MetaChat - Igor Stravinksy mugshot from 1940.

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23 May 2010

Igor Stravinksy mugshot from 1940. On April 15, 1940, Stravinsky's unconventional major seventh chord in his arrangement of the Star-Spangled Banner led to his arrest by the Boston police for violating a federal law that prohibited the reharmonization of the National Anthem. (via the almighty brownpau's twitter-feed).

post by: ufez at: 09:22 | 4 comments

[+]

posted by danf 23 May | 09:33

It's a great story, but not exactly true.

[In January 1944] Everything went off calmly enough in Cambridge's Sanders Theatre on the 13th and Boston's Symphony Hall on the 14th, but by the second Boston concert on the 15th word had got about, and to his astonishment the composer was visited in his dressing-room by a policeman and warned that if he conducted his "Star-Spangled Banner" that evening he would be in breach of a Massachusetts state law banning performance of the national anthem in any "embellished" form. The anthem was duly omitted and no further action taken. But the incident soon established itself as yet another myth, in which Stravinsky was supposedly arrested, held in police custody for several nights, and even photographed full-face and in profile for police records. It soon emerged that the police reading of the law was in any case suspect, to say the least. What was actually forbidden was to play the anthem in part, or "as dance music, as an exit march, or as a part of a medley of any kind." Stravinsky's arrangement, of course, infringed none of these prohibitions. [Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky, The Second Exile: France and America, 1934–1971 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2006), 152]

Legends Revealed also refutes the story (scroll down) and says the photo was for a 1940 visa application.

posted by D.C. 23 May | 10:45

Ooh, D.C. Thanks (and I mean that sincerely) for the straight story. I kind of like the hoax (for lack of a better term) more than the fiction.

posted by ufez 23 May | 11:54

Does anyone know if this arrangement exists anywhere in score or recording? Just curious.

posted by typewriter 23 May | 16:15

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