The Double Canon (Raoul Dufy in Memoriam) is a short composition for string quartet by Igor Stravinsky, composed in 1959. It lasts only about a minute and a quarter in performance.
Although it is a memorial piece for the painter Raoul Dufy, who had died on 23 March 1953, the Double Canon is not a personal tribute, for the two men had never met. The work originated as a duet for flute and clarinet, composed in Venice in September 1959 as a souvenir piece in response to a request for an autograph.Шаблон:Sfn Later expanded for string quartet, it had its first performance at a Stravinsky festival in New York, either on 20 December 1959,Шаблон:Sfn or else on 10 January 1960 in a concert also featuring the premiere of the Movements for piano and orchestra.Шаблон:Sfn
Analysis
The Double Canon is exceptional in Stravinsky's twelve-tone compositions in that it uses transposed forms of the row. Stravinsky's habitual practice was to use only untransposed row forms.Шаблон:Sfn
The first five notes of Stravinsky's series for the Double Canon are equivalent to the five-note set of In Memoriam Dylan Thomas, and also are closely related to sets used in Agon, Epitaphium, and A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer. It is representative of the earliest phase of Stravinsky's serial practice, when he had not yet developed the technique of hexachordal rotation that characterizes his music written from the Movements onward.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn
Straus, Joseph N. (2004). Stravinsky's Late Music. Cambridge Studies in Music Theory and Analysis 16. Cambridge University Press. pp. 11–18. Шаблон:ISBN.
Walsh, Stephen. 1988. The Music of Stravinsky. London and New York: Routledge. See esp. pp. 235–238.
