(Stravinsky: The Second Exile, France
and America, 1934 - 1971, ISBN 0-373-40752-9,
the second volume in this set, was published
in 2006. This book is reviewed at www.musicweb-international.com/classrev/2006/Oct06/Stravinsky_exile.htm)
Having read the second
book in this series first, and therefore
now knowing how things turned out it
is fascinating in a particular way to
read the first book to see things beginning
in a clear understanding of how they
worked themselves out. Actually, most
musical readers are in somewhat the
same position I am as many musical readers
with an interest in this area will have
read the Robert Craft conversation books
and will believe they understand a lot
about late Stravinsky. In his second
book, Walsh makes some important correctives
to the ideas in the Craft books so,
if it is not necessarily better to read
the second book first, it’s not really
the worst idea. So rather than reviewing
the second book on the basis of remembering
the first, I am here reviewing the first
while remembering the second.
Walsh begins by affirming
his great debt—and ours—to Robert Craft
as Stravinsky’s archivist and personal
assistant, a necessary and tactful gesture
because, over the course of the two
volumes, Walsh will examine much of
what Craft has published and offer in
many cases differing interpretations.
The reason for most of this is simply
that Stravinsky was uninterested in
history, most especially his own, and
fabricated generously. Stravinsky wanted
there never to be a biography of him
written, but Walsh forthrightly disregards
the composer’s wish and asserts our
right to know the facts.
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky
was born 17 June [NS], 1882, at about
noon, in Oranienbaum, Russia, a summer
resort a day’s journey to the west of
St. Petersburg. In case you’re interested
(I am) that works out to Virgo rising,
Sun conjunct the asteroid Vesta in Gemini
at the midheaven, Jupiter in Gemini
in the Ninth House, Mars in Leo, Moon
conjunct Mercury (retrograde) in Cancer
in the 10th house, Uranus in Virgo in
the Twelfth house in opposition to the
asteroid Ceres/Persephone in Pisces
at the Descendant. Of course, as we
astrologers are well aware, at almost
the same instant a baby was born in
India and another was born in China,
and these three people all led very
different lives. And, as we astrologers
will see over the progress of this two
volume set, all of these influences
manifested themselves fully in Stravinsky’s
life.
His father Fyodor was
a famous opera singer at the time, and
Igor was named after the Prince Igor
of Borodin’s opera. The family was quite
well off and could afford to and did
travel considerably. The elder Stravinsky
acquired a huge library of philosophical
books as well as opera scores; he died
miserably after a long, painful struggle
with bone cancer when Igor was 22. Stravinsky’s
meeting with Rimsky-Korsakov was almost
accidental — he befriended the distinguished
composer’s son at school. Curiously,
Rimsky-Korsakov agreed with Stravinsky’s
mother Anna that the Conservatory was
not the place for Igor, and Rimsky-Korsakov
gave him private lessons. Prokofiev,
of course, DID go to the Conservatory,
at about this same time, receiving personal
guidance from Taneyev, but there no
record that the two music students in
the same city ever met there. Stravinsky
was nine years older than Prokofiev,
but began studying later in life, so
there was actually only a few years
difference in their beginning their
careers.
Young Igor was shy,
obedient, unassuming. He remembered
his childhood as monotonously unhappy
and oppressive. His father had been
a violent-tempered tyrant. Igor was
destined not for music but for the civil
service and he and his mother argued
constantly so that he took any excuse
to be out of the house, almost living
with the Rimsky-Korsakov family. There
is little doubt why it was Igor’s talented
older brother Roman who had been his
parents’ pet; the photographs show that
the resemblance between father and son
was striking. Roman’s death at an early
age, two years before the death of his
father was a shattering blow, enough
to unhinge any wife and mother. The
anniversary of Roman’s death was each
year the occasion for fresh mourning
and a requiem service in Church. His
widowed mother was obsessed about the
health of her children and demanded
that all communications begin with a
full recital of symptoms or their absence.
Igor’s drive for freedom
took urgency when his long friendship
with his first cousin Yekaterina (Katya)
blossomed into love. He was 24 before
he had the nerve finally to marry her,
and then only when the year of mourning
for his father had run its course. Their
honeymoon was in Finland and by the
time they returned and the newlyweds
had moved into the Stravinsky apartment,
mother had conceded defeat and was polite
if not docile. Photographs after this
time show the previously retiring Igor
Stravinsky, now a husband and master
of his mother’s house, looking intensely,
at times insolently, directly into the
camera and enjoying strutting in modish
clothes.
Rimsky-Korsakov was
impressed with Stravinsky’s early attempts
at composition, one of which was a brief
cantata in honor of Rimsky-Korsakov’s
birthday, and encouraged him to finish
the piano sonata he was working on.
When the sonata was complete, Rimsky-Korsakov
was extremely pleased with it and right
away committed himself to giving Stravinsky
private lessons. These consisted at
first of work on the orchestration of
Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Invisible
City of Kitezh. Rimsky-Korsakov
would ask Stravinsky to orchestrate
a section, go over what he had done,
then point out how he, Rimsky-Korsakov,
would have done it. He also assigned
Stravinsky to write a symphony, directing
him to study the Glazunov Eighth
Symphony and the Taneyev Fourth
Symphony, both recently published.
When Stravinsky’s Symphony in Eb
("Opus 1") was complete in
sketch, then master and pupil worked
over the score and Stravinsky revised
extensively. Listening today to Glazunov
and Taneyev, one sees almost no point
of contact with the Stravinsky style,
although the influence of Rimsky-Korsakov
remains vivid to the last of his works.
Rimsky-Korsakov was
gruff, stingy with praise. He never
before or after took a personal pupil.
His own children were not musical, and
perhaps he felt that in Stravinsky he
had found a son and successor. In Rimsky-Korsakov
Stravinsky found a stern but approachable
father who would encourage and help
him in his music. Rimsky-Korsakov also
found a copyist and helpmate during
the composition of his final musical
works. Perhaps naturally the Rimsky-Korsakov
children were jealous and after the
death of their father contrived to quarrel
with Stravinsky and eventually break
off all friendly communication. The
situation is hauntingly like the Stravinsky-Craft
relationship which was to cause such
bitter rivalry between Robert Craft
and the Stravinsky children, again only
after the death of the composer.
Stravinsky was apparently
completely faithful to his wife Katya
until her mother moved into the house,
followed not long after by his own mother
moving in as well, this conflation of
the families made necessary by the Russian
revolution which left many completely
without means. Katya’s tuberculosis
which was dormant in youth had been
activated by her first pregnancy, and
the strain of her steadily declining
health plus the responsibilities of
caring for four children left her exhausted
and presumably unable or at least uninterested
in fulfilling her wifely duties. In
a short span Stravinsky had a crush
on a showgirl, for whom he wrote a piece
of music, then a brazen affair with
Coco Chanel, which she terminated in
a publicly humiliating manner. Vera
deBosset Sudeykina was married at the
time she and Stravinsky began their
affair, which they kept completely a
secret for some time. Eventually everyone
found out and after much storming during
which Sudeykin threatened to kill everyone,
he finally left for the U.S. and the
lovers were free to meet openly. Over
the next decade they both are rumored
to have had affairs, but in 1940 they
were married and after that lived a
model of fidelity.
When Charles Ives found
out that his colleague Henry Cowell
was gay, Ives reacted in shock and rage
and refused ever to speak to Cowell
again. Some have wondered if, since
Stravinsky greatly admired Tchaikovsky
and Musorgsky, had many homosexual friends
and collaborators throughout his European
and American careers, conducted business
with them, and quarreled publicly with
them, did he have homosexual affairs?
Walsh (as well as Craft) presents not
the slightest hint of any such thing.
Another suggestion comes from the fact
that Vera’s husband Sudeykin was bisexual,
and she may have found that attractive
in him as well as in Stravinsky, but
that is hardly a base for reasonable
speculation. If such a thing occurred
it would most likely have been when
Stravinsky first arrived in Paris, but
it left not the slightest evidence.
In contrast, the Hamburg gay community
today tells stories of the young Brahms,
and this may have been one reason Brahms
could never get a musical job in Hamburg
and spent his later life in ultimately
tolerant and forgiving Vienna - which
Stravinsky despised.
If I were to find a
fault in these books it is that Walsh
does enjoy showing off his vocabulary
and his knowledge of Russian. Keep your
OED and your Larousse at hand. Brush
up on your Russian nicknames. Stravinsky’s
surviving brothers were named Yury and
Gury, but "Gima" and "Gimochka"
refer to Igor. "Seryozha"
is Diaghilev. A project as huge as this
is a learning experience for everyone;
Walsh is a better writer at the end
of volume two than he was the beginning
of volume one.
There are those who
say that after Sacre du Printemps
Stravinsky stopped writing music or
might as well have. The second book
describing the gestation of the later
masterpieces takes their eminence for
granted. This first book describes Stravinsky’s
activities, interests and feelings about
music immediately before and after the
Sacre, and records contemporary
critical reactions. Sacre represents
Stravinsky’s furthest excursion into
the use of large orchestras, his legacy
from Rimsky-Korsakov. When people complained
that he should continue to write like
that, he reacted angrily, saying that
these people wanted him to go backwards,
when he wanted to move forwards. He
was forever wanting to explore new combinations
of sounds, new forms both dramatic and
absolute, for the stage and the concert
hall. His early works had often been
written to order, on detailed commission.
His later works more likely followed
his own lead. There is a famous story
where he dreamed the Sacre, and
later in his life he dreamed other works
as well.
Stravinsky had luxurious
tastes from his upper middle class upbringing
in Tsarist Russia, but the Russian Revolution,
WWI and WWII, and the 1929 crash created
huge financial stresses, especially
for a man with a large extended family
and a mistress to support. He wrote
his piano concerto and learned to play
it because he needed the money, and
he gradually learned to be a good conductor
because he needed the fees from conducting
his own music. Once one accepts that
he worked unceasingly at composing,
continually inspired, always exploring
and moving into new vistas, then his
work taken as a whole is seen to be
more even in quality, more consistent
in style, and the middle and late works
can be better appreciated. He deliberately
avoided allowing his personal emotions
to enter into his work, and some of
his most reserved works were written
at times of emotional stress and crisis.
The one exception to this is that when
he became involved in the Orthodox and
Roman Catholic churches in the thirties
he for the first time set religious
texts, a trend which increased in his
later years.
For my own taste, after
lots of listening and reading these
books, I rank Stravinsky’s works as
follows:
The great masterpieces,
the works which, had he written only
one of them, would rank him among the
greatest of composers:
Sacre du Printemps
(1913)
Symphony of Psalms
(1930)
Threni (1958)
Firebird (1910)
Petrushka (1911)
Masterpieces:
In Memoriam Dylan
Thomas (1954)
Symphony in Three
Movements (1945)
Concerto for Piano
and Winds (1924)
Apollo (1928)
Agon (1957)
L’Histoire du Soldat
(1918)
Violin Concerto
(1931)
Good music, the works
which will probably remain in repertoire,
which, had he written only these, would
rank him as a composer of note:
Œdipus Rex (1927)
The Rake’s Progress
(1951)
Pulcinella/Suite
Italienne (1920)
Octet for Winds
(1923)
Symphonies of Wind
Instruments (1920/1948)
The Nightingale/Song
of the Nightingale (1914)
Renard (1916)
Symphony in C (1940)
Concerto in D (1946)
The Fairy’s Kiss/Divertimento
(1928)
Vom Himmel Hoch
Variations (1956)
Les Noces (1922)
Fireworks (1909)
Scherzo for Orchestra
(1908)
Pastorale (1907)
Some works are difficult
to evaluate, good in part but uneven
in quality. These are controversial:
Persephone (1934)
Canticum Sacrum
(1955)
Requiem Canticles
(1966)
Sermon, Narrative
and Prayer (1961)
Symphony in Eb
(1908)
"Dumbarton
Oaks" Concerto (1938)
Movements for Piano
and Orchestra (1959)
Some of his music is
simply not very interesting, however
one might admire the skill involved.
These are the works which will probably
not survive, which will become footnotes.
One such work is his chamber opera Mavra,
pronounced a failure at its premier
and hardly played since. Babel,
written for a film, The Flood,
written for television, and Abraham
and Isaac, his first setting of
the Hebrew language, may be others.
These works are generally only performed
and recorded in "complete"
surveys of his music.
This is a lot of music,
a lot of amazingly fine music in varied
styles. It is noteworthy compared in
originality, variety and extent to the
lifetime output of, say, Sibelius, or
Vaughan Williams, two other composers
who lived approximately as long at about
the same time. Although I once shook
hands with Milhaud and with Erich Leinsdorf,
argued in a hallway with Lukas Foss,
chatted with Paul Chihara at a party
at Alden Ashforth’s, gave Randy Rhodes
a horoscope reading, literally bumped
into Iain Hamilton in a theater lobby,
most important to me was watching and
hearing Stravinsky conduct at the podium
from my seat in the balcony in Royce
Hall. That is the closest to greatness
I’ve personally ever been.
Paul Shoemaker
