Stravinsky

by Stephen Walsh

  43 27 May 1938, SSCIII, 265. Bela Bartók, whose music was not in the exhibition, actually protested against its exclusion.

  44 For a digest of this correspondence, see SSCIII, 267–71, passim, much of it in footnotes. As ever, the translations have to be treated with caution. See also SPD, 554–5.

  45 Letter of 31 May 1938 to Jean Marx in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Paris: SSCIII, 267, note 83. In due course, a kind of disclaimer was issued by the German Foreign Office, to the effect that “neither the person nor the work of Igor Stravinsky as a whole was intended to be rejected on the basis of the exhibition.” German text in Joan Evans, op. cit., 105–6.

  46 Letter of 28 January 1939 (PSS). Strecker was echoing a statement by the critic Herbert Gerigk in that month’s Nationalsozialistischen Monatshefte that “there existed no grounds for eliminating Stravinsky from German musical life.” Only in 1940, after the fall of France, was he officially banned on account of his French citizenship. See “Notiz zu Strawinsky,” in Dümling and Girth, Entartete Musik, 226; also Joan Evans, op. cit., 107–8.

  47 Letter of 5 June 1939 to Strecker (PSS).

  48 See SCS, 83–4.

  49 Letter of 24 May 1938 (PSS). The following correspondence is all in the same file.

  50 Letter of 28 June 1938 (PSS)

  51 Letter to Stravinsky, 6 September 1938 (PSS).

  52 Letter of 10 July 1938 (PSS).

  53 Letters of 19 and 25 August 1938. Theodore and Denise were staying in Morges.

  54 DB, 93.

  55 See Cingria’s letter to Stravinsky of 24 October 1938, SSCIII, 124; also 121–2, note 23.

  56 Letter of 24 October.

  57 DB, 93 (entry for 8 November); also Cingria’s letter (undated, November or December 1938) to Stravinsky, SSCIII, 125. At risk of laboring the point, however, it needs restating that the Cingria letters in SSCIII are so chaotically mistranslated and so senselessly edited as to be nearly useless for practical purposes.

  58 DB, 93 (entry for 21 November).

  59 See Katya’s and Theodore’s letters of late November to Igor, in PSS; also DB, 93, passim, and Sfam, 141.

  60 SPD, 640, note 187. The letter has not surfaced, but I have taken the poem to be the one published as no. 122 in Ed Weeda (ed.), Yuriy Mandel’shtam: Sobraniye Stikhotvoreniy, 93–4.

  61 I assume this to be the “scene” referred to by Vera in her diary for 18 December 1938. See DB, 93, where the Russian word “skandal” is too mildly rendered as “difficulties.”

  62 Letter of 31 December 1938 (UCLA, Kall). Kall had written on the 9th (PSS).

  63 Sfam, 143. In his unpublished memoirs (Are You the Son …?), Soulima implies that they were all in fact aware of the risk of infection, two respectable doctors having already asserted that the situation was beyond remedy.

  64 Letter to Strecker, 1 February 1939, in SSCIII, 271.

  65 I have broadly accepted Denise Strawinsky’s account of Katya’s death, though well aware of possible motives for romanticizing the scene. See Sfam, 144–5.

  66 Craft notes in SSCII, 506, that Stravinsky left for Sancellemoz on the 15th of March. However, the Sancellemoz admission records show that he arrived on the 12th.

  67 To be exact, Anna was ill for about a week before she died. Soulima’s letter of 4 June to his father (PSS) refers to an “intestinal obstruction.”

  7 TO THE MAGIC MOUNTAIN

  1 Soulima Stravinsky, Are You the Son …?

  2 Letter of 17 June 1939 (sold at Sotheby’s, London, 18 November 1988, lot 470).

  3 Matthew Arnold, “Dover Beach.”

  4 John Culhane, Walt Disney’s Fantasia (New York: Abrams, 1983), 12, 108.

  5 Culhane (op. cit., 135) describes a meeting in November 1938 at which Disney rejected the idea of commissioning new scores, on the grounds that “those guys don’t work that way.”

  6 A copy of the contract is in PSS. Speiser claimed (letter of 14 January 1939) to have worked hard to push the fee up, for which his reward was to have his own percentage reduced, from 25 to just over 20. Of the $6,000, Speiser took $1,250, while ERM’s U.S. agents, Galaxy, took $1,000, leaving the composer with $3,750. See Expo, 145–6, for Stravinsky’s own account of these transactions.

  7 As was all music by non-U.S. citizens at this time, since the U.S.A. had never signed the Berne Convention on copyright.

  8 See Valérie Dufour, Strawinsky à Bruxelles (Brussels: Académie Royale de Belgique, 2003), 116–9; also Paul Collaer’s letter of 18 April 1939 to Stravinsky, in ibid., 236–7, and Darius Milhaud’s review in La Revue musicale, 20e année, no. 191 (May–June 1939), 69/309. On the failure of earlier performances to materialize, see SCS, 173.

  9 Soulima noted down the relevant passages on a sheet of paper now in the New York Public Library. The Mozart is bars 37–8 of the Andante cantabile; the Haydn, for example, bars 17–25 of the Andante.

  10 Letter of 15 March 1939, SSCI, 437.

  11 Rosenstiel, Nadia Boulanger, 310.

  12 Letter of 28 March 1939 (PSS). Other documents are in the E. W. Forbes Papers of the Harvard University Archives. Some additional published information is in Elliot Forbes, A History of Music at Harvard to 1972 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, 1988). Craft states (in SSCII, 503) that Stravinsky had already been sounded out the previous autumn and had accepted in principle via Nadia. This is supported, however, by no surviving documents except possibly Forbes’s ambiguous remark, in a letter of 21 March 1939 to Dean George H. Chase, that the decision had been delayed by the death of Stravinsky’s wife and daughter, and that Nadia would be acting as intermediary.

  13 Letter of about 21 April 1939 (UCLA, Kall).

  14 See his letter of 29 July 1939 to Strecker (PSS). The Library of Congress purchase remained intact, as confirmed by the head of the Music Division, Harold Spivacke, in a letter of 7 July (PSS). It was the Chicago Symphony Orchestra commission that now seemed doubtful.

  15 Curiously enough, Cingria had written an article for the Nouvelle Revue française on the same subject and with the same point of view as Souvtchinsky’s, but graciously withdrew it. Souvtchinsky submitted his own article to the NRF, but it was rejected. See SSCII, 505–6.

  16 Courrier royal, 4 January 1936.

  17 Notes on a dinner at the Café Weber, 3 November 1938, reproduced in facsimile in Igor Strawinsky, Poétique musicale, ed. Myriam Soumagnac (Paris: Harmonique Flammarion, 2000), 159–62.

  18 See Roland-Manuel’s letter to Stravinsky, 24 March 1938, quoted in SSCII, 506–7, as if it referred to the writing-up of notes for Harvard. Craft bases his discussion of this and other early texts in the collaboration on the assumption that Stravinsky already knew about the Harvard post in late 1938 and that Roland-Manuel was already preparing his texts in March 1939. But the evidence is against this. Stravinsky was only invited in late March 1939, and he did not accept even provisionally until 11 April, being uncertain until then that his doctors would let him do so. There is no significant evidence that Harvard were even considering him before February or March (see note 12, above), and no direct reference to the Harvard project in any outside correspondence, before Stravinsky’s letter of about 21 April to Kall and Souvtchinsky’s of 26 April to Stravinsky, which not only argues for Roland-Manuel as the better collaborator (in terms suggesting that the issue is still open), but also refers to Souvtchinsky having just shown Roland-Manuel the chapter headings, “which he liked very much.” Craft’s remark that Stravinsky’s “in-principle acceptance had been conveyed to the university by Nadia Boulanger months earlier [than March 1939]” seems to be either speculation or a reminiscence of Vera Stravinsky’s. Nadia was not in the U.S.A. between May 1938 and mid-January 1939, and she did not reach Boston until late February or early March. (In any case, why transmit such information by carrier? The telegram was in universal use.) It seems, therefore, that Roland-Manuel’s 24 March letter must refer to his RM article. As for the pensée, as Craft calls it (ibid., 506), which Stravinsky scribbled on the back of t
he envelope of this letter, it may or may not have been written down at the time but in any case is not directly related to the Harvard lectures. It deals with the word as sound material, a topic not raised in the lectures.

  19 Letter of 1 May 1939 (PSS). Nevertheless, Stravinsky’s outline, written out at almost exactly this time, still refers in the first lecture to “8 lectures,” though it only provides for six. See the free translation in SSCII, 511–5.

  20 Souvtchinsky’s letter is in PRKIII, 671. His recently discovered lecture drafts have been described and discussed by Valérie Dufour in two important articles: “La Poétique musicale de Stravinsky,” Revue de musicologie, 89/2 (2003), 373–92; and “Strawinsky vers Souvtchinsky: Thème et variations sur la Poétique musicale,” Mitteilungenen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, 17 (March 2004), 17–23.

  21 See the photo in Strawinsky, Poétique musicale, ed. Soumagnac, 61.

  22 La Revue musicale, 20e année, no. 191 (May–June 1939), 70/310-80/320 (unhelpfully, the pages are double numbered, for the issue and the year respectively).

  23 Dufour, however, finds the influence of Souvtchinsky also in this interview, and it must be admitted that the text gives the impression of having been written out in advance in answer to a set of presubmitted questions. So perhaps Souvtchinsky planned this as well.

  24 Poet, 53–5. The equivalent pages in the Soumagnac French edition are 98–9.

  25 La Revue musicale, op. cit., 15/255–18/258.

  26 Poet, 131–2; Soumagnac, 150–1. Valéry’s “Première leçon du cours de poétique” is in Paul Valéry, Oeuvres, vol. 1 (Pléiade edition, Paris: Gallimard, 1957), 1340–58.

  27 Poet, 13–15 (Soumagnac, 71–2); 61 (103).

  28 Letter to Kall of (about) 21 April 1939 (UCLA, Kall).

  29 Letter of 24 April 1939 (PSS).

  30 Letter of 26 April, PRKIII, 671.

  31 Letter of 28 April to Souvtchinsky, PRKIII, 672.

  32 Letter of 23 May to Igor Stravinsky, PRKIII, 676–8.

  33 Letter of 28 April.

  34 Letter of 23 May.

  35 Ibid. Souvtchinsky had heard from Roland-Manuel that Stravinsky was offended, but he does not say why. His letter of 3 May, however, will have arrived on the 4th or 5th, probably the day Roland-Manuel left Sancellemoz. It passes lightly over the Soulima issue, saying “I love Svetik, but I love you more.” Soulima himself remarked later that it was “not easy to resist the attractions of this intelligent, cultured, whimsical, enigmatic, truly Dostoyevskian character. It was easy to trust him and count on his loyalties. It was also most dangerous to do so, as I learned” (Are You the Son …?).

  36 Letter of 25 May, PRKIII, 678–80.

  37 4 June 1939 (PSS). This is the letter that includes an account of what turned out to be Anna Stravinsky’s final illness.

  38 These particular anecdotes are from Soulima Stravinsky, interview with Thor Wood, and Are You the Son …? (in the memoir, the car at the funeral is Misia Sert’s). No doubt the reminiscences are colored by subsequent events, but since the tone and content of the interview and memoir are not in general hostile to Vera, I have seen no reason to doubt their essential veracity.

  39 Igor wrote to Souvtchinsky on 25 June that “I expect Vera on about the 10th at the latest,” but Vera’s PS to Igor’s next letter of 9 July suggests that she was there by then. Both letters in PSS.

  40 Stravinsky’s letter of 8 July 1939 to Souvtchinsky (PRKIII, 698) is contradicted by Denise Strawinsky’s memory (private communication). But see also DB, 104, note 2, supporting the composer.

  41 Letter of 8 July to Souvtchinsky.

  42 Ibid. Olivier Messiaen’s short article, “Le rythme chez Igor Strawinsky” (RM, op. cit., 91/331–2/2), was to prove seminal for postwar analysis, but in any case it is hard to see from its sensitive and intelligent contents what Stravinsky can have disliked about it. The jab at de Schloezer, who did not contribute to the Revue, clearly implies that Stravinsky supposed he had been involved in planning the issue.

  43 “Igor Strawinsky: Législateur du ballet,” RM, op. cit., 81/321–90/330.

  44 See Stravinsky’s letter of 8 July to Souvtchinsky.

  45 The claim that the reconciliation was due to Vera is Craft’s: see DB, 104, note 2. See also Stravinsky’s letter of 31 July 1939 to Theodore (PSS).

  46 The movement was finished in short score on 19 July.

  47 Letter of 20 April 1939, PRKIII, 670.

  48 Letter of 24 August 1939, quoted in Soumagnac, 39, and “Diaghilev: Les Ballets Russes,” exhibition catalogue (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, 1979), item 347. Strecker was at Sancellemoz on the 22nd, and the French mobilized part of their reserve on the 23rd. Soulima, though he still had a Nansen passport, had been enrolled as a reservist and now held a French “livret militaire.”

  49 Letter of “Monday” [28 August] 1939 (PSS).

  50 Letter of 27 August (PSS). The Biennale was cancelled.

  51 Letter of 29 August, quoted in Soumagnac, 39–40.

  52 Some manuscripts had already been lodged with ERM the previous April: see M. F. Astrov, letter of 15 April 1939 to Stravinsky, PRKIII, 666. Unfortunately, the list enclosed by Astrov with his letter seems to have been lost.

  53 Rosenstiel, Nadia Boulanger, 312.

  54 See his letter of 13/15 September 1939 to Theodore (PSS).

  55 Letter of 17 September 1939, in R. Mallet (ed.), André Gide–Paul Valéry: Correspondance 1890–1942 (Paris: Gallimard, 1955), 517.

  56 This and other details are in Rosenstiel, Nadia Boulanger, 313. I am not convinced, though, by Rosenstiel’s view that “Paul Valéry enjoyed Stravinsky’s company only when the composer was playing the piano and singing.” This is not borne out by the various accounts of their meetings, and especially not by François Valéry’s reminiscence, in a letter of 4 November 1946 to Stravinsky, of “that singular affinity in aesthetic rigor and at the same time that opposition of philosophical ideas. I can assure you that that opposition is not fundamental …” Quoted in Soumagnac, 43.

  57 Letter of 6 October 1939, in M. Chimènes (ed.), Francis Poulenc: Correspondance 1910–1963 (Paris: Fayard, 1994), 485.

  58 See his letter of 21 September 1939 to James B. Conant, the Harvard president (Harvard University Archive).

  59 Postcard of 16 September 1939 (PSS). On the 21st he wrote another postcard informing Theodore that he was “leaving in two hours. Departure fixed for tomorrow.”

  60 As related by Vera in her letter of 4 October to Stravinsky. See DB, 95; also 93, note 6.

  8 THE POETICS OF SURVIVAL

  1 Compare Forbes’s letter of 11 December 1939 to Nadia Boulanger (Harvard University Archive) with his much later account to Lawrence Morton (letter of 4 April 1961: UCLA, Morton), which claims that after one night and a jolly dinner Stravinsky asked point-blank if they could stay. I have preferred the contemporary report. Forbes asked $250 a month in rent, but Stravinsky insisted on paying $300, then forgot, and there was an embarrassment the following January when Forbes had to remind him. See Forbes’s letter to Stravinsky of 5 January 1940 (PSS).

  2 Frederick Jacobi, Jr., “Harvard Soirée,” Modern Music (October/November 1939), 47–8, reprinted in Carol J. Oja (ed.), Stravinsky in Modern Music (New York: Da Capo Press, 1982), 57–8.

  3 Alexis Kall, “Stravinsky in the Chair of Poetry,” Musical Quarterly, 26, no. 3 (July, 1940), 284.

  4 Jacobi, op. cit., 48.

  5 Winthrop P. Tryon, “Stravinsky on Composing,” Christian Science Monitor, 2 November 1939; compare Poet, 62, 61.

  6 Jacobi, op. cit., 48.

  7 SPD, 642–3, note 13.

  8 Lawrence Dame, “Harvard Lectures Resemble Concerts,” Boston Herald, 28 April 1940.

  9 See SCS, 358–9.

  10 “With the Fire Bird’s Heart,” Philadelphia Inquirer, April 1940. See also Dagmar Godowsky’s letter to Kall, 27 October 1939 (UCLA, Kall).

  11 Walter Piston, “A Reminiscence,” Perspectives of New Music, ix/2 and x/1 (1971), 6–7.
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  12 Most of this information is derived from her long letters of October–December 1939 to Stravinsky, in DB, 93–110.

  13 See his letter of 21 November 1939 to Vera in DB, 103–4. Handwritten drafts (in French and Russian) are in UCLA, Kall.

  14 See Vera’s letters to Igor of 28 October and 23 November 1939, in DB, 99, 104–5. A draft of the letter to Theodore, mainly in Kall’s hand but with an autograph conclusion in Stravinsky’s, is in UCLA, Kall.

  15 Letter of 11 December 1939 to Vera, in DB, 107–9.

  16 Almost all the information in this paragraph is collated from Vera’s letters to Stravinsky, and her diary for January 1940, as published in DB, 100–10. However, the diaries in their published form are a very far cry from the originals, preserved in PSS. As has previously been noted, Vera’s diaries are hybrid, part engagement book, part journal. Many entries that Craft works into coherent, literate texts are actually no more than jotted names, with times and intentions—a dinner, a trip to Chartres, a visit to the cinema. Dinners will be preceded by shopping lists (with amounts paid) in the margins, or across the top or bottom of the page. Different inks and pencils, and varying weights and sizes of handwriting, indicate that the jottings were made at different times, as in any engagement diary. Craft’s editing completely obscures these distinctions, often leaving the reader unaware that an “event” was actually no more than a plan. He even sometimes aggravates this problem by adding events (for instance, concerts) that he happens to know took place, even though Vera doesn’t mention them—thereby completely subverting the whole point of a published diary, which is its personal contemporaneity. Worst of all, he imports extensive material from elsewhere, without ever identifying it, except in the case of the many letters he quotes within the text (and a few entries from Igor’s diaries). The diary for January 1940 is particularly rich in such additions. For instance, the sad parting with Ira Belyankin referred to here, though presumably authentic, is nowhere to be found in Vera’s diaries. The entry for 4 January, about life onboard ship, is almost entirely imported, the reader can only guess from where (and will not ask unless he chance to consult the Russian-language originals in Basle). For what it’s worth, the original Russian text may be translated: “At Gibraltar, we make an interminable stop and only leave at 2. Two fat Jewish ladies ask sleepily: ‘Was ist das für eine Station?’ [‘What port is this?’],” which hardly coincides with DB at all. Add to this confusion of sources the misallocation of dates, the seemingly casual errors of translation, the more or less habitual change of verbal tense for the recording of events (past in the original, usually present in the book), and the subtly or unsubtly nuanced footnotes—all by now well-known features of Craft’s editing—and you have a death trap for helpless, credulous researchers. In nevertheless using it as a source, I have always referred to the original diaries. All references to imported text are noted.