Stravinsky's trio version of The Soldier’s Tale is an instrumental suite for violin, clarinet and piano using material taken from his larger septet version of the same title, written the year before in 1918.In this updated version, the suite is presented with live-edited animated film commissioned from artist Derek Gray and Edinburgh-based film maker Roddy Simpson.

It tells the story of a soldier who strikes a bargain for his soul, trading his violin for unlimited economic gain, all he wishes for, until he finally realises that it is not material worth which is important in life but love, family and music. The importance of choosing the good and abiding in it, of not overstepping one’s boundaries, of gratitude, is his timeless moral message.

Igor Stravinsky : The Soldier’s Tale
Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was certainly the greatest composer of the twentieth century, yet most listeners never go beyond his “Russian” period as represented by the meteoric early ballets The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. To get the full measure of Stravinsky, we must follow him after he left his native country on the eve of the Communist Revolution. Settled in Europe, Stravinsky turned away from Russian folklore as a source of inspiration in favour of the “classics” of Western culture, as is clear from such composition titles as Oedipus Rex, Apollo, Perséphone, Orpheus, and Agon. His reconversion to the Russian Orthodox faith in the late 1920s brought Christianity into the mix of influences and sources of inspiration that produced Symphony of Psalms and a Mass.

Stravinsky never forsook his Russian roots and an earthy peasant sense of good and evil. In an era when the devil (along with other religious concepts) was being widely reduced to a symbolic abstraction, he insisted that he believed in “the Person of the Lord and the Person of the Devil” and put the latter on stage in two of his most important musical-dramatic works, The Soldier’s Tale and The Rake’s Progress. These pieces remind a secularized world that the battle between man and the Evil One remains the human drama.

L’Histoire du soldat (The Soldier’s Tale): A “theatrical work to be read, played, and danced,” was created in 1918. The libretto was adapted by C.F. Ramuz from a Russian folk tale and tells the story of the soldier Joseph, who, while on leave, trades his violin to the devil in exchange for a book which predicts the future economy. Stravinsky’s music is scored for a bare-bones ensemble of seven instruments that evokes the raucous sounds of a village band. With rhyming narration, pantomime, and ballet, the work often resembles improvised street theatre - an impression sustained by Stravinsky’s use of popular genres such as march, tango, waltz, and ragtime.

The moral content of Soldier centres on the bargain Joseph makes with the devil. Joseph’s fiddle symbolizes his soul. The “way of the fiddle”- the life of poetry, art and faith, is contrasted with the “way of the book”- the life of rationalism and commerce. Joseph obtains great wealth but remains enslaved to the devil’s whims. Upon losing all his money to the devil in a card game, he finally becomes free. Joseph marries a princess and seems destined for happiness at last but he makes a fatal error by returning to the scene of his original encounter with the devil. The latter is there waiting and reclaims Joseph’s soul for good. The narrator draws the moral:

“You must not seek to add to what you have, what you once had… No-one can have it all; that is forbidden. You must learn to choose between. One happy thing is every happy thing. Two is as they’d never been."

The importance of choosing the good and abiding in it, of not overstepping one’s boundaries, of gratitude, is a timeless message. Alas, it is too late for the soldier. Stravinsky ends the cautionary tale with music (“Devil’s Dance”) that flails about in hopeless desperation until the final drum beat puts a grim cap on the proceedings.

The Soldier’s Tale is a sardonic delight and one of Stravinsky’s most popular pieces, but it is most often heard as a concert suite rather than as originally conceived: a hybrid of action, spoken word and music. Only by experiencing the work whole can we get its full moral punch.

Music Co-OPERAtive Scotland (McOpera) was formed in the spring of 2012 by musicians from The Orchestra of Scottish Opera to provide and generate a range of artistically exciting and diverse work in Scotland. Since that time, it has developed a wide portfolio of activity ranging from operatic productions, bespoke recording projects, orchestral performances and community outreach projects across a wide social and cultural demographic.

Recent McOpera activity (Project Manager - Sue Baxendale) includes critically acclaimed 5-star productions of large-scale community operas for the Lammermuir Festival, with Britten’s Noye’s Fludde in 2016 and the premiere performance of Matthew Rooke’s community opera, An Cadal Trom in September 2018.

Other activity includes the Scottish premiere of Fleishmann’s Rothschild’s Violin and the world premiere of Scottish composer Erik Chisholm’s opera Simoon (for Cottier Chamber Project 2014 and 2015, the latter released as a live performance on Delphian label in November 2016); an animated film production of Stravinsky’s The Soldier’s Tale with commissioned piece for children’s chorus and ensemble by Peter Kemp (Milngavie Tales), a Young Musicians’ Portfolio Musicians Project and A Song for Flight by Moira Morrison for Milngavie Music Club; and A Song for Haddo (for primary school voices and high school strings) for the Haddo Arts Festival in 2017, 2018 and 2019.

www.mcopera.com