Parallel harmony in Stravinsky's music: influences, confluences, and manifestations

This work investigates chordal parallelism in the music of Igor Stravinsky as a stylistic event, as well as an articulation of aesthetic influences and confluences. Exploring historical precedents through a literature review, including biographical questions related to the composer, this work demonstrates some compositional manifestations of this phenomenon, not only in the music of Stravinsky, but also in nineteenth-century Russian nationalism (especially in works of composers of Balakirev's circle) and in the work of composers with whom Stravinsky established friendships (including Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel). Perceiving that this aptitude features collaterality with the beginning of medieval theorized polyphonic practices, the chordal parallelism often manifested in Stravinsky's modernism represents a practical deviation from the mechanisms of tonal voice leading (especially those with an emphasis on oblique and contrary motion) that were established during the predominance of the tonal system. No less important than other surrounding questions related to his foreground compositional style are the moments in which chords are articulated in parallel, one of the technical features typically related to Stravinsky's music.