Stravinsky and the Uneasy Order in the Symphony of Psalms

When Igor Stravinsky composed the Symphony of Psalms between 1929 and 1930, Europe was suspended in an uneasy pause. The war was over, but peace had not brought reassurance. Ideologies were reorganizing, masses were once again taking center stage, and the individual was beginning to disappear behind increasingly rigid collective forms. Stravinsky does not narrate this condition. He embodies it.

The Symphony of Psalms offers no consolation. The choir does not sing to move us emotionally, but to exist as a compact, impersonal sonic body. Voices intertwine without any single line asserting itself, as if the self had been deliberately silenced. Even the orchestra renounces warmth: no violins, no lyrical glow. What remains is a severe, almost liturgical order that invites not identification, but distance.

And yet, it is precisely this distance that generates unease. Not because the music is “cold,” but because it confronts us with a collective that functions perfectly without asking anything of us—except to listen. Stravinsky does not urge us to accept this world, nor to resist it. He forces a more uncomfortable question: why does a faceless order disturb us so deeply?

It is a question that feels strikingly current today. In a time when groups, identities, and collective narratives once again tend to instrumentalize the human being, the Symphony of Psalms appears less as a historical artifact than as a mirror. It does not denounce. It does not proclaim. It shows—and leaves the unease to do the rest.

Today, the instrumentalization of the human being no longer takes the form of heroic sacrifice, as it did in the twentieth century, but of a quieter reduction: the individual becomes a function. In an age that celebrates individuality, the self is expected to be constantly visible, efficient, and clearly defined. It is not erased, but made measurable and replaceable. This may be why the impersonal order of the Symphony of Psalms still unsettles us: it presents a collective that functions perfectly without the need for any singular voice, reflecting a condition we continue to recognize as our own.

These reflections will be at the center of a dedicated discussion organized by the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, taking place in Florence on March 30 and 31: two days to engage with a work that, without raising its voice, continues to speak with unsettling clarity to our present.

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