Stravinsky

by Stephen Walsh

  57 Letter of 19 April 1947, in SSCI, 245.

  58 Sallard’s letters are quoted by Craft in DB, 141, note 8, but the quotations (from otherwise inaccessible correspondence) are selective and patently hostile to Marion.

  59 See his letter of 5 April 1947 replying to an enquiry of 31 March from Szigeti’s agent, Herbert Barrett, about the possibility of a recording of the Divertimento (PSS).

  60 I am grateful to Susan Palmer, archivist at the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London, for confirming that the oils were never sent to Chicago.

  61 This point was first made, as far as I know, by Lawrence Morton. See “Stravinsky in Los Angeles,” in the program book of the Festival of Music Made in Los Angeles (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Philharmonic Association, 1981), 80–1.

  62 Letter of 24 April 1947, Hawkes to Stravinsky (PSS). See also Stravinsky’s reply of 11 May, in SSCIII, 315.

  63 Letter of 23 June 1947, in SSCIII, 315.

  64 Quoted in SSCIII, 109.

  14 THE EYE OF THE NEEDLE

  1 Letter to Stravinsky of 15 July 1947, in SSCI, 266.

  2 Letter to Stravinsky of 16 October 1947, in SSCI, 269.

  3 Letter to Stravinsky of 26 December 1947 (PSS). The letter is in SSCI, 269–70, but without the passage quoted.

  4 As related to Christopher Isherwood. See Katherine Bucknell (ed.), Christopher Isherwood: Diaries, Volume One: 1939–1960 (London: Vintage, 1997), 698.

  5 Letter of 23 June 1947, in SSCIII, 315.

  6 Letter of 26 September 1947, in ibid., 317.

  7 Letter of 30 September 1947 (PSS).

  8 See Spies’s letter to Stravinsky of 17 March 1947 (PSS). Fine’s performance was on 26 February.

  9 Letter of 26 September.

  10 The RCA contract was dated 8 July 1947.

  11 See chapter 12.

  12 Letter of 22 August 1947 (PSS). Stravinsky’s contract was dated 28 May.

  13 “A Run of Half Notes,” Los Angeles Times, 9 November 1947.

  14 Letter of 12 March 1948 (PSS).

  15 Letter of 9 March 1949 (PSS).

  16 See his letter to Stravinsky of 7 October 1947 (PSS).

  17 Stravinsky to Hawkes, 7 October 1947 (PSS). The letter is in SSCIII, 318, but with the passage about Soulima omitted.

  18 Letter of 7 October, SSCIII, 318.

  19 Letter of 20 August 1947 (PSS).

  20 Craft, unused material from interviews with the present author for the radio series, Conversations with Craft (BBC Radio 3, 1995), producer Andy Cartwright. Hereafter CwC.

  21 Craft, “Encounter and Metamorphosis,” in Glimpses of a Life, 27.

  22 See Stravinsky’s letter to Craft, 29 August 1947, together with Craft’s commentary, in SSCI, 329–30.

  23 SSCI, 329.

  24 Letter of 5 September 1947, summarized in SSCI, 331.

  25 Letter of 7 October 1947, SSCI, 331–2.

  26 Letter of 7 October, SSCI, 332, which also quotes Craft’s reply of 11 October.

  27 Stravinsky to Craft, telegrams of 26 October and 4 November; Craft to Stravinsky, letter of 1 November (summary): SSCI, 333–4.

  28 Letter of 10 December 1947, quoted in SSCI, 334–5.

  29 Quoted in Charles Osborne, W.H. Auden: The Life of a Poet (London: Eyre Methuen, 1979), 225.

  30 Alan Ansen, The Table Talk of W. H. Auden (Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1990), 76–7.

  31 Letter of 6 October 1947, in SSCI, 299.

  32 Letter of 12 October 1947, in SSCI, 299.

  33 Mem, 157.

  34 Ansen, Table Talk, 17, 24.

  35 Mem, 157.

  36 Mem, 156.

  37 SCF (94), 108.

  38 Letter of 9 November 1947 (PSS). The letter is excerpted in SSCIII, 319–20, but with the Mozart request omitted.

  39 As he told Albert Goldberg in an interview for the Los Angeles Times, 23 November 1947.

  40 See Stravinsky’s letter to Hawkes of 25 November 1947, in SSCIII, 320; also to Hawkes’s assistant, Betty Bean, 10 December 1947 (in ibid. but the relevant passage omitted) and 12 January 1948 (ibid., 322). More curiously, he had previously asked Hawkes for music by Byrd (died 1623) and Purcell (died 1695) “as a sample of music in Hogarth’s [born 1697] time” (see ibid., 319).

  41 Letter of 5 October 1947, in SPD, 557.

  42 Letter of 20 November 1947, in T. Page and V. W. Page (eds.), Selected Letters of Virgil Thomson (New York: Summit Books, 1988), 215–16.

  43 Letter of 6 December 1947 (PSS).

  44 Letter of 29 December 1947, quoted in SPD, 558, which also provides a useful summary of the whole affair.

  45 Poet, 55. As it happens, the first English-language edition of the Poetics had just been published by Harvard University Press, translated by Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl.

  46 See Walsh, “Stravinsky’s Symphonies: Accident or Design?” in C. Ayrey and M. Everist (eds.), Analytical Strategies and Musical Interpretation (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 35–71, for a detailed examination of this topic.

  47 Another possibility is that the prelude started life as an idea for a string quartet that Stravinsky had briefly toyed with writing for the Juilliard String Quartet. He had provisionally accepted the commission from William Schuman in July 1947; by January 1948 it had been put firmly into cold storage, but it was not actually cancelled until May 1950. See SSCI, 328, note 4, for relevant details.

  48 Letter of 1 September 1946 (PSS). Leibowitz was a Polish Jew who settled in Paris in 1945, and who proselytized the work and method of Schoenberg (at that time largely ignored in France) through teaching, concerts, and two influential books, Schoenberg et son école (Paris: Janin, 1947) and Introduction à la musique de douze sons (Paris: L’Arche, 1949).

  49 R. Leibowitz, “Two Composers: A Letter from Hollywood,” Partisan Review (March 1948), 361–5.

  50 Ibid., 365.

  51 Letter of 24 November 1947, partly (mis)quoted in N. Nabokov, Bagazh: Memoirs of a Russian Cosmopolitan (New York: Atheneum, 1975), 171. The original is in the Nabokov Archive of HRC, Austin, Texas. Nabokov’s story (in Bagazh, 172–3), of Craft having failed to sign his postcard to Stravinsky and the latter asking Nabokov to track down its author, cannot as he claims belong to this Christmas visit, for reasons which will be obvious from the preceding narrative.

  52 “Igor Stravinsky,” Atlantic Monthly (November 1949), 21–7; reprinted in greatly expanded form in Nabokov, Old Friends and New Music (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1951), 139–67.

  53 Old Friends and New Music, 155.

  54 Ibid., 157.

  55 Ibid., 148–51.

  56 Letter of 3 October 1947, cited in DB, 142, note 4.

  57 Letter of 17 December 1947 (PSS). For practical as well as political reasons, the planned festival was later moved to Munich, then eventually cancelled. Stravinsky notified Strecker in a letter of 23 March that he would not himself be coming.

  58 Vera’s letters of 2 and 7 January 1948, respectively, in DB, 143.

  59 Stravinsky wrote to Koussevitzky on 15 March 1948 that they had cancelled their trip because of the risks. See Yuzefovich, “Chronicle of a Non-friendship,” 822.

  60 Letter of 13 January 1948, in CASIII, 86–7.

  61 Night letter of 31 January, ibid., 99; SSCI, 231. For this whole January correspondence, see CASIII, 85–99, SSCI, 228–31 (Stravinsky’s side only). Here and elsewhere the discrepancy of one day between the dates of night letters in CAS and those in SSC is apparently due to the fact that the editor of the former worked with the originals, which carry the date of receipt, while that of the latter worked from Stravinsky’s drafts, which have the date of dispatch. In such cases, I have noted the date of dispatch. This also accounts for occasional textual discrepancies between the two editions.

  62 Letter to Stravinsky, 1 February 1948, in CASIII, 100–1.

  63 4 February 1948, CASIII, 102; SSCI, 232.

  15 THE PROGRESS BEGINS

  1 Letter of 16 January 1948, in SSCI, 304.

 
2 The attributions of these scenes in Paul Griffiths, Igor Stravinsky: The Rake’s Progress (Cambridge, Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 14, are incorrect. An excellent, detailed account of the librettists’ own collaboration is in Humphrey Carpenter, W. H. Auden (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981), 352–7.

  3 Ansen, The Table Talk of W. H. Auden, 76–7.

  4 Letter of 28 January 1948, in Mem, 161.

  5 Including, oddly enough, Robert Craft, who many years later questioned whether “irrational and emotionally indifferent acts hurtful to innocent others bring happiness to those who commit them?” (“Words for Music Perhaps,” in The Moment of Existence, 24). But of course The Rake’s Progress is specifically and deliberately a demonstration that they do not.

  6 SSCI, 361.

  7 See his letter to Auden of 18 October 1949, in SSCI, 309–10.

  8 SCF (94), 1.

  9 Letter of 9 March 1948, in SSCI, 338.

  10 Craft’s most vivid account of his background is in “Encounter and Metamorphosis,” Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life, 19–32. There is more detail but less entertainment in ImpLif, 3–56.

  11 SCF (94), 6.

  12 DB, 144. Craft’s account of the episode is in “Encounter and Metamorphosis,” 29.

  13 SCF (94), 7.

  14 A recording of the discussion is in the Library of Congress.

  15 New York Herald Tribune, 12 April 1948.

  16 SCF (94), 6.

  17 Stravinsky’s letter was published in the New York Herald Tribune on 18 April. Thomson’s two reviews appeared in the Tribune on 12 and 18 April, respectively.

  18 DB, 144.

  19 Ansen, The Table Talk of W. H. Auden, 98. See also Edward Mendelson (ed.), W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman: Libretti and Other Dramatic Writings by W. H. Auden (London: Faber & Faber, 1993), xxiii. The idea was dropped.

  20 Letter of 4 January 1948, in SSCI, 270.

  21 DB, 144. The maquette and some of the cutouts are reproduced in Stravinsky and the Theatre (New York: New York Public Library, 1963), 43.

  22 T&C, 53; T&E, 47.

  23 New York Times, 28 April 1948.

  24 New York Herald Tribune, 29 April 1948.

  25 New York Times, 1 December 1957, quoted in SPD, 379.

  26 In the poem “Musée des Beaux-Arts.”

  27 See SCS, 469 and 652, note 58.

  28 Letter of 29 April 1948, in SSCI, 271.

  29 Soulima was arriving on the 17th of June, which the composer had for many years celebrated as his New Style birthday. These days, though, he was celebrating it (correctly) on the 18th. See SCS, 539, for an explanation of Old and New Style dating.

  30 Letter and telegram of 1 June 1948, in SSCI, 341.

  31 Letter of 6 June, in ibid., 342.

  32 Letter of 2 June, in ibid., 342.

  33 Sfam, 150.

  34 DB, 143.

  35 SSCI, 343.

  36 SCF (94), 8.

  37 Craft, “Encounter and Metamorphosis,” 31.

  38 I am indebted to Robert Craft, both in his writings (passim) and in conversation, for much of the information in this paragraph.

  39 February 1948.

  40 SCF (94), 9–10; DB, 145.

  41 “Encounter and Metamorphosis,” Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life, 32.

  42 Letter of 4 August 1948 (PSS, emphases his). The letter is in SSCIII, 324, but with the quoted passage omitted.

  43 Letter of 1 February 1948, CASIII, 101.

  44 Letter to Erwin Stein (of Boosey and Hawkes), quoted in SSCI, 350.

  45 F.A. [Franco Abbati], Corriere della Sera, 28 October 1948.

  46 Quoted in SSCI, 350.

  47 Letter of 27 November 1948, in SSCI, 351. Ansermet’s letter, of 20 November, is in CASIII, 103–5.

  48 DB, 145.

  49 Letter of 8 October 1948, SSCI, 346.

  50 Letter of 28 October 1948, SSCI, 348.

  51 Letter of 8 October.

  52 Stravinsky to Lieberson, letter of 5 June 1948; Lieberson to Stravinsky, letter of 15 June (PSS). According to Philip Stuart, Craft was nevertheless engaged by Lieberson to help edit the still-unreleased recording of Ode, “a task which Stravinsky himself was prevented from undertaking by his RCA contract;” Stuart, Igor Stravinsky—The Composer in the Recording Studio (New York, Westport, and London: Greenwood Press, 1991), 11.

  53 Letter of 7 October 1948 (PSS).

  54 Letter of 10 December 1948 (PSS).

  55 Night letter, 9 February 1948 (UCLA, Kall). I am grateful to Colin Slim for drawing my attention to the oddities of this communication.

  16 A FAMILY HAPPY IN ITS OWN WAY

  1 Letter to Craft of 8 October 1948, SSCI, 347.

  2 See, respectively, Hawkes to Stravinsky, letter of 23 September 1948 (PSS), and Stravinsky to Auden, letter of 17 November 1948, SSCI, 306.

  3 Letter of 15 October (PSS).

  4 See Auden’s letter of 23 November 1948 to Stravinsky, in SSCI, 307.

  5 Nabokov’s article, “The Atonal Trail—A Communication,” is in Partisan Review 15 (May 1948), 580–5; Leibowitz’s reply, in the form of a letter to the editor, is in Partisan Review 15 (August 1948), 943.

  6 See SCS, 464–5.

  7 Thomas Mann, Tagebücher, 1940–43, 952.

  8 All quotations are from Theodor W. Adorno, Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. Anne G. Mitchell and Wesley V. Bloomster (London: Sheed and Ward, 1973).

  9 Letter of 5 December 1949, quoted in Stuckenschmidt, Arnold Schoenberg: His Life, World and Work, trans. H. Searle (London: John Calder, 1977), 508.

  10 See Stuckenschmidt, op. cit., 499–500 for a full account of the visits.

  11 Letter of 7 January 1949 (PSS). Alexandre Tansman’s Igor Stravinsky had been published in Paris in 1948.

  12 SSCI, 357 (where the original text in PSS is slightly curtailed).

  13 SCF (94), 13–14. The original final couplet, as set earlier in the cabaletta, had been “It shall not matter/What he may be.” The substitute lines, not otherwise present, are “Time cannot alter/A loving heart” (extended to “An ever-loving heart” to fit the lead-up to the final top note).

  14 See Stravinsky’s telegram of 19 May 1948 to Koussevitzky (LoC, Koussevitzky): Yuzefovich, “Chronicle of a Non-friendship,” 824.

  15 That the initiative was Craft’s is suggested by Stravinsky’s letter to him of 3 November 1948, in SSCI, 349.

  16 SCF (72), 8. The account in SCF (94), 14–16, is fuller, but the quoted remark is for some reason truncated. In general Craft’s published diaries cannot automatically be accepted as contemporary with the events they describe, since they have appeared in several significantly variant forms (moreover, the description of the meeting in Dial, 91–2, though put into Stravinsky’s mouth, is plainly based on Craft’s diary notes).

  17 Craft’s entry for 21 February in SCF (94), 16, stating that the Piano Concerto was recorded on that day, is an error, apparently due to his habit of rewriting diary entries at a much later time. The concerto was not recorded until 1950.

  18 Letter of 18 March 1949, in SSCI, 245–6.

  19 W. H. Auden, “In Praise of Limestone,” Collected Poems (New York: Vintage, 1991), 542.

  20 SCF (94), 16.

  21 Stravinsky to Craft, letter of 9 March 1949, in SSCI, 357–8.

  22 The boxes had been dispatched by Soulima (by sea via the Panama Canal) before his own departure from Paris the previous summer.

  23 SSCI, 358–9, and note 71.

  24 Bagazh, 236.

  25 Quoted in Laurel E. Fay, Shostakovich: A Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 173.

  26 Bagazh, 238.

  27 For a detailed account of the Waldorf conference, see Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? (London: Granta Books, 1999), 45–56.

  28 Letter of 3 April 1949 (PSS).

  29 DB, 146. From this time until she returned to Switzerland in 1954, Madubo worked in Hollywood as a seamstress.

  30 Soulima Stravinsky, interview with Thor Wood.

 
31 In such contexts, the term “children” should be taken to include children-in-law.

  32 Letter of 27 April 1949, SSCI, 361.

  33 SSCI, 332, note 13.

  34 See variously SCF (94), 17–34; CwC; DB, 146–7.

  35 SSCI, 409–10. Craft has suggested that the scoring was prompted by the range of the two lines, but the pun seems too obvious to ignore. The bulk of the materials sorted by Craft in 1949 are now in the Paul Sacher Stiftung in Basle, but some were given to the Library of Congress for purposes of tax deduction.

  36 SCF (94), 34.

  37 See above, chapter 2, note 33.

  38 Isherwood, Goodbye to Berlin (London: Hogarth Press, 1939), 13.

  39 Isherwood, Lost Years: A Memoir 1945–1951, ed. K. Bucknell (London: Vintage, 2001), 201, note 1.

  40 Ibid., 201.

  41 Ibid., 222–3.

  42 Ibid., 203.

  43 SCF (94), 29.

  44 SCF (94), 22.

  45 SCF (94), 28–9.

  46 As usual, the different published editions vary, sometimes in significant respects. For instance, in SCF (72), 10, we read that “I. S. has not followed any science or philosophy of science since his reading of Bergson a half-century ago,” which in SCF (94), 22, has become “I. S. has not followed any science or philosophy since his University of St. Petersburg years, at which time he was immersed in Kant.” In Lost Years, 199, Isherwood likewise alleges that Craft’s diaries “may in fact have been reconstructed … quite a long while after the event.” Craft had relayed (SCF [72], 12) a story supposedly told by Isherwood at their first Farmers’ Market meeting, about his having been struck off Chaplin’s guest list for peeing on the sofa one evening when drunk, an incident Isherwood claims cannot have occurred until at least ten months later. Significantly, this anecdote no longer figures in SCF (94).

  47 Dial, 168; SCF (94), 68.

  48 Maria Huxley, letter to her son Matthew, quoted in Bedford, Aldous Huxley, Volume 2, 1939 to 1963, 121.

  49 SCF (94), 48.

  50 Ibid.

  51 SCF (94), 18.

  52 See, for instance, his letter of 19 July to Igor Markevitch, who had written to him on the 17th to inform him of the death of Elie Gagnebin, the Narrator in the original Lausanne Soldier’s Tale (PSS).