Stravinsky

by Stephen Walsh

  WOLF

  Two Sacred Songs from the Spanisches Liederbuch (“Herr, was trägt der Boden hier,” and “Wunden trägst du”), arranged for mezzo-soprano and ten instruments, 1968. First performance: Los Angeles, 6 September 1968. Published: Boosey and Hawkes, 1969.

  BACH

  Preludes and Fugues from Das wohltemperierte Klavier, in E minor, C-sharp minor, B minor (Book I) and F major (Book II), for wind and strings (various combinations), 1969. First performance: Neuchâtel, 18 January 2005. Unpublished (Boosey and Hawkes).

  NOTES

  LIBRARY ABBREVIATIONS

  (Specific collections are denoted by the name attached to the library identifier.)

  BN Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris

  Columbia Columbia University, New York City

  HRC Harry Ransome Center, University of Texas, Austin

  LoC Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

  NYPL New York Public Library

  PSS Paul Sacher Stiftung, Basle

  RGALI Rossiyskiy gosudarstvennïy arkhiv literaturï i iskusstva (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art), Moscow

  RGB Rossiyskaya gosudarstvennaya biblioteka (Russian StateLibrary), Moscow

  SCNY Surrogate’s Court, New York County, 31 Chambers Street, NY 10007 (file no. 2749–71)

  UCLA Department of Special Collections, Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles

  ENTR’ACTE: A HOUSE DIVIDED

  1 H. G. Wells, The Shape of Things to Come (1933), book 1, chap. 13.

  2 Quoted in J. E. Bowlt (ed.), The Salon Album of Vera Sudeikin-Stravinsky (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), xv.

  3 Maritain, Art et scolastique (Paris: Art Catholique, 1920), 9.

  1. A GENTLE AND A FREE SPIRIT

  1 See SCS, 514.

  2 As Robert Craft does in SSCII, 492.

  3 Letter of Prokofiev to Myaskovsky, 17 September 1934, in PMP, 427–8; English translation in Harlow Robinson (ed. and trans.), Selected Letters of Sergei Prokofiev (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998), 312. See also Prokofiev’s letter of 6 September 1934 to Asafyev, in ibid., 137. Prokofiev does not exactly tell Myaskovsky that he saw Nouvel at Voreppe, but by mentioning the two authors and projects in the same sentence he strongly implies it. This is slightly obscured in the repunctuated English translation.

  4 Letter of 25 February 1935 (PSS). The arguments, largely circumstantial, are too detailed to elaborate in full here. Nouvel certainly wrote Stravinsky’s article “Diaghileff as I Knew Him” (the evidence is again in a letter from Katya, 4 March 1937 [PSS], wrongly dated 1935 in SSCII, 492, note 5). But for Haskell’s book Diaghileff: His Artistic and Private Life (London and New York: Gollancz and Simon & Schuster, 1935), he provided only “a mass of carefully compiled notes,” as Haskell acknowledges both in hisintroduction and on the title page. Craft finds a similarity of style between the two books, though (unless Haskell’s acknowledgment is deliberately misleading) this is no argument for Nouvel’s authorship of Chron. Similarities of content there certainly are, as one might expect. But Craft also, most bizarrely, suggests that oddities and archaicisms in the English translation of Chron are the fault of Nouvel (or whoever wrote the book). Incidentally, Stravinsky read excerpts to Katya at Sancellemoz in July 1935. “I’m so glad you read me what is written of your book,” she wrote to him on the 26th, and later (6 August) she referred to Nouvel as “your faithful collaborator [sotrudnik]” (PSS).

  5 After adopting “Soulima” as his professional Christian name in 1931, Svetik came to prefer it to the Russian diminutive of Sviatoslav, and while his family continued to call him “Svetik” or “Nini,” new friends, including his French wife, knew him as Soulima. Henceforth, except sometimes in quotations, this book will follow suit.

  6 Soulima Stravinsky, unpublished interview with Thor Wood, February 1977 (typed transcript in NYPL). I am grateful to Charles Joseph for bringing this interview to my attention. It is only fair to note, however, that Soulima is contrasting Nouvel’s role with Robert Craft’s in the conversation books and may therefore, more than forty years after the event, be affected by some bias against Craft.

  7 The closure was by no means official. In August 1934 Frankfurt Radio had broadcast The Rite of Spring, conducted by Hans Rosbaud, and in November Erich Kleiber included the work in a public concert in Berlin. A memorandum of the German radio had stated on 27 July 1934 that “there was no racial or political objection to Stravinsky.” Nevertheless a German tour, or regular German concert bookings, remained out of the question. See Joan Evans, “Stravinsky’s Music in Hitler’s Germany,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 56/3 (Fall 2003), 540.

  8 See Katya’s letter of 25 February 1935, referring to a (now lost or inaccessible) letter from her husband of 7 February (PSS). In fact no currency is specified, but since $150,000 would be a fantasy profit in the circumstances, I have assumed francs (the equivalent of $5,000–6,000). For information on Merovitch, see Gregor Piatigorsky, Cellist (New York: Doubleday, 1965), passim; also Merovitch’s obituary in the New York Times, 9 August 1965 (he died on the 7th).

  9 Stravinsky learnt about Merovitch’s illness from Dushkin, who was in New York (telegram of 15 November 1935; letter of 26 November [PSS]).

  10 Milwaukee Wisconsin News, 15 January 1935; Town Crier, 7 January 1935. The Arts Club reception and concert were on the 13th, the Milwaukee concert (with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra) on the 14th, and the three orchestral concerts in Chicago itself on the 18th, 19th, and 22nd. The Milwaukee concert seems to have been the first occasion on which the Fairy’s Kiss excerpts, in their orchestral version, were formally billed as the Divertimento (see SCS, 660, note 85). On the 21st Stravinsky and Dushkin gave a recital in Minneapolis, a ten-hour train journey from Chicago, presumably returning overnight in time for the next day’s concert.

  11 Several critics noted a marked improvement in his conducting since 1925.

  12 The only significant variation was that occasionally they gave only part of a whole program. In Toledo on the 23rd, for instance, they gave the second half of a concert whose first half was played by a quintet from Paris.

  13 According to one reporter, Stravinsky uttered only two words in English at his first Chicago rehearsal: “red wine.” He conducted the rehearsal in French. See Jack Diamond, “Stravinsky Likes His Wine Red; Talks to Orchestra,” Chicago News, 12 January 1935. But his English must have improved during the tour, if only because, by late March in Washington, he was speaking it enough to be frequently corrected. See SPD, 321, quoting the Washington Post of 24 March 1935.

  14 Letter of 15 January 1935 (mistakenly dated 1934), Alexis Kall to Stravinsky (PSS). In the rejected ceremonious form of address, the word “you” (vï) is the polite second person plural, but elsewhere, and throughout their correspondence, Kall addresses Stravinsky in the intimate second person singular, as tï. For information on the hitherto unknown figures in Kall’s list of former friends, see PRKIII, 555–6; also H. Colin Slim, “Unknown Words and Music, 1939–44, by Stravinsky,” in D. Rosen and C. Brook (eds.), Words on Music: Essays in Honor of Andrew Porter on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday (Hillsdale, New York: Pendragon Press, 2004), 302–3. Fyodor Alexandrovich Luther was a schoolteacher who ran a literary discussion group attended by his pupils, including Kall, and possibly also by Stravinsky (who was presumably not one of them, as he went to a different school). According to Viktor Varunts (PRKIII, 555, note 7), “Bilibin” was not the well-known painter Ivan Bilibin, but his brother Alexander, though as Varunts notes that the painter brother also belonged to the Luther circle, the point would seem to be academic. The poet Ivan Oreus, who wrote under the nom de plume Konevskoy (not, pace Slim, the other way round), was tragically drowned in the summer of 1901 at the age of twenty-four, thus providing a probable latest date for Kall’s first meeting with Stravinsky. On the pianist Nikolay Richter, Stravinsky’s cousin Mikhail Yelachich, and Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov, see SCS. A group photograph of Kall,
the Bilibin brothers, and Oreus, taken in 1898, is in PRKIII.

  15 I am indebted to Colin Slim for much of the material on Kall’s background, including the information that his former housemate, a well-known Hollywood con man called Michael Roomanoff, had committed suicide the previous month. The neighbors Kall mentions were the singer Nina Koshetz and a violinist by the name of Zhukovsky.

  16 Letter of 19 January 1935, Stravinsky to Kall, in PRKIII, 558.

  17 Letters of 22 January 1935 (misdated 1934), Kall to Stravinsky; 26 January, Stravinsky to Kall, in PRKIII, 559–61.

  18 Letter of 2 March 1935, Stravinsky to Kall, in PRKIII, 571.

  19 Merle Armitage, Accent on Life (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1965), 176.

  20 See the New York report in Musical Times, 76 (March 1935), 269. The orchestral pieces were interspersed with vocal items by Ponchielli, Bizet, Tchaikovsky, and others, sung by Gladys Swarthout and conducted by Frank Black.

  21 According to the Radio Guide, however, the Stravinsky element in the program was limited by what were described as “the excessive demands of Stravinsky’s publishers.”

  22 See Fernand Auberjonois, “Stravinsky, Fernand Auberjonois et les bisons,” quoted in SNB, 369–70. At some time during this particular stay in New York, Stravinsky was also visited by Vera’s husband, Sergey Sudeykin, in quest of work as a stage designer. See Vera’s letter to Stravinsky of 19 February 1935, in DB, 70–1.

  23 28 January 1936. See Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 84–5.

  24 Novaya Zarya, 14 February 1935 (quoted in PRKIII, 598, note 1).

  25 Dagmar Godowsky, First Person Plural (New York: Viking, 1958), 213.

  26 Ibid., 213–4. As always with Dagmar, a certain exaggeration has to be allowed for. Stravinsky was in Washington, taking his two 1935 visits together, for no more than five or six days in total, on two of which he had concerts. So the “scores” of parties Dagmar refers to can hardly have been more than half a dozen at the very outside. As for the train journey, one wonders what had become of Dushkin. Finally, Craft claims that Dagmar did in fact become Stravinsky’s mistress this time in New York (see ImpLif, 197), though if so it is extremely curious that Dagmar herself seems in effect to deny it.

  27 Isabel Morse Jones, “Singing Scotsmen Appear; Stravinsky Tells Plans,” Los Angeles Times, 19 February 1935.

  28 Miguel de Reus, “Masterly Concert Puzzles L.A. Audience,” Illustrated Daily News, 1 March 1935.

  29 Los Angeles Times, 21 February 1935.

  30 At that time the LAPO, like many American orchestras, contained a large number of European immigrants.

  31 Florence Lawrence, “Philharmonic Throng Cheers Igor Stravinsky,” Los Angeles Examiner, 22 February 1935.

  32 Letter of 30 January 1935, in PRKIII, 562–3. Italicized words in English in the original.

  33 Robinson’s own phrase. See Edward G. Robinson and Leonard Spigelgass, All My Yesterdays (New York: Hawthorn Books, 1973), 147–8.

  34 “Propositi di Strawinsky,” Gazetta del Populo (Rome), 31 May 1935. For a detailed account of the MGM visit, including a group photograph of Stravinsky, Kall, and Merovitch with Stothart and the music staff, see William H. Rosar, “Stravinsky and MGM,” in Clifford McCarty (ed.), Film Music, vol. 1 (New York: Garland, 1989), 108–22.

  35 Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography (London: The Bodley Head, 1964), 429–30.

  36 Letter of 17 November 1935 (PSS). Strecker had evidently outlined Chaplin’s proposal in a letter to Stravinsky of 8 November which, unfortunately, seems not to have survived. In quoting Stravinsky’s letter in SPD, 335, Craft misunderstands “je ne trouve pas ça du tout une idée utopique” in a sardonic sense; but in Stravinsky’s vocabulary not to be utopian (i.e., impractical) was a virtue.

  37 Chaplin, op. cit., 430. Chaplin says the dinner was at his house, but nothing else is known of such an occasion.

  38 The text of his speech is reproduced in facsimile in T&C, facing 145.

  39 New York Times, 16 March 1935; 28 April 1928.

  40 New York Times, 5 February 1936.

  41 Apart from a single matinee performance of The Firebird, in the Fokine choreography, which he conducted on the 21st.

  42 The Chicago recital was to have been on the 29th. The trip was saved from complete pointlessness by a recital in Winnetka on the 27th.

  43 Letter of 4 April, CASIII, 49–50.

  44 Letter of 2 April 1935, in DB, 75.

  2 THE POET OF MONTPARNASSE

  1 See Vera’s letters to Igor of 28 and 30 December 1934, in DB, 62, and Katya’s of 29 December, in PRKIII, 550, and DB, 62, note 9.

  2 See her letters to Igor in America, in DB, 61–75, passim.

  3 See Milène to her father, letter of 16 January 1935; Katya to Igor, letter of 31 January 1935 (both PSS).

  4 Vera to Igor, letter of 18 January 1935, in DB, 67. See also Katya’s letters to Igor, January–February 1935, passim (PSS); and Sfam, 118.

  5 Katya to Igor, letter of 11 February 1935, PRKIII, 568.

  6 Ibid. Irina Terapiano was the sister of Igor Stravinsky’s sister-in-law, Yelena Nikolayevna, the wife of his brother Yury. Craft (SPD, 256–7) misspells her name and—apparently quite unaware that she was Yury’s sister-in-law—characterizes her grotesquely as a “busybody” for having in 1925 intervened with Igor on his brother’s behalf. Elsewhere Craft also uses Mika’s “pleasant nature, good judgment … courage, maturity and independence” as a stick to beat her brothers, pointing out that it was Mika, not Theodore or Soulima, whom Stravinsky sent to Germany in May 1934 to bring out blocked funds. But Theodore had an emergency operation for peritonitis in mid-May, and Soulima was still convalescing from tuberculosis. In any event, a daughter is a much more effective emissary in such cases, being more likely to soft-talk her way past male guards.

  7 Katya to Igor, PRKIII, passim.

  8 See SCS, 531, which, however, mistakenly identifies Theodore as the subject of the diagnosis.

  9 Concert of 11 September. This was the two composers’ second and final meeting. Berg died fifteen months later.

  10 Letter of 20 October 1934; see also Stravinsky’s reply of 22 October (PSS).

  11 Letter of 22 October (Akademie der Künste, Berlin).

  12 Letter of 24 October, Scherchen to Stravinsky (PSS).

  13 Letter of 24 October (Akademie der Künste).

  14 See SCS, 13–14, 34–8.

  15 See, for instance, her letter of 12 February 1935, in DB, 70.

  16 But nothing, Katya thought, would induce Grisha to buy a new set of dentures, “even if he earned a million dollars” (letter of 28 February [PSS]).

  17 See her letter to Igor of 30 January 1935, DB, 68. Other information is from Katya’s letters of January and early February, passim.

  18 See Vera’s letter to Igor, 8 January 1935, DB, 66; also Katya’s letter of the same date (PSS).

  19 Letter of 16 February 1935 to Igor, in PRKIII, 568–9.

  20 Letter of 24 February 1935, in PRKIII, 569–70.

  21 Letter of 21 May 1935 to Igor, in PRKIII, 578–9.

  22 Letter of 26 April 1935 (PSS).

  23 Letter of 21 May.

  24 Letter of 11 August 1935 to her husband (PSS). For an account of Ira’s behavior on the eve of Mika and Yury’s wedding, see Katya’s letter of 12 October 1935 (PSS).

  25 For this and further information on Mandelstam, see Ed Weeda, Introduction to Yuriy Mandel’shtam: Sobraniye Stikhotvoreniy (The Hague: Leuxenhoff, 1990). I am grateful to Stanislav Shvabrin for bringing this volume to my attention. See also Y. Terapiano, Vstrechi (New York: Izdatel’stvo imeni Chekhova, 1953), 122–5. Yury Mandelstam was apparently not related to his more famous namesake, Osip.

  26 Letter of 22 August 1935, in PRKIII, 581–2.

  27 The Russian Orthodox church-in-exile had recently split into pro- and anti-Moscow factions, the latter of which was compelled to find makeshift churches for its services. The Strav
inskys adhered to this breakaway faction. See, for instance, T&C, 41.

  28 Information kindly supplied to the author by Mika’s younger sister, Milène Marion.

  29 Letter to Igor, 13 June 1935 (PSS).

  30 See Katya’s letter to Igor, 15 May 1935, in PRKIII, 577.

  31 Letter of 28 November 1934 (PSS). Stravinsky had spent three days in London, dining with Gollancz and his wife on the 26th and conducting the British premiere of Persephone at the Queen’s Hall on the 28th.

  32 “La Musique,” Vendredi, 24 January 1936.

  33 “La Musique,” Le Magazine d’aujourd’hui, 1 May 1935.

  34 Chroniques de ma vie, vol. 1 (Paris: Denoël et Steele, 1935), 106; Chron, 83. I have retranslated in this case in order to remain closer to the French text as cited by Marcel.

  35 Chron, 91.

  36 Stravinsky seems also to have been piqued by Romola Nijinsky’s recently published biography of her husband, with its hostile and possibly mendacious portrait of the composer at Morges in 1916: Nijinsky (London: Gollancz, 1933), 306–9. See also SCS, 262–4.

  37 Chron, 158: cf. SCS, 330–3.

  38 “Les Concerts,” Le Temps, 18 May 1935.

  39 Chron, 282–3.

  40 Ibid., 283–4, 286.

  41 Ibid., 286.

  3 GRAVES OF ACADEME

  1 Chron, 193.

  2 Soulima Stravinsky, interview with Thor Wood.

  3 Ibid.; also letter of 14 November 1934, Willy Strecker to Stravinsky, referring to the death-mask request (PSS).

  4 In Dial (42–3), Stravinsky claims that the double piano was specially built for work on the concerto; but it seems more likely that an existing instrument was commandeered. A letter from Katya of 14 August (PSS) suggests that the new piano was only installed in September.

  5 Dial, 43.

  6 Soulima Stravinsky, interview with Thor Wood.

  7 The obvious exception, in the finale of Brahms’s D minor Piano Concerto, pointedly excludes the soloist.