JAVS Spring 2026

Featured Article

Stravinsky’s “Élégie” for Solo Viola, Debussy’s “Élégie” for Piano: Two compositions in Dialogue by Kylie Baird

In 1944, the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) composed a short work for solo viola (later transcribed for violin) titled Élégie . The piece was commissioned in memory of the recently deceased founding violinist of the Pro Arte String Quartet, Alphonse Onnou, at the request of the quartet’s violist, Germain Prévost. The condensed history of this work traces a complex web of interpersonal interactions involving Prévost, many of which were shaped by negatively tainted perceptions of his musicianship— perceptions that ultimately involved Stravinsky himself. It was Nadia Boulanger, then music director at Edgewood College, who independently recognized Prévost as a highly capable musician. The damaging rumors surrounding his performance stemmed largely from the quartet’s new violinist, Antonio Brosa, who had spoken disparagingly of him. Around the same time that Prévost contacted Stravinsky to commission Élégie in honor of Onnou’s legacy, Boulanger conveyed this clarification to the composer. In response, Stravinsky not only composed the piece as a gesture of apology for the misunderstanding but also waived the commission fee. 1 Stylistically, Élégie occupies a position between two of Stravinsky’s most prominent compositional periods: Neoclassicism, which emerged in the early 1920s, and Serialism, which would dominate his output in the 1950s. His earlier works—from the so-called “Russian period” through Neoclassicism—often display a focused attention to harmonic and intervallic relationships, experimental uses of timbre, and the employment of scale collections governed by principles inherited from Classical tradition. Stravinsky’s musical development was strongly influenced by Russian composers such as Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, as well

as by the French composer Claude Debussy, who rose to prominence during the Impressionist period.

This composition is notable for several reasons. Most significantly, it represents a rarity within the viola repertoire and remains the only work Stravinsky composed specifically for the instrument, despite his broader output for violin and cello. 2 From an analytical perspective, the piece reveals intricate rhythmic and harmonic displacements, the use of diatonic scale collections, and instances of superimposition—elements that position Élégie as a distinctive example of tonal and rhythmic exploration within mid-twentieth-century literature. However, the most compelling element of this research emerged through the discovery of Claude Debussy’s Élégie , L. 138. Written for piano between 1915 and 1916—approximately three years before Debussy’s death and nearly three decades prior to Stravinsky’s composition—the work dates from the First World War and is dedicated to Queen Alexandra. At approximately two minutes in length, Debussy’s Élégie reflects his late compositional style, with thematic material that evokes an introspective and angular approach to phrasing and expression. The initial aim of this project was to survey other elegies written during or around this period, comparing works within the genre in order to better understand the structural and stylistic choices composers employed. It was not until a complete listening and score study of Debussy’s Élégie that several points of parallelism became apparent—despite the two works being written for different instruments.

Journal of the American Viola Society / Vol. 42, No. 1, Spring 2026

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