Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence Volume I

Gathers the modern Russian composer's letters, from different periods in his career, to friends, poets, and fellow composers

This is an odd hybrid of a book, as even its author acknowledges, devoted half to close examinations of aspects of Stravinsky's life (1882-1971) and relationships, half to sometimes technical analysis of his works. Craft is, of course, admirably suited for both tasks, but the book is essentially a grab bag of essays and reviews, many of which have appeared before (mostly in the New York Review of Books ). The longest pieces deal with Stravinsky's relations with his children, in which the chilly, removed father and the selfish, sometimes devious offspring all come off poorly. A sketch, through her correspondence, of his long-suffering first wife Catherine and her relationship with the composer's mistress Vera Sudeikina, whom he married after Catherine's death in 1940, is also revealing, and there is interesting commentary on the creation of the famous Craft-Stravinsky "Conversations" book collaborations. There are glimpses of Stravinsky with Dylan Thomas, and a bizarre story of conductor Leopold Stokowski helping to support the composer by inventing an imaginary female benefactor so he could secure American premieres of some of Stravinsky's works. But far too much of the book is devoted to minutiae of interest only to Stravinsky scholars and musicologists. Photos.
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