2025 Institute for Russian Music Studies Conference

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I will be presenting the following session at the 2025 IRMS Conference in Vipiteno, Italy:

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Jump Cuts and Juxtapositions: Film Editing Techniques in Stravinsky’s Petrushka

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When: July 8-11, 2025

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Description: 

Igor Stravinsky’s Petrushka (1911) demonstrates a pioneering use of film editing techniques in music, particularly through rapid juxtapositions, abrupt cuts, and shifting perspectives. Stravinsky manipulates rhythm, orchestration, and harmonic contrast in ways akin to montage and jump cuts in cinema. His abrupt changes in texture and harmony mirror film’s ability to splice disparate scenes together, creating a dynamic sense of motion and narrative fragmentation.

 

A key example is the use of bitonality—such as the famous "Petrushka chord"—which functions like a cinematic dissolve, overlapping different harmonic spaces. The ballet’s structure, built on episodic contrasts, resembles quick scene changes in film, reinforcing its fragmented storytelling. Additionally, Stravinsky’s unpredictable metric shifts parallel the rhythmic pacing of film editing, where cuts can disrupt or accelerate time perception.

 

These techniques give Petrushka a visual-musical quality, anticipating later collaborations between composers and filmmakers. Stravinsky’s innovations foreshadow how music and film editing would later intertwine, making Petrushka an early model for the intersection of these two art forms.

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For more information, visit https://www.orfeomusicfestival.com/2025-irms-conference