Stravinsky
Page 93
53 SCF (94), 34.
54 SCF (94), 21.
55 The anecdotes here are from CwC.
56 ASS, 24.
57 Letter of 18 October 1949, SSCI, 309–10.
58 Stravinsky attended a performance of Don Giovanni by the visiting San Francisco Opera at the Shrine Auditorium on 31 October, when the trio was nearing completion.
59 “Une lettre de Stravinsky sur Tchaïkovsky,” Le Figaro, 18 May 1922.
60 Letter of 24 October 1949, SSCI, 310.
61 New York Herald Tribune, 22 November 1949. In ImpLif, 109, note 133, Craft remarks that Berger complained that the concert was under-rehearsed. But Berger said nothing of the kind. The gist of his review is that “Mr. Craft sometimes attempts more than he can fulfil adequately. His Stravinsky readings last night offered, perhaps, more to people who know the works, and who took the concert in the spirit of a rehearsal at which to refresh their memory of the glorious instrumental inspirations in music they have come to love through the piano transcript[tions]” (the final word is misprinted in the review).
62 Letter of 28 November 1949 (PSS).
63 Letter of 6 December, excerpted in SSCI, 369, note 94.
64 Undated letter (September 1949), quoted in SSCI, 364.
65 The acknowledged motive, as we have seen, was Soulima’s need to make his own way outside his father’s orbit. In Are You the Son …?, however, he hints at other reasons, including the excessive competition for work among the army of accomplished musicians who infested Hollywood. He also alleges a less friendly attitude on Vera’s part, and, generally, a “new situation in the household.”
17 DEATH OF A PROPHET
1 Soulima Stravinsky, interview with Thor Wood; also DB, 147.
2 Dial, 106.
3 Robert Gross, “Gross at 69: A Fiddler Reminisces,” Calendar (Los Angeles), 2 October 1983, 55.
4 SCF (94), 35.
5 Stravinsky is vague in Dial (103) about the occasion on which he and Krenek re-met, but since he certainly attended the twelve-note concert on 14 August (1949), at which Krenek made a speech, I am assuming that the meeting took place then. In ImpLif, 139–40, Craft seems to confirm this but misdates the event to September; cf. DB, 147, which implies that Vera went, too, though the original diary text merely records “Ebel [Wilshire Ebell] concert 12 tone.”
6 George, Earl of Harewood, The Tongs and the Bones, quoted in Humphrey Carpenter, Benjamin Britten: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1992), 298. Another possible explanation is that there was something odd about the performance Stravinsky had attended, which at any rate, as we saw in chapter 14, was of poor quality. Perhaps the orchestral part was entirely played on the piano, as in the Così to which he had taken Auden.
7 Letter of 15 December 1949, in SSCI, 369, but here retranslated from the Russian original in PSS. Presumably Nabokov relayed to Isaiah Berlin the version of this anecdote that Berlin later enjoyed telling. “Britten,” Stravinsky is supposed to have said, “is a vonnnderrful … accompanist.” As for “Auntie Britten,” the vague suggestion conveyed in English is more specific in Russian, “tyotka” (“auntie”) being a standard slang term for a “queer” or “gay.”
8 See chapter 15, note 6, and related text.
9 See, for example, Carpenter, op. cit., 240–1 and 326–7, for remarks on Britten’s gradual rejection of Auden’s friendship.
10 DB, 147; see also Craft’s letter to Hawkes, 27 December 1949, reproduced in facsimile in SPD, 441. Craft notes (page 442) that the letter was signed “Bob Craft” in Stravinsky’s hand, in the desire to avoid direct communication with Hawkes. But the explanation is bizarre, since Stravinsky had written dozens of letters to Hawkes and would soon be writing more. The real reason is obviously that Stravinsky wrote Craft’s name on the carbon copy as an aide-memoire as to who had actually signed the letter.
11 See Stein’s letter of 20 December 1949 (PSS).
12 See Stravinsky’s letter to Hawkes of 17 October 1949, in SSCIII, 329.
13 Letter of 20 December 1949 (PSS).
14 Letter of 3 January 1950 (PSS).
15 SCF (94), 35.
16 Ibid., 42; see also DB, 147.
17 SCF (94), 28. Many of the impressions in this paragraph are from CwC.
18 Letter of 28 November 1949, in SSCI, 273.
19 Presumably the idea was put forward in person in New York. It is referred to in Stravinsky’s letter to Berman, 29 May 1950: “Kirstein had told me in a burst of enthusiasm that he would take it for City Center but is now playing dead” (PSS).
20 SCF (94), 36; but see also his letter to Berman, 7 June 1950 (PSS), in which he grumbles about Menotti’s success.
21 SCF (94), 36.
22 Ibid.; see also Auden’s undated (early March) note to Stravinsky containing the bidding sequence, in SSCI, 312–3.
23 SPD, 405.
24 Letters of 15 March, 15 and 22 April, respectively, all in PSS.
25 Letter of 4 June 1950 (PSS).
26 Letter to Hawkes, 20 May, in SSCIII, 331; also to Berman, 29 May 1950 (PSS).
27 In Are You the Son …?, Soulima claims that John Kuypers, the head of the department at Urbana, had mentioned this possibility to Vera the previous summer and received a curt negative. Soulima himself only heard about the post from a Music Academy of the West colleague, who told Françoise about it on the beach at Santa Barbara and advised her to get Soulima to write quickly to Urbana. Another version of the story (told to me by Milène Marion) is that Kuypers had written to Vera, who had opened the letter and thrown it into the wastepaper basket.
28 SCF (94), 42.
29 Rimsky-Korsakov, My Musical Life, trans. Judah A. Joffe (London: Eulenburg, 1974), 46. For the cinema experience, see SCF (94), 43.
30 Letter of 23 June 1950 (PSS).
31 Letter of 6 July 1950, Auden and Kallman to Stravinsky. The remark quoted is in a postscript by Kallman omitted from SSCI, 314.
32 Stravinsky had written to Soulima in Paris on 25 March 1948, asking him to transfer 3,000 francs to Mrs. Sallard, “who is in dire need.” In November 1950 she wrote to Vera that Soulima’s wife had seemed cross at the North Wetherly Drive Stravinskys’ failure to make a favorite of their little boy, Zizi; see DB, 150, note 9. The composer continued to make payments to Mrs. Sallard until the month of her death in a road accident in March 1961.
33 Letter of 4 June 1950 (PSS).
34 DB, 149 (with a photo).
35 SCF (94), 43.
36 Isherwood, Diaries, Volume One: 1939–1960, 426.
37 Letter to Ernst Roth, 20 September 1950 (PSS: the relevant passage is omitted from the letter as published in SSCIII, 335).
38 Ricketson eventually offered $5,000; see Betty Bean to Stravinsky, letter of 6 October 1950 (PSS).
39 See Ghiringhelli’s letter of 9 June and Stravinsky’s reply of 19 June 1950 (PSS).
40 Kirstein to Stravinsky, letter of 23 August 1950. Much of this enormous letter is printed in SSCI, 274–7.
41 Letter of 25 August 1950, 277–8.
42 Apollo architectons is not mentioned as such until Kirstein’s letter of 26 August 1953 (SSCI, 285), but since he there refers to it as “the old idea,” and the maturity of Apollo had been his initial suggestion (letter of 29 April 1948, SSCI, 271), I am assuming that the “architectons” slant had come up in early conversations.
43 Letters of 23 and 25 August respectively. Kirstein seems to be suggesting that Sweeney would be a separate project from the Apollo sequel; but this is one more aspect of his opportunism. Why lose a brilliant proposal just because it might not suit a preconception?
44 Stravinsky to Bean, letter of 6 November 1950, in SSCIII, 338.
45 See Stravinsky’s letter to Soulima, 22 December 1950, quoted in SSCIII, 340, note 15.
46 Nabokov’s letter to Stravinsky of 23 December 1950 is quoted in SSCII, 377; Stravinsky’s reply of 2 January 1951 is in ibid.
47 Stravinsky had mentioned the Venice interest in a letter of 3 February 19
48 to Soulima (private collection). The information about Hawkes is from CwC.
48 Letter to Stravinsky, 5 December 1950, in SSCI, 314.
49 See his letter of 26 January 1951; Stravinsky had told him about the Venice deal in a letter of the 24th (PSS).
50 Letter of 26 January.
51 Stravinsky’s correspondence with Ghiringhelli is in PSS. For the threat of legal action, see Ghiringhelli’s letter to Roth of 24 February (PSS).
52 Mentioned by Roth in his letter of 23 March to Stravinsky (PSS).
53 Telegram of 9 May 1951 (PSS).
54 Letter of 25 June, confirming his telegram of the 20th (PSS).
55 Letter of 9 February 1951 (PSS).
56 The first performance of The Rake’s Progress at the Royal Opera was on 18 June 1979.
57 See his letter to Roth of 9 February 1951 (PSS).
58 Letter of 16 February 1951 (SSCI, 317), in reply to Auden’s of 14 February addressed to Craft, quoted in SCF (94), 45, and also in SPD, 407, where it is incorrectly dated
16 February.
59 SCF (94), 1.
60 SSCI, 317, note 24.
61 In January 1948, Auden told Alan Ansen that “we’re getting four thousand dollars for the libretto” (Table Talk, 95). It seems, however, that no contract survives, and we do not know exactly on what terms Auden agreed to write the libretto. The Boosey and Hawkes records indicate only that the librettists received $3,000 as an advance on royalties for their work. Under this agreement, copyright in the text remained with the publisher, another detail that Auden seems to have held against Stravinsky. I am grateful to Edward Mendelson and Andrew Kemp for their help in establishing these details.
62 Letter of 16 February to Auden, SSCI, 317. He had taken essentially the same line over the proposed deal with Central City; see his letter of 13 October 1950 to Betty Bean.
63 In a letter to Bean, 23 October 1950, he said that he was not renewing “for musical reasons” (PSS).
64 Letter to Stravinsky of 29 March 1951 (PSS).
65 Letter to Bean, 17 March 1951, in SSCIII, 342–3.
66 Letter of Sapiro to Roth, 15 May, and Roth’s reply of 29 May 1951 (PSS).
67 Letter to Bean, 31 January 1952 (PSS).
68 See his letters to Stravinsky of 10 February and 25 July 1951, in SSCI, 316, 320.
69 Ebert to Stravinsky, telegram of 25 July 1951 (PSS).
70 Berman set out the problem in detail in his letter to Stravinsky of 14 April 1951, but years later he claimed that his participation had been vetoed by Auden, over Stravinsky’s head. See Berman’s letter to Craft, 24 May 1968 (PSS). On 14 July 1951 Ghiringhelli wired Stravinsky that Piper was unavailable, and on the same day Stravinsky wired back advising him to engage Balthus (PSS). Exactly when Ratto and Colciaghi were booked has proved hard to establish.
71 SSCIII, 192, note 16; also SCF (94), 45. Gide died on 19 February 1951, and the Stravinskys heard the news four days later during their journey through Texas.
72 News of Steinberg’s death (in December 1946) came in a letter from the same Dmitry Borodin who had written to him about Yury’s death in 1941. The letter also informed him of the death of Rimsky-Korsakov’s eldest son Mikhail. Stravinsky replied on the 28th (PSS).
73 See Stravinsky’s letter to Soulima, 17 April 1951, quoted in SPD, 650, note 96. Bolm had died on the 16th. Errazuriz died that same month, Koussevitzky on 4 June.
74 Quoted in SCF (94), 52–3.
75 “Influence or Assistance,” in Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life, 35. But Craft blatantly contradicts himself when he says that mention of Schoenberg’s name was forbidden at North Wetherly Drive, yet explains Dushkin’s embarrassment at meeting him at Mitropoulos’s Schoenberg performance on the grounds that “he realized that I would mention the meeting to Stravinsky.” Craft’s tendency to exaggerate this problem may possibly be connected with a division in his own loyalties. Had things worked out differently, he might have ended up “Assisting Schoenberg” rather than Stravinsky.
76 Ibid., 36. See SCF (94), 38–40, for Craft’s memorable account of this visit.
77 SCF (94), 49.
78 Ibid., 53–4.
79 Letter of 17 September 1951, in SCF (1994), 65–6 (dated original in PSS). See
W. H. Auden and Norman Holmes Pearson, Poets of the English Language (5 volumes, New York: Viking, 1950).
18 THE TIME-TRAVELLER COMES ASHORE
1 DB, 151, note 2.
2 For an account of these first days in Italy, see SCF (94), 54–60.
3 Ibid., 60; letter to Elizabeth Mayer, quoted in Carpenter, W.H. Auden, 370.
4 SCF (94), 69. There was a second dress rehearsal on the 10th, conducted by Leitner.
5 “Stravinsky’s ‘Rake’ Has Its Surprises,” New York Herald Tribune, 30 September 1951.
6 SCF (94), 62–3; also CwC.
7 Quoted in SCF (94), 60.
8 “‘La carriera del libertino’ non darà gloria a Stravinsky,” Guido Pannain, Il Tempo, 12 September 1951.
9 Antonino Procida, “‘La carriera del libertino’ di Igor Strawinsky alla Fenice,” Il Giornale, 12 September 1951.
10 “La ‘Carriera del libertino’ di Strawinski accolta con successo al Festival musicale,” Corriere della sera, 12 September 1951.
11 “Il Libertino di Strawinsky ha sposato la donna barbuta,” Oggi, 20 September 1951.
12 John S. Weissmann and Gian Galeazzo Severi, respectively. These and other remarks were collected at a press reception on the day of the premiere and quoted by Barrett McGurn in “Critics Say Stravinsky Opera Marks His Return to Melody,” New York Herald Tribune, 12 September 1951.
13 SCF (94), 61; CwC.
14 SCF (94), 62; CwC.
15 Letter to Paul Gay, 23 September 1951, in Cingria, Correspondance Générale, vol. 4 (Lausanne: Éditions L’Age d’Homme, 1979), 319. But Cingria had written to Stravinsky from Ravenna on the 16th, recalling their meeting with pleasure but regretting that it was so brief. “We should have seen each other again, comforted each other in the things that matter, raked over the past a bit.” He added: “That will happen, but in Switzerland when you come” (SSCIII, 130–1).
16 T&C, 57, where the memoir is signed “V. S.” As usual in that volume, the text is actually by Craft, and reappears, substantially rewritten but with the same title, the same imagery, and the same verbal jokes, in SCF (94), 62–3.
17 See Eugenio Montale, The Second Life of Art (New York: Ecco Press, 1982), 249–50, for an account of the occasion, and DB, 153, for a photograph.
18 See SCF (94), 63–5, for these and other details of the Venetian holiday.
19 The contract is dated 24 August. The Oedipus recording, with Peter Pears in the title role, was unusual in that the German narrations (from the concert) were excised, and instead narrations in French by Cocteau himself were recorded in Paris the following May and spliced into the tape. See Stuart, Igor Stravinsky: The Composer in the Recording Studio, 36; also SCF (94), 82.
20 “Influence or Assistance?,” Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life, 38.
21 See SCS, 429. Craft (op. cit., 46) suggests that he may have heard Webern’s early string quartet and the violin pieces, op. 7, which had been programmed with works of his own. Unfortunately he does not identify the concerts in question.
22 Krenek’s concerto was in the same Donaueschingen program as the Boulez (6 October), while the Henze symphony was premiered on the 7th. The Südwestfunk kept recordings of the entire festival.
23 For his account of the origins of the festival, see Bagazh, 242–6. Nabokov claimed not to have known about the CIA funding for the CCF until the information began to leak out in the New York press in the mid-sixties, but he certainly did know that the agenda was specifically political and anti-Communist. See Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper?, and Ian Wellens, Music on the Frontline (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002).
24 Stravinsky met Nabokov’s assistant, Denis de Rougemont, in Geneva and informed him of his decision.
26 For these various incidents, see SCF (94), 67, and DB, 151.
27 Letter of 7 January 1949 (PSS).
28 SCF (94), 54.
29 Ibid., 67.
30 SPD, 415.
31 Kallman to Stravinsky, letter of 19 September 1951 (PSS). Kallman was in fact taken on as assistant director of the Milan Rake. For more details on the librettists’ surely only half-serious ideas for additional scenes, see Kallman’s note for Stravinsky’s 1964 recording, reprinted in Edward Mendelson (ed.), W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman: Libretti and Other Dramatic Writings by W. H. Auden, 626–9.
32 See Kallman’s letter of 27 January 1952, and Stravinsky’s reply of 31 January (both PSS); emphases in the original.
33 Letter of Vera Stravinsky to the Marions, 23 November 1951, in DB, 151; also SCF (1994), 69.
34 On the 25th.
35 Letter of 28 November 1951, mostly in SSCI, 284–5, the rest PSS.
36 As noted in Stravinsky’s letter of 8 January 1952 to Betty Bean, in SSCIII, 353. See also SPD, 204–5. He describes the libretto as “a celebration of Wisdom in a manner comparable to Ben Jonson’s Masques.” The text was eventually published in Mendelson (ed.), W.H. Auden and Chester Kallman: Libretti, 95–126.
37 See especially André Marion to Bean, 31 January 1952 (PSS).
38 SCF (94), 70.
39 In his letter to Craft of 20 September 1951, proposing further texts: see SCF (94), 65.
40 The theme and its inscription are reproduced in facsimile in SSCI, 251.
41 SCF (94), 71. The program was The Soldier’s Tale (Suite), the Octet, Dumbarton Oaks, Danses concertantes.
42 Letter of 26 January 1952, quoted in Bedford, Aldous Huxley, vol. 2, 128. Other information in SCF (94), 70–1.
43 SCF (94), 72.
44 Letter of 21 January 1952 (PSS).