Chilly Night in Milan

Igor Stravinsky had promised (TIME, July 26) that his new Mass would be “cold music, absolutely cold. No women’s voices. They are by their very nature warm; they appeal to the senses.” The Mass was sung for the first time in Milan last week. And cold, absolutely cold, it proved to be.

Onstage, the chorus of 50 voices and the tiny orchestra (ten wind instruments) were dwarfed in La Scala’s gilt vastness. When Swiss Conductor Ernest Ansermet put down his baton after the 17-minute Mass, listeners looked at each other uncertainly. Stravinsky’s Mass was colder than an unheated cathedral in January. There was timid applause and jeering whistles, then more of both until praise and dispraise were about a standoff. The critics, too, pursed their lips.

Said Conductor Ansermet, who has been through chilly receptions before: “You may not agree with [Stravinsky] but you must admit that whatever he touches is out of the ordinary. Stravinsky composes nothing indifferent or second-rate. This work is a search for new possibilities . . . but it is difficult to listen to.”