Octet for Winds

Composer: STRAVINSKY, Igor

Quick Facts

  • A 3-movement piece scored for flute, clarinet, 2 bassoons, 2 trumpets, tenor trombone, and bass trombone
  • Written between 1922-23
  • Premiered in 1923 at the Paris Opera House conducted by the composer
    • Fun fact – this was the first time Stravinsky had conducted the premiere of his own music
  • Dedicated to dancer and future wife of Stravinsky, Vera de Bosset1

About the Piece

  • Stravinsky’s Octet for Winds began with a dream –

“I saw myself in a small room surrounded by a small group of instrumentalists playing some attractive music… I awoke from this little concert in a state of great delight and anticipation and the next morning began to compose.”2

  • The piece decidedly marks Stravinsky’s turn towards the neoclassical style, which surprised both audiences and the composer’s contemporariesand caused quite a stir.
    • A young Aaron Copland attended the premiere of the Octet and wrote about a…

“general feeling of mystification that followed the initial hearing. Everyone was asking why Stravinsky should have exchanged his Russian heritage, and a neoprimitive style all his own, for what looked very much like a mess of 18th-century mannerisms. The whole thing gained Stravinsky the unanimous disapproval of the press. No one could have possibly foreseen, first, that Stravinsky was to persist in this new manner of his, or, second, that the Octet was destined to influence composers all over the world in bringing the latent objectivity of modern music to full consciousness by frankly adopting the ideals, forms, and textures of the pre-Romantic era.”3

  • Listen for – the “jazzy” syncopation used in the third movement that echoes the age in which it was written.4

Sources

  1. “Octet, K041 (Stravinsky, Igor),” IMSLP, accessed April 3, 2023, https://imslp.org/wiki/Octet%2C_K041_(Stravinsky%2C_Igor).
  2. Joseph Horowitz, “Octet for Wind Instruments,” Boosey & Hawkes, accessed April 3, 2023, https://www.boosey.com/cr/music/Igor-Stravinsky-Octet-for-Wind-Instruments/826.
  3. Kathy Henkel, “Octet for Winds,” L. A. Phil, accessed April 3, 2023, https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/pieces/4885/octet-for-winds.
  4. Joseph Horowitz, “Octet for Wind Instruments,” Boosey & Hawkes.

Cut IDs

11351