Stravinsky

by Stephen Walsh

  5 Newsweek, 23 January 1937, 24.

  6 Apart from in his General Motors radio concert in February 1935. Dushkin had been scheduled to play Stravinsky’s Violin Concerto and the Mozart D major in the first set, with Webster programmed for the second set, but Dushkin was taken ill and Webster stood in at short notice. Rumor had it that Dushkin had damaged his left index finger in an all-night practice session on a new type of E string (see Milton Widder, “Igor Stravinsky—Small Body but a Giant Brain,” Cleveland Press, 20 February 1937). He apparently had still not recovered by the second week.

  7 New York Herald Tribune, 22 January 1937.

  8 “Stravinsky Wins Stirring Ovation,” New York Times, 22 January 1937.

  9 Newsweek, 23 January 1937, 24. For details of the Philharmonic’s conductor problems during these years, see Howard Shanet, Philharmonic: A History of New York’s Orchestra (New York: Doubleday, 1975); also Peter Heyworth, Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

  10 Francis D. Perkins, New York Herald Tribune, 15 January 1937.

  11 New York Times, 15 January 1937.

  12 W. J. Henderson, New York Sun, 28 January 1937. The Suite italienne is based not on Tchaikovsky, but on the Pergolesi and Gallo borrowings in Pulcinella. The program did, however, also include the Tchaikovsky-based Divertimento.

  13 Letter of 17 October 1949 to Ralph Hawkes (PSS). The sketches suggest that the title was added later (initially with the spelling “Preludium”), but they also show that the original scoring was close to that of the published 1953 version, notwithstanding the note in the printed score that “the string parts were added in June 1953.” They were in fact merely revised at that time. The description “radio orchestra” is taken from an undated letter of Lawrence Morton to Nicolas Slonimsky (UCLA, Morton).

  14 Cleveland Press, 20 February 1937.

  15 Letters of Vera to Igor, 18 and 24 January 1937, DB, 83–5. See also Katya’s letters of January in PSS.

  16 Letter to Igor, 4 February 1937 (PSS).

  17 Letter of 12 February 1937 (PSS). Ste Geneviève-des-Bois is in fact no more than thirty kilometers due south of the capital.

  18 Letter of 15 February 1937, DB, 87.

  19 The letters, from late February and early March, appear not to have survived, but are referred to in some detail in Katya’s letters of the time (PSS).

  20 See SPD, 334, for a transcript of the sketch.

  21 Again the letter has not surfaced, but Strecker’s reply of 3 February 1937 (PSS) alludes to it.

  22 Letter of 8 March 1937, Copley to Dushkin (PSS).

  23 See Katya’s letters of 9 February and 16 March 1937 (PSS). On 5 March Stravinsky also wrote to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge turning down a commission for a string quartet which he had previously accepted in principle. See her letter of 31 July and his of 15 August 1936 (PSS).

  24 Dushkin travelled with his young wife, Louise.

  25 Letter of 4 November 1936. Armitage envisaged that Stravinsky would actually work on the score while in Los Angeles.

  26 The telegram and a copy of the undated draft contract are in UCLA, Morton.

  27 Alexander Fried, “Stravinsky Likes Idea of Writing for Movies,” San Francisco Examiner, 22 March 1937.

  28 Alfred Frankenstein, “Just Where Is Stravinsky?,” San Francisco Chronicle, 22 March 1937. Stravinsky refused to tell any of his interviewers what the script was about, but according to Craft the draft title was The Knights of St. David (see SSCII, 307, note 52).

  29 André Frank, “Igor Stravinski va composer pour le cinéma,” L’Intransigeant, 19 May 1937.

  30 See, for example, Strecker’s letter of 6 April 1937 (PSS).

  31 D. Milhaud, “Le Respect de soi-même, de son art et le cinéma,” Figaro, 19 January 1938.

  32 Morros himself later abandoned music and, in the immediately postwar years, worked for the U.S.A. as a counterintelligence agent in the Soviet Union. See Morros, My Ten Years as a Counter Spy (New York: Viking, 1959).

  33 See Dushkin’s letter of 31 January 1938 to Stravinsky, quoted in SSCII, 310, note 59. For a brief account of the Robinson dinner see Gershwin’s letter to Emily Paley quoted in Joan Peyser, The Memory of All That (New York: Billboard Books, 1998), 277 (but wrongly implying a January 1937 date for the letter and hence the dinner). Gershwin notes that Stravinsky asked “if he and Dushkin could play for the group. They played seven or eight pieces superbly.”

  34 See Fairbanks’s telegram of thanks, 20 March 1937, and an earlier, undated letter requesting the autograph (PSS). Stravinsky had met Fairbanks and Dietrich a few days before.

  35 For an account of this lawsuit and some documentation, see SSCII, 250–2. A contemporary summary is in Paris-Soir, 6 May 1937, 13 (misdated 19 May in SSCII, which also gets the author’s name wrong).

  36 Los Angeles Times, 26 July 1936, quoted in Heyworth, Otto Klemperer: His Life and Times, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 72.

  37 As well as being a dancer and choreographer, Kosloff had studied violin with Leopold Auer in St. Petersburg.

  38 Letter of 29 October 1936 to Stravinsky (PSS).

  39 Florence Lawrence, “Petrouchka Has Brilliant Color, Carnival Spirit,” Los Angeles Examiner, 13 March 1937.

  40 See the photograph of this scene in SPD, 338.

  41 Letter of 1 April 1937 (from Seattle) (UCLA, Kall).

  42 “Erstens ist es anders, zweitens als man denkt,” quoting the dictum of Wilhelm Busch. Letter of 19 April 1937 (UCLA, Kall).

  43 Letter to his wife, 15 April 1937, in G. Skelton, ed., Selected Letters of Paul Hindemith (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 103.

  44 Kirstein, “Working with Stravinsky,” 139.

  45 See SCS, 467. In Stravinsky and Balanchine (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 83 et seq., Charles Joseph proposes a much more specific collaboration, but his evidence is circumstantial. It depends, for instance, on the recollections of Vera Stravinsky, who was far away from Monte Carlo, where Balanchine was preparing Apollo in spring 1928, and it equates “discussion” of the music (which certainly took place the preceding winter) with actual production work, which Balanchine always did at rehearsal. Stravinsky himself was rather little in Nice (where he lived) in the first half of 1928. No doubt he attended one or two early sessions and he was certainly in Paris for the final rehearsals. Whether this adds up to a collaboration is a matter of opinion.

  46 Le Jour, 4 March 1938.

  47 George Balanchine, “The Dance Element in Stravinsky’s Music,” in Lederman (ed.), Stravinsky in the Theatre, 84.

  48 Julian Seaman, “Music,” Daily Mirror, 28 April 1937.

  49 Winthrop Sargeant, “Stravinsky’s Card Party Joyous Ballet Spectacle,” New York American, 28 April 1937.

  50 Letter to Willy Strecker, 20 May 1937.

  51 “Stravinsky’s Card Party Joyous Ballet Spectacle.”

  52 Rosenstiel (Nadia Boulanger, 274) states that Stravinsky “had appealed to Nadia,” but gives no source. Correspondence between the two is lacking for this period, as they were both living in Paris.

  53 See Nadia’s telegram to the Blisses, 8 June 1937 (PSS).

  54 Ibid.

  55 Letter of 17 May 1937 (sold at Christie’s, London, 29 June 1994, lot 124; Jonathan Stone kindly drew my attention to this substantial lot and allowed me to examine it before the sale).

  56 8 June, part of the Exposition Internationale de Paris.

  57 Letter of 20 June 1937, replying to Massine’s of 17 June (PSS). The identity of the “gifted young writer” is unknown. Viktor Varunts suggests Yury Mandelstam (commentary on this letter in PRKIII, 630, note 1); but it is hard to imagine that intensely serious poet working on a ballet scenario. Malayev is another, perhaps more obvious possibility. By late April he had recovered from his suicide attempt and was well enough to play tennis with Soulima, and even that most stressful of all ball games, croquet (letter of Katya to Igor, 27 April
1937 [PSS]).

  58 Letter of 8 August 1937 (PSS).

  59 Almost exactly at this time, Stravinsky also received a suggestion from Copley’s assistant, Severin Kavenoki, for a theatre piece based on the recent series of frescoes by José Clemente Orozco, The Epic of American Civilization, in Dartmouth College, but Stravinsky turned it down on the grounds that “I feel incapable of writing a folklore ballet, whether American or otherwise” (letter of 4 September 1937) (NYPL, Kavenoki Archive).

  60 Letter of 27 December 1937 (UCLA, Kall).

  61 See Sfam, 133–5, for these and other details. The Château de Monthoux was, incredibly, demolished in 1990, but the library building still stands, not far from the church on its mound. The grounds are now a small municipal park, with a duck pond nearby.

  62 Sfam, 136. Katya left for Sancellemoz early in September.

  63 Letter of 28 July 1937, SSCIII, 123, but with the quoted phrase truncated.

  64 Letter of 8 August 1937, SSCII, 306–8.

  65 Cingria sent the text with his letter of 5 July, suggesting that any necessary cuts or changes be made by Theodore; see SSCIII, 121–3, but with the reference to Theodore conspicuously omitted.

  66 SPD, 553.

  67 See Joan Evans, “Some Remarks on the Publication and Reception of Stravinsky’s Erinnerungen,” Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, no. 9 (March 1996), 17–23, for these and other details. The first German-language edition soon came out, in the autumn of 1937. Dr. Evans notes that while the Bayreuth passages were restored in later German editions, the remarks on Jewish violinists have never been reinstated.

  68 Another had been the German premiere of Persephone in Brunswick on 5 June, conducted by Ewald Lindemann. See Joan Evans, “Stravinsky’s Music in Hitler’s Germany,” 555.

  69 Hitler’s speech on modern art in connection with the Munich Entartete Kunst exhibition in July had been reported in extenso in the August issue of the Fascist paper Il musicista. See Harvey Sachs, Music in Fascist Italy (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987), 180.

  70 Alfredo Casella, Music in My Time, trans. and ed. Spencer Norton (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955), 218.

  71 This was of course a concert performance of Jeu de cartes. The European stage premiere was in Dresden on 13 October 1937.

  72 Stravinsky seems definitely to have heard a rehearsal of the Schoenberg Suite (see, for instance, SPD, 635, note 98, and 643, note 17), but there is no hard evidence that he attended the actual concert.

  73 M. Talalay, “Russkaya bogema v Positano,” Russkaya mïsl’, 10 February 2000; quoted in PRKIII, 634, note 1.

  74 Letter of 23 August 1937, in PRKIII, 633. One reason for including this quotation is in order to correct the startling mistranslation of it in SSCII, 263–4, note 6. Viktor Varunts suggests that Ira did not go to Positano (PRKIII, 643, note 3), but the evidence that she did is in several letters of Katya’s and a telegram from her husband.

  75 Letter of 18 September 1937 (PSS).

  76 Letter of 13 September 1937 (PSS).

  77 SSCIII, 253.

  78 CASIII, 63–4.

  79 Letter of 14 October 1937, CASIII, 65.

  80 Letter of 15 October 1937, CASIII, 66. Their letters crossed, and Ansermet’s change of mind came before he had read Stravinsky’s reply to his original letter.

  81 Letter of 19 October 1937, CASIII, 66–7. The London concert was on the 18th. Ironically, Stravinsky actually made two unmarked repeats in his performance, and these are preserved in his recordings (but not the published score) as follows: Berlin, 1938, bars 1–2 of fig. 202 repeated; Cleveland, 1964, figs. 99–106 and bars 1–2 of fig. 202 repeated. See White, Stravinsky, 397.

  82 Les Fondements de la musique dans la conscience humaine (Neuchâtel: A la Baconnière, 1961).

  83 Letter of 22 October 1937, CASIII, 67–70.

  84 Letter of 19 October 1937.

  85 SSCI, 227.

  86 Anne Ansermet, Ernest Ansermet, mon père, 89.

  87 See Berners’s letter to Stravinsky, 25 November 1937, in SSCII, 157. Berners sprayed his pigeons with harmless colored pigments, which added, he said, “a tropical touch to this wintry country.”

  88 The London concerts were on 18 and 19 October, Amsterdam on 28 October, Naples on 13 November, French radio on 6 December, Tallinn on 13 December, and Riga on 16 December.

  89 Letter to Stravinsky, 7 December 1937, in PRKIII, 639.

  90 L’Intransigeant, 29 December 1937.

  91 Letter to Dushkin of 4 January 1938.

  6 … AND WINS

  1 Letter of 3 December 1937 (PSS)

  2 Letter of 20 March 1938 (PSS).

  3 Letter of 23 April 1938 (Christie’s, London, 29 June 1994, lot 124).

  4 DB, 91–2, passim.

  5 The pneu (Paris express letter by pneumatic tube) has not surfaced, but its contents can be gleaned from Lourié’s reply of 23 December 1937 (PSS).

  6 Letter of 10 September 1938 (PSS).

  7 See SCS, 457; also CherP, 136.

  8 See Theodore’s letter to his father, 30 September 1938 (PSS).

  9 Lourié sent Stravinsky birthday greetings on 18 June 1939. “Don’t grumble at me for not writing,” he added, “but I don’t like empty phrases and a proper letter would use up a whole notepad” (PRKIII, 688–9). This might well be a veiled hint at the need for an explanation.

  10 The Sérénade, an occasional series mainly devoted to music by living composers, had been started by the marquise in 1932.

  11 For an account of the occasion (15 January 1938), see Prokofiev’s letter of 29 January to Myaskovsky, in PMP, 454; English translation in Robinson, Selected Letters of Prokofiev, 322–3. Stravinsky’s memory (Mem, 67) that he last saw Prokofiev in New York in 1937 is thus incorrect.

  12 “Igor Strawinsky s’afflige de l’indifférence des milieux musicaux officiels à son égard,” L’Intransigeant, 13 October 1937. In the same interview, he asserted emphatically (in the implied context of the recent death of Widor) that he would never again offer himself as a candidate for the Academy.

  13 Review of Jeu de cartes, Nouvelle Revue française, 26e année, no. 292, 1 January 1938, 149.

  14 See, for instance, René Simon, “Entendrons-nous bientôt des oeuvres de Stravinsky à l’Opéra?” L’Intransigeant, 19 March 1938.

  15 As well as the concerto, Igor and Soulima recorded Mozart’s Fugue in C minor, K. 426, which remains Stravinsky’s only published recording of another composer’s music, not counting his own arrangements.

  16 Letter of 15 May 1938 (PSS); emphases hers.

  17 Undated telegram (PSS). “Execution Concerto Dumbarton Oaks digne de l’oeuvre.”

  18 Letter of 15 May 1938 to Strecker (PSS). The comical confusion only arises because of the French word order and, of course, the telegraphic style.

  19 Letter of 16 May 1938, Mildred Bliss to Nadia Boulanger: see J. Brooks, “Mildred Bliss Tells Nadia Boulanger to Think of Herself for Once,” in Ralph P. Locke and Cyrilla Barr (eds.), Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists since 1860 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1997), 209–13.

  20 Letter of 31 May 1938, in SSCIII, 264, note 77.

  21 Letter of 26 May 1938, SSCIII, 264–5. Bach’s concertos were, of course, written for the Margrave of Brandenburg.

  22 André Coeuroy, Beaux-Arts, 17 June 1938.

  23 Robert Brussel, Le Figaro, 17 June 1938.

  24 The Rosenthal concert was on 30 May rather than the 29th, the actual anniversary.

  25 Coeuroy, op. cit.

  26 Vendredi, 17 June 1938; Posledniya novosti, 21 June 1938; NRF, 26e année, no. 298 (1 July 1938), 152–3. The passage quoted is from the NRF.

  27 Vendredi, 29 November 1935. Pelagius was a fifth-century British heretic who maintained that man could avoid sin and gain salvation through his own free will, and without divine grace.

  28 NRF, 1 July 1938, 152–3.

  29 Letter of 19 August 1938, quoted in Peter Sulzer (ed.
), Zehn Komponisten um Werner Reinhart, vol. 1 (Winterthur: Stadtbibliothek Winterthur, 1979), 84.

  30 Letter of 22 February 1938 (PSS). Dagmar’s letters are mostly in German, Stravinsky’s in French.

  31 Letter of 16 May 1938 (PSS), emphases hers. Original in English.

  32 See Stravinsky’s letter to Strecker of 1 June 1938, in SSCIII, 267.

  33 But not in 1910 at the time of The Firebird, as Stravinsky states in Expo (130). Claudel was in Prague throughout that period.

  34 SSCIII, 194, note 1. See also SPD, 318.

  35 P. Claudel, Journal, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1969), 236, entry for 5 June 1938; Claudel’s letter to Milhaud of 15 August 1938 is quoted in ibid., 1004, note 3.

  36 Le Figaro littéraire, 26 March 1938. Stravinsky’s annotated cutting is in PSS.

  37 Letter of 9 June 1938, SSCIII, 194.

  38 See their correspondence in SSCIII, 194–6.

  39 Letter of 25 June 1938, SSCIII, 267–8.

  40 See Paul Claudel and Jacques Madaule, Connaissance et reconnaissance: Correspondance 1929–1954 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1996), 271–82.

  41 “Manifeste aux intellectuels espagnols,” in Occident, 10 December 1937, with a postscript indicating that “intellectuals who wish to associate themselves with this manifesto can send their signature to one of the following addresses” (including Claudel’s own). The text names no names and claims to be politically neutral, but this would not have deceived its likely readers. See also Claudel’s poem “Aux martyrs espagnols,” in Oeuvres complètes de Paul Claudel, vol. 2 (Paris: Gallimard, 1952), 240–6, especially the passage beginning “L’heure du Prince de ce monde.” I am grateful to Christopher Flood and Maryse Bazaud for their help in locating these texts.

  42 For information on the exhibition and its background, I am indebted to A. Dümling and P. Girth (eds.), Entartete Musik: Dokumentation und Kommentar zur Düsseldorfer Ausstellung von 1938 (Düsseldorf: DkV, revised and expanded ed., 1993); also Michael Meyer, “A Musical Façade for the Third Reich,” in Stephanie Barron, “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (Los Angeles: Harry N. Abrams, 1991), 171–82; and Joan Evans, “Stravinsky’s Music in Hitler’s Germany,” 569–77. The main festival opened on 22 May, the exhibition on the 24th.