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octave on the piano. His treatment of the piano within the orchestra reflected
this resolution not to resort to "soimd effects and noise." Through all of the
major stylistic changes which marked his long compositional career, he never
once utilized the instrument in any of the nontraditional methods which were
in vogue during the twentieth century, such as the plucking of the strings with
the fingers; striking of the strings with mallets; use of the prepared piano with
bolts, metal cHps, paper, mbber, felt, etc., attached to or laid across the
strings; striking the wooden cabinet of the piano; or using of electronic
keyboard instruments. The closest he came to a nontraditional usage of the
piano was the one-time use of harmonics in the Movements for Piano and
Orchestra, discussed in Chapter IV.
His contempt for some of these effects is evident in the following
comment:
Progress, or at least invention, might have been detected by the
non-initiate in the new techniques for the movement of sound in
space. But some of the other 'pioneering' of the period must have
seemed to him [the non-initiate] like paring closer and closer to
nothingness . . . [for instance] the performances on the woodwork
of the piano (after the attractions of 'topless' pianos had been
overexposed). . . *^
In an earlier dialogue with Robert Craft, when discussing
instrumentation, Stravinsky commented that an "old" instrument, the piano,
interested him more than an Ondes Martinot.*^ This was an electronic music
instrument invented by Maurice Marteriot, first presented in 1928, which used
a keyboard and produced only one note at a time. Vibrato could be created,
and both low and high ranges exceeded the limits of the piano. Wide glissando
sweeps and expressive portamentos were possible. Many of Stravinsky's

*^Stravinsky, Themes and Conclusions, p. 150.

*^Stravinsky, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky, p. 32.