Concerning the origin of his 1930 Symphony a/Psalms, Igor Stravinsky wrote: “My idea was that my symphony should be of great contrapuntal development.” A setting of verses from Psalms 39, 40, and 150, Stravinsky’s work is cast in three movements, each involving some degree of contrapuntal writing. The most highly contrapuntal of the three movements is the second, normally referred to as the “Double Fugue.”
There is some debate concerning the precise form of movement two. While some scholars, such as Eric Walter White and Stephen Walsh, view it as being fugal in at least a referential way, one prominent Stravinsky scholar, Andre Boucourechliev, believes this movement falls outside of any conventional form. In his book Stravinsky, Boucourechliev makes the following statement:
The development of [the opening four-note] cell … introduces a pseudo-subject marked by a descending fourth, the whole passage being built up into one of those polyphonic constructions of Stravinsky’s that falls into no existing category …. The horizontal writing becomes so rich, its layering so dense, that it virtually dynamites the vertical control; so that the work ceases to belong to what was originally taken to be a formal category and creates its own stylistic “landscape”-a “no man’s land.”
The work is a highly organized, three-section movement that fits the conventional definition of double fugue-a fugue involving two subjects, usually set forth separately, then usually combined in the final section.
Stravinsky describes movement two as an upside-down pyramid in three levels. The first two of these levels are fugue expositions, complete with entries of the subject in four voices, episodic material, and, in the case of level two, the use of stretto. The third and final level is described by Stravinsky as a “combining” of the two fugues, an effect used masterfully to bring the movement to a convincing conclusion.
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