and one item of proto-serialism in the form of a tonal melody (cantus cancrizans) extended through its own retrograde and inversion forms. No doubt such writing was encouraged by Stravinsky's European trauma. But it is not essentially foreign to his own previous work from the Mass onwards, and might, but for what followed, have been accepted as a late-period intensification of that tendency. The Septet is somewhat different, however, because of its systematic abandonment of overt tonality as it pursues its 16-note row through a polyphonic Passacaglia and Gigue (after a first movement based on the same material but candidly in A major-minor and sonata form). Even here the influence of Schoenberg seems to be largely technical. Linguistically, the hard rhythmic articulations and sharply characterized textures seem light years from op.29's contrapuntal self-communings. And curiously, it is through rhythm that Stravinsky seems to restore a new kind of tonal focus, whereas with Schoenberg atonality in pitch and, metaphorically speaking, atonality in rhythm go hand in hand. The Septet was eventually performed at Dumbarton Oaks in January 1954. By that time several major theatre projects had come, and in all but one case gone. In May 1953 Stravinsky had met Dylan Thomas in New York and they had discussed an operatic collaboration based on Thomas's idea of a rebirth of language and myth after the near-destruction of humanity in a nuclear war. But the poet had died suddenly in November, just as the Stravinskys were awaiting him in Hollywood. Meanwhile in August Stravinsky agreed to write a new ballet for Kirstein to go with Apollo and Orpheus. Kirstein was floating another Apollonian subject (having previously contemplated Eliot's Sweeney Agonistes), whereas Balanchine had had an idea based on Terpsichore which later evolved into a dance competition before the gods ... as if time called the tune, and the dances which began quite simply in the sixteenth century took fire in the twentieth and exploded (letter from Kirstein to Stravinsky, 31 August 1953). It was this last idea that led eventually to Agon. But first, Stravinsky composed his Three Songs from William Shakespeare and In memoriam Dylan Thomas, an intensely beautiful setting of Do not go gentle into that good night for tenor and string quartet, framed by solemn dirge canons (reminiscent of Gabrieli) for strings with trombones. Here a chromatic five-note row is used, without note-repetitions, still using a mainly melodic serialism, whose patterns are emphasized for ceremonial or ritualistic effect a uniquely Stravinskian touch. The first half of Agon was then sketched and drafted, ending in December 1954 with the coda to the Gaillarde, which seems to be the first music Stravinsky composed using a chromatic 12-note row. Up to this point the work reflects Balanchine's idea of a succession of antique dances inspired by Mersenne, and alternates tonal pieces with free chromatic dances of a concentrated rhythmic, motivic character. At this point, he broke off to fulfil a commission by the Venice Biennale for a Passion according to St Mark. Only when this work, the Canticum sacrum, had been completed (in November