Stravinsky
Page 91
34 SPD, 374; Dial, 53. See also Stravinsky’s letter to Soulima of 12 December 1945 (private collection).
35 According to DB, 132, Denham telephoned on 2 November to invite Stravinsky to conduct.
36 Telegram to Stravinsky, 11 September 1944 (PSS).
37 Respectively: Louis Biancolli, New York World Telegram, 11 September 1944; John Martin, New York Times, 11 September 1944; Biancolli, op. cit. Biancolli thought the score bad, while denying it the excuse of not having been written for the dance, since he was under the impression that it had been.
38 Martin, op. cit.
39 Edwin Denby, New York Herald Tribune, 11 September 1944.
40 Denby, New York Herald Tribune, 17 September 1944.
41 New York World Telegram, 11 September 1944.
42 Letter of 17 September 1944 (PSS).
43 Rieti’s letter of 14 September 1944 (PSS) and Stravinsky’s reply of the 18th, in Ricci, Vittorio Rieti, 411–12.
44 Letter to Rieti, 18 September.
45 See Stravinsky to Winter, 8 October 1944, in SSCIII, 299, and Winter’s letter of 23 October (PSS).
46 Telegram of 30 November 1944 (PSS).
47 Telegram of 30 November 1944 (PSS).
48 Abravanel’s account of the whole episode is in a letter to Eric Walter White, 28 February 1981 (HRC, White).
49 Ibid.
50 Anton Dolin, Markova: Her Life and Art (London: Allen, 1953), 242.
51 Letter to Abravanel, 4 December 1944 (HRC, White).
52 Howard Barnes, New York Herald Tribune, 8 December 1944.
53 Time, 18 December 1944, quoted in Schuster-Craig, op. cit., 289.
54 Letter to Vera Stravinsky, 15 December 1944 (PSS).
55 27 December 1944 (PSS).
56 Telegram from Abravanel to Stravinsky, 6 January 1945 (PSS).
57 DB, 128, entry for 21 May.
58 Compare DB, 131, with Vera’s letter of 10 September 1944 (Rosenbach Library, Philadelphia). The ironic quotation marks in DB round the words “most beautiful” and “most famous” are not to be found in the original diary.
59 DB, 132.
60 N. Nabokov, Old Friends and New Music (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1951), 151.
61 Craft’s first letter is dated 22 February 1944, Stravinsky’s reply 27 February (PSS). See SSCI, 328, for a summary and excerpts.
62 Craft, “Encounter and Metamorphosis,” in Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life, 19–32.
63 Craft wrote on 29 March and 15 August 1944, but Stravinsky seems only to have answered the latter (19 August).
64 See Dorothy Lamb Crawford, Evenings On and Off the Roof (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), for this and much more information on Yates, Mullen, and the early history of the Roof concerts.
65 Ibid., 61, 64.
66 See note 2, above.
67 The fair copy of the Kyrie bears the copyright date 1944, that of the Gloria 1945 (PSS).
68 Craft, “Stravinsky—Relevance and Problems of Biography,” in Prejudices in Disguise (New York: Knopf, 1974), 290–1.
69 Joseph, Stravinsky Inside Out, 74.
70 Ibid.
71 See Nadia Boulanger’s letter to Stravinsky of 21 August 1944 (PSS).
72 Expo, 76–7. See also Craft, Prejudices in Disguise, 290.
73 Murrill, “Aspects of Stravinsky,” Music & Letters, xxxii/2 (April 1951), 118–24.
12 DISTANT CLASHES OF ARMS
1 New York Herald Tribune, 2 February 1945. Later on there were side trips to Philadelphia, where he repeated his Chicago lecture and performed two-piano works with Vincent Persichetti, and (in early March) to Rochester and Montreal, where he conducted, of all things, Lalo’s Cello Concerto, with Marcel Hubert as soloist.
2 Decca had already settled in 1943.
3 DB, 132.
4 See, for instance, his letter of 20 February 1942 to Ernest Voigt, urging AMP to acquire his works, as “I need a publisher …” (PSS).
5 Koussevitzky invited Stravinsky to his Carnegie Hall concert on 14 February, but Stravinsky declined as he was conducting Apollo for a broadcast later that evening. See his letter of 8 February 1945 (LoC, Koussevitzky): English translation in Yuzefovich, “Chronicle of a Non-friendship,” 816. According to Vera’s diary, Koussevitzky called on them on the 19th, the day before the AMP meeting (DB, 132).
6 Levy wired Stravinsky on 23 March 1945, inviting Stravinsky to telephone. There were then one or more meetings, after which Stravinsky summarized the position in a letter of 20 April (drafted, no doubt, by Sapiro) (PSS).
7 To recapitulate: Petrushka and The Rite of Spring enjoyed protection in countries signatory to the Berne Convention because ERM (in Berlin, the Russische Musikverlag) had copyrighted them in Germany, itself a signatory. Berne copyright in Firebird, on the other hand, had been established through legal action in the twenties (see SCS, 439–40). None of the three works had been protected in the U.S.A., which had never signed the convention, and of which their composer had not been a citizen.
8 Letter of Helen Jacobson to Sapiro, 27 July 1945 (PSS).
9 Letter of 14 August 1945 (PSS).
10 Lieberson to Stravinsky, 9 April 1945; Chase to Stravinsky, 22 June (PSS).
11 Letter of 18 December 1945 (PSS).
12 The Prelude (1850 text), Book X, 58–61.
13 Letter of 27 March 1945, in Chimènes (ed.), Francis Poulenc: Correspondance, 584–6 (phrase in internal quotes in English in the original).
14 “Strawinsky contre les imbéciles,” Carrefour, 24 March 1945. Desormières had conducted the work twice.
15 “Un concert houleux,” unidentified newspaper, March 1945 (cutting in PSS).
16 Sauguet, “Troisième festival Strawinsky,” La Bataille, 22 March 1945.
17 Jolivet, “Assez de Strawinsky,” Noir et Blanc, 4 April 1945; Nigg, “La querelle Strawinsky,” Combat, 15 April 1945; Poulenc, “Vive Strawinsky,” Le Figaro, 7 April 1945; Baudrier, “Lettre à Serge Nigg,” unidentified newspaper, April 1945 (cutting in PSS).
18 Leibowitz, “Béla Bartók, ou la possibilité du compromis dans la musique contemporaine,” Les Temps modernes (1947), 729.
19 Joan Peyser, Boulez: Composer, Conductor, Enigma (London: Cassell, 1976), 31.
20 “Schoenberg est mort,” in Relevés d’apprentri (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1966), 271 (italics his). The article originally appeared as “Schoenberg Is Dead,” in The Score, no. 6 (February 1952), 18–22. It appears retranslated into English in P. Boulez, Stocktakings from an Apprenticeship, trans. S. Walsh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 209–14.
21 Letter of 18 August 1945 (PSS).
22 Lourié, “Neogothic and Neoclassic,” Modern Music, 5 (1928), 3–8.
23 Letter of 25 April 1945, quoted in SSCII, 515–16.
24 See Schaeffner’s letter of 1 September 1946 (PSS).
25 Radio Paris, 10 February 1944 (text in PSS).
26 The letter itself has not surfaced, but its contents can in general terms be deduced from Igor Stravinsky’s letters to Soulima (30 March: private collection) and to Milhaud (23 May [PSS]), and Milhaud’s to Poulenc of 19 June (private collection).
27 Letter of 23 May 1945 (PSS).
28 Letters of 3 January and 27 March 1945, passim: see Chimènes (ed.), Francis Poulenc: Correspondance, 577 (but with the information on Marcelle Meyer expunged), and 585 (originals: private collection).
29 Letter to Milhaud, 13 July 1945 (private collection).
30 See above, chapter 9, note 30.
31 Soulima’s explanations are in Are You the Son …?
32 The subject is first mentioned in Igor’s letter to Theodore of 18 December 1945, which also indicates, however, that the Marions have already been invited and have accepted with enthusiasm (PSS).
33 Undated note, possibly a postscript to Bourdariat’s letter of 25 April 1945, but dated by Myriam Soumagnac to February; see her preface to the Poétique musicale, 22. The chapter was, of course, largely the work of Souvtchinsk
y.
34 Poet, 111, 110; Soumagnac, 137, 136.
35 Heyworth, Klemperer, vol. 2, 141.
36 Stravinsky wrote to Koussevitzky on 20 June that he had “just finished” the suite. See Yuzefovich, “Chronicle of a Non-friendship,” 817. The letter is in English, which does not inhibit SSCI, 350, note 53, from rewording (and misdating) it.
37 Letter of 14 August 1945 (PSS).
38 The contract is dated 17 October 1945, and it specifies the exact lengths of the three movements.
39 Craft, “Discoveries in Stravinsky’s Sketches,” The Moment of Existence (Nashville and London: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996), 272.
40 Dial, 51.
41 By 20 August, when he informed Gretl Urban of its completion. He told Rieti that the idea for a three-movement symphony was inspired by the latter’s Sinfonia tripartita (1944), which is dedicated to him. See Ricci, Vittorio Rieti, 166.
42 The Billboard, 29 September 1945; but the article carries the dateline 24 September.
43 SPD, 377. See also the correspondence between Sapiro and Woody Herman’s agent, Herman Goldfarb, in PSS.
44 See Deakin’s letter of 20 April 1945 to Stravinsky (PSS).
45 Telegram of 25 October 1945 (PSS).
46 Letter of 27 October 1945 (PSS). “Stinks” is in English in the original French text.
47 DB, 133. The ballet was choreographed by Todd Bollender and conducted by Emanuel Balaban.
48 Dial, 53.
49 Letter of 4 November 1945, in SSCI, 244.
50 David Hamilton, “Schoenberg on Records,” High Fidelity Magazine (September 1974), 70.
51 Los Angeles Times, 19 November 1945.
52 Dial, 106. Stein’s account is in “Schoenberg and ‘Kleine Modernsky,’” in Pasler (ed.), Confronting Stravinsky, 315. Stravinsky also claims that they “were in the recording studios on the same day,” though there were probably no separate recording sessions and it was the concert that was taped. I have so far failed, however, to trace a copy of this recording, which is referred to by Morse Jones in her LA Times review.
53 Expo, 78.
54 See his letter to Zirato of 8 December 1945, in SSCII, 437, note 6. The problem was that the Symphony of Psalms also lacks violins and violas, so any normal orchestral filler (such as Pulcinella, which likewise has no clarinets) was ruled out. Stravinsky might equally have thought of his unperformed Kyrie and Gloria, each about the same length as the chorale, and scored within the available instruments. But from the start Stravinsky “heard” this music with children’s voices on the soprano line; and in any case, he would not have expected a choir to learn so novel a work so quickly. Finally, he probably did not yet regard these pieces as complete. As early as March 1945, the (manuscript) full score of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments had been among a group of scores he had asked Soulima to send from the Paris store; letter of 16 March (private collection).
55 Expo, 72.
56 See ASS, 16, for facsimiles of the two certificates. In ibid., 9, Craft implies that the divorce fraud was perpetrated in March 1940 at the time of their civil wedding, but in SPD, 635, note 91, he gives the date as 15 April 1945, and in IVSPA, as 5 August 1945. No evidence is adduced for any of these conflicting dates, but an entry in Vera’s diary for 27 August 1945 is closest to the last date mentioned: “So as not to forget: I married Sud[eykin] on 11 February 1918 at Yalta. I divorced Sud[eykin] on 20 February 1920 at Tiflis” (DB, 133). See also above, chapter 8, note 27.
57 See IVSPA, 104, for a detailed account of these activities and a photograph of Vera in the gallery.
58 Sacher wrote on 30 December 1945; Stravinsky replied on 9 January that he could only accept if a maximum of twelve minutes’ music was required (PSS).
59 Peter Hill, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 53.
13 ORPHEUS IN A NEW GUISE
1 In between, in New York the day after the Carnegie Hall concert, Szigeti recorded the early Pastorale in its version with wind quartet, under the composer’s supervision. In the Carnegie concert, Claudio Arrau also played the Serenade in A.
2 See Winter’s letters to Stravinsky of 24 February and 24 November 1944 (PSS).
3 Letter to Stravinsky, 8 April 1946 (PSS). “Humbleness” is in English in this otherwise Russian-language letter.
4 This may have been the occasion when, according to Craft, Haieff slept on the floor of the Stravinskys’ compartment, since no other was available (ImpLif, 113). Craft places this on a journey from Los Angeles to New York, but Haieff apparently did not travel with the Stravinskys on any of their wartime or just-postwar transcontinental rail trips.
5 DB, 136; ASS, 26.
6 The San Francisco concerts included, on 22 March, the world premiere of the orchestral version of the Scherzo à la russe.
7 New York Times, 2 February 1945. See chapter 12; whatever might be said about individual pieces, the program (the Glinka, Tchaikovsky’s second symphony, and Stravinsky’s Ode, Piano Concerto, Four Norwegian Moods, and Circus Polka) undoubtedly lacked focus.
8 Letter to Stravinsky of 31 March 1946 (PSS).
9 Letter of 2 April (BN, Manziarly). Haieff’s account is in his letter of 8 April (PSS).
10 Letter of 9 January 1946 (PSS).
11 See Berman’s letter to Stravinsky of 7 February 1946 (PSS); also DB, 136. In a letter of 4 April to Theodore, Stravinsky says he has started work on the Medea music, which has to be ready by mid-July; but a postscript announces that the project has been called off, as they could not meet his terms (PSS).
12 Letter from Ralph Hawkes to Aaron Sapiro, 15 February 1946 (PSS).
13 See Stravinsky’s letter of 7 April and Sacher’s reply of 25 April; also chapter 37, note 12. Sacher offered 5,000 Swiss francs (about $1,200), on the grounds that Strauss had accepted this for Metamorphosen eighteen months before. He omitted to mention that the Strauss work is in twenty-three string parts and lasts half an hour.
14 See his letter to his son Theodore, 10 May 1946 (PSS).
15 Letter of 3 July 1946 (PSS).
16 See Stravinsky’s correspondence with Massine in PSS.
17 The autograph score of the Concerto in D is dated 8 August 1946; the autograph score of the revised Petrushka, in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, is dated 14 October 1946.
18 “The man of talent is like a marksman who hits a target others cannot hit, but the man of genius is like a marksman who hits a target others cannot see.” Bryan Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 171.
19 The contract letter is dated 7 May 1946 (SSCI, 265), but the proposal was probably brought by Balanchine in April.
20 The Stravinsky version is reproduced in facsimile in DB, 137; also in Muzïkal’naya Akademiya, no. 4 (1992), 190.
21 Taper, Balanchine, 220. They and Berman also discussed a possible new choreography for Scènes de ballet, but nothing came of it.
22 The notes, in Russian in Stravinsky’s hand, are reproduced in Joseph, Stravinsky and Balanchine, 194 (originals in PSS).
23 Chapin, Musical Chairs, quoted in SPD, 347.
24 Letter of 17 January 1946 (PSS).
25 Letters of 25 April and 7 August 1946, respectively (PSS).
26 Expo, 38.
27 Letter of 11 April 1946 (BN, Boulanger).
28 Letter of 18 December 1945 (PSS). There had been a dispute between the two brothers over back payments of the rent on Denise’s mother’s flat in Paris.
29 See Païchadze’s letter of 4 April 1946 to Stravinsky (PSS).
30 Letter of 25 October 1946 (PSS).
31 Sybille Bedford, Aldous Huxley: A Biography. Volume Two: 1939–1963 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1974), 75.
32 SCF (94), 22.
33 Letter of 3 December 1947, quoted in Bedford, op. cit., 87.
34 T&C, 52; T&E, 46–7.
35 Taper, Balanchine, 221.
36 “On Apollo and Orpheus,” The Moment of Existence, 295.
37 Stage directions printed in the score.
38 T&C, 53; T&E, 48. As usual the (inauthentic) texts of the two editions differ in many details.
39 N. Nabokov, Old Friends and New Music, 152. Stravinsky called it a “vielle,” which Nabokov wrongly interprets as a viol. The medieval fiddle, played without vibrato, has a nasal, almost adenoidal sound.
40 SPD, 645, note 30. Bukofzer wrote on 8 April 1947.
41 DB, 138.
42 Quoted in Taper, Balanchine, 207.
43 DB, 139.
44 Craft, “Encounter and Metamorphosis,” Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life, 26.
45 The information that Stravinsky attended Renard rehearsals is in ibid., and also in DB, 139. By contrast, Todd Bollender, who danced the Fox, told Nancy Reynolds that Stravinsky did not attend any of the rehearsals (private communication from Dr. Reynolds, 2004).
46 The photograph was published in AMC under the misleading caption “Historic encounter.” The admission that the two did not meet on this or any previous occasion is Craft’s own, in SSCI, 331, note 8.
47 See Stravinsky’s letter of 10 February 1947, replying to Craft’s of 21 December, in SSCI, 329.
48 White’s dating of the concerto’s first performance to 27 January is an error, alas perpetuated by the present author in the Stravinsky work-list in The New Grove (2nd ed.).
49 See Stravinsky’s letter of 25 January 1947 (misdated 1946), and Mrs. Bliss’s telegram of 31 January (PSS).
50 Letter of 14 March 1947, SSCIII, 314.
51 Letter of 10 February 1947 (PSS).
52 Letter of 11 October 1946 (PSS).
53 Letter of 11 November 1946 (PSS).
54 Letter of 18 November 1946 (PSS). Messiaen was, of course, French, but it is not entirely clear from Stravinsky’s letter whether he really thought him Belgian or was ironically pretending to think so.
55 Letter of 22 December 1946 (PSS).
56 This was noticed a few months later by Nicolas Nabokov, who, after spending some time with Stravinsky in New York in early April 1947, wrote to Souvtchinsky that “I formed the impression he has something against you—some small irritation.” See Yelena Pol’dyaeva, “Vtoroe pokoleniye,” in A. Bretanitskaya (ed.), Pyotr Suvchinskiy i ego vremya (Moscow: Kompozitor, 1999), 186–7.