Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 February 2010
Strawinsky often surprises his admirers. When they believe themselves to have discovered his æsthetic aims or located his place in history, he suddenly escapes from their observant eyes to emerge on quite a different spot where nobody had suspected him to dwell. His most recent works, the Cantata on old English poems, the Septet, and the Shakespeare Songs, show a contrapuntal strictness of a very special kind, which he has never attempted before.
1 The principle that the parts of a canon should enter in succession is here not observed. Often the theme begins simultaneously with its imitation, whose different rhythm soon lags behind the Passacaglia theme, or is in advance of it.
2 The retrograde inversion begins with the note with which the inversion ends (in the present case the note B). The inversion of the retrogression begins with the same note as the retrograde motion (which is the last note of the theme, in the present case A).