joseph c. stravinsky inside out

[...]... Jennifer’s love of ballet, I began exploring the Stravinsky and Balanchine partnership (about which I shall have more to say in a forthcoming book) When the Stravinsky archives in Basel, Switzerland, were opened to scholars in the 1980s, I began traveling regularly to the Paul Sacher Stiftung, where quite unexpectedly I stumbled across aspects of Stravinsky s life about which I either knew nothing or had entirely... Vera Stravinsky and ў xix ў xx ў A Note on Sources Robert Craft A particularly valuable one is Craft’s diary, first released in 1972 but significantly updated and expanded in 1994, titled Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship (the more recent edition is used here) Two additional secondary sources have been especially useful: Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft’s Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents, and Stravinsky: ... each piece Stravinsky Inside Out Cўhўaўpўtўeўr ў1ў Truths and Illusions: Rethinking What We Know Of all living composers, none has provoked so many studies, commentaries and discussions as Igor Stravinsky The eminent place occupied in contemporary art by the composer might partly explain this flowering of criticism But he is not the only one up on the heights, and yet, nearly always, Stravinsky. .. carriers of cultural history—and none more so than Stravinsky, who relied so deeply on indigenous models to guide him and his music throughout his life The romantic archetype of the monastic composer working in seclusion was as foreign to Stravinsky as one could imagine Stravinsky had to survive by his own wits After all, if he was to make a living without having to resort to teaching like most composers,... these works [Stravinsky s violin and piano pieces, Samuel] Dushkin collaborated with Stravinsky in writing the violin part,” Stravinsky circled the statement and added in the margin, “absolutely wrong”—though as the sketches in the Stiftung clearly reveal, Dushkin played a far greater role in assisting him than history has claimed, or Stravinsky was ever willing to admit.4 Sensitive to Stravinsky s... around his image Stravinsky did not work in isolation, churning out one masterpiece after another, insulated from the rapidly evolving world in which he lived To operate on such a naive assumption is to insult the inquisitive, rational, impassioned, pragmatic, and very human person that he was I have come to think about these issues only recently, for this is not the book I originally set out to write... first explores the context of one of Stravinsky s initial compositional ventures in America during the 1920s— and one of his most important ballets In the second, I offer a personal remembrance about the composer’s relationship with Soulima Stravinsky, his son and my former teacher This complex father-son bond was especially close during the 1930s, just before the elder Stravinsky came to America I make... important compositional achievements Stravinsky s longtime collaborator George Balanchine is missing, as are Martha Graham, Agnes de Mille, Josephine Baker, and Isadora Duncan And where are such legendary American jazz musicians as Parker, Duke Ellington, Billie Holiday, and Art Tatum? Yet Stravinsky is there, sandwiched between the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty and “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Even more... quite insufficient To one and all, “Thank you, my dear,” as Stravinsky himself would have said A Note on Sources I have chosen not to include a formal bibliography for two reasons First, the Stravinsky materials to which I refer throughout the text are fully documented in the endnotes listed for each chapter Readers unfamiliar with the vast Stravinsky literature, but still interested in pursuing these... booklet, Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, in which new acquisitions and summaries of current Stravinsky research are published It is virtually impossible to discuss Stravinsky s life without relying on the writings of the composer’s longtime associate, Robert Craft Some of the socalled conversation books by Stravinsky and Craft were published in two editions: one in Great Britain and one in the United . purported truths and fictions characterizing our current image of the composer. The next two chapters offer perspectives on the evolution of, respectively, a specific work and a specific familial relationship the composer would surely have endorsed Joseph Esherick’s claim that in music, as in architecture, “Beauty is a conse- quential thing, a product of solving problems correctly.” To assume that Stravinsky. The Composing Room of Michigan, Inc. Printed in the United States of America by R. R. Donnelly & Sons. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Joseph, Charles M. Stravinsky inside