Sinfonia and Gavotte from Pulcinella Suite

In the spring of 1919, the impresario Sergei Diaghilev began work on a new idea: a ballet based on the Renaissance characters of commedia dell’arte, with set designs by Pablo Picasso and music by Ottorino Respighi. When Respighi withdrew from the project, Diaghilev approached Igor Stravinsky, with whom he had collaborated on wildly successful productions of The Rite of Spring, Petrushka, and The Firebird. Diaghilev did not want an original score, however. Hoping to evoke the sense of a bygone era, he asked his friend to orchestrate music thought to be written by the 18th-century composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi (much of it has since been attributed to other composers). Stravinsky had some initial reservations but agreed to look at the music—and as he later recalled, “I looked and fell in love.” Stravinsky’s respect for the source material is evident in the setting. He hardly alters the melody and bass lines throughout the movements, adding modern touches that appear as subtle and witty anachronisms of harmony, rhythm, or timbre. The result was a huge success and achieved even greater renown as a concert suite (containing 11 of the original 18 movements) and transcriptions (the Suite Italienne) for violin or cello and piano. More importantly, reaching back to older musical sources launched a new chapter in Stravinsky’s composition—his “Neoclassical” style. Several decades after its premiere, Stravinsky said, “Pulcinella was my discovery of the past, the epiphany through which the whole of my late work became possible.”