka ballet suite and its musical structure.

Also his piano style and his piano works comprise a separate section in this study. In the last part of the study, the technique Stravinsky used for adapting his orchestra suite to solo piano is extensively analyzed by comparing the orchestra and piano versions of Petrushka ballet suite in terms of similar and different aspects.

This study aims to provide guidance for those who are to perform the piano adaptation of the work and transform an orchestral work in ballet music into piano, and it also provides guidance for the form and similarity of orchestral timbres in solo versions as well as being a significance source for acquiring knowledge on these topics.