Stravinsky

by Stephen Walsh

  32 SCF (94), 153.

  33 Letter of 28 March 1956 to Brigitte Manceaux, in Chimènes, 835–6, but first published in Hélène de Wendel (ed.), Francis Poulenc: Correspondance 1915–1963 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967), 235–6. Poulenc does not, of course, refer expressly to the Canticum Sacrum, which was not yet known in March 1956. “Je continuerai,” he writes, “à écrire do mi sol do et n’approuve pas Strawinsky qui se met des chapeaux trop jeunes pour son âge.” Of course, Poulenc may have been “going about” saying this, as Craft put it in the original (but not the revised) edition of his chronicle, but if so, how did he—Craft—come to hear of it, not having been in France since 1952? See SCF (72), 62, where the text differs in many details from that of the 1994 edition. The original (1969) account of this conversation, in R&C, 191–9, tallies—apart from the usual tinkerings—with the 1972 text. The entry is not yet in the British edition of Dial (1968).

  34 SCF (94), 157.

  35 See his letter of 13 November 1956 to Craft (PSS).

  36 Letter of 14 November 1956 to Theodore Strawinsky (PSS).

  37 See Berman’s letter of 23 October (PSS).

  38 See, for instance, Poulenc’s letter of 7 November 1956 to Milhaud (private collection).

  39 See Stravinsky’s medical diary, in ASS, 159; also Symonds’s report in ibid., 157–8, and 155, note 2.

  40 SCF (94), 158–9.

  41 Craft was present, but has so far published no memoir of the meeting beyond the bald mention in SCF (94), 159.

  42 SCF (94), 159. Tansman’s letter has unfortunately not surfaced.

  43 See above, chapter 17.

  44 John Goldsmith (ed.), Stephen Spender: Journals 1939–1983 (London: Faber and Faber, 1985), 183.

  45 Stravinsky and Kirstein lunched together on 12 January and agreed that Agon would figure in the company’s autumn season. See SSCI, 291, note 30.

  46 Jay S. Harrison, “Stravinsky Is Conductor of His Own ‘Persephone,’” New York Herald Tribune, 11 January 1957.

  47 SCF (94), 163, 172.

  48 Howard Taubman, “Music: Homage to a Living Master,” New York Times, 11 January 1957.

  24 TALKING THE BOOK

  1 Letter of 24 May 1957 to John Andrewes (PSS: the letter is in SSCIII, 405, but without the passage quoted here).

  2 Letter of “Friday” (June, 1956). See chapter 22, note 38.

  3 PSS.

  4 M&C, 18.

  5 SCF (94), 151. The question and answer quoted figured eventually in Conv, 127, but appeared first in English in Igor Stravinsky, “Composing,” in Atlantic Monthly, 199/6 (June 1957), 49.

  6 For the first of these references, see Conv, 21; Atlantic Monthly, 49. The remark about Webern composing at the piano is in Atlantic Monthly, 48, and survived through the various other printings of these early questions, but was excised from Conv, 15 (see the question about “the musical idea”).

  7 Igor Stravinsky, “Foreword,” Die Reihe, 2: Anton Webern, vii. The juste de la musique remark is in Conv, 127; Atlantic Monthly, 50.

  8 This in spite of the fact that Stravinsky sent the definitive answer to Boulez on 13 May. See SSCII, 351, note 10.

  9 Joan Peyser, Boulez: Composer, Conductor, Enigma (London: Cassell, 1976), 135, amplified by Boulez’s remarks to me in a conversation of December 2002.

  10 SSCII, 350.

  11 The relevant letters, dated 28 January, 9 February, 17 February, and a postcard of 25 February, are all in PSS in the Craft collection.

  12 Craft’s letter is not accessible, but Boulez’s postcard of 25 February makes its contents reasonably clear. “Please,” it urges, “don’t be shy [ne vous excusez pas] about conducting Marteau.”

  13 For confirmation of this account, see Dorothy L. Crawford, Evenings On and Off the Roof, 167–9.

  14 SSCII, 350.

  15 Letter of 15 March 1957, in SSCII, 392 (retranslated from the original in HRC, Nabokov). The “marvellously interesting” is also from this letter.

  16 Letter of 12 May 1957, in SSCI, 259, but here retranslated from the original in BN (copy also in PSS).

  17 Letter of 23 March 1956 (PSS).

  18 Letter of 16 May 1957 (PSS).

  19 Letter of 16 April 1957 (PSS).

  20 Telegrams of 21 March, quoted in M&C, xviii, note 7.

  21 Letter of 15 March.

  22 See his letter to Adams of 3 May 1957, in SSCIII, 403.

  23 See Joseph, Stravinsky and Balanchine, 260.

  24 Letter of 22 May 1956 (PSS). Sacher had first proposed the commission, as we saw, on 29 July 1954, repeating the offer on 17 August 1955, 15 May 1956, and 4 April 1957.

  25 Letter of 13 April 1957 (PSS).

  26 Letters of 24 April (Sacher), 9 May (Stravinsky), and 15 May (Sacher), respectively. The Basle premiere of Canticum sacrum was on 16 May.

  27 See chapter 22, note 7. The DTÖ publication is accompanied by a lengthy introduction by Webern: see H. Moldenhauer, Anton von Webern: A Chronicle of His Life and Work (London: Gollancz, 1978), 84–5, for a substantial quotation.

  28 In the Monday Evening Concerts of, respectively, 4 February and 11 March. Stravinsky, as we saw, already knew the Couperin work from Hugues Cuénod’s recording.

  29 See ASS, 62–3, for a facsimile of the first seventeen bars of the transcript, with Stravinsky’s added parts. Craft’s account of the circumstances here and in SPD, 456–7, is self-effacing, but the motivation and necessary materials can only have come from him and through his efforts.

  30 SPD, 456. See also Craft’s preface to the Boosey and Hawkes edition of the three motets.

  31 The edition is Glenn. E. Watkins (ed.), Gesualdo di Venosa: Sacrae Cantiones für sechs und sieben Stimmen (Hamburg: Ugrino Verlag, 1961), vol. 9. This commentary lists minor changes to the surviving parts of “Illumina nos” but none to the other two motets.

  32 Letter of 20 May 1957, in SSCIII, 405.

  33 See, respectively, Robert Graff’s letter of 1 April 1957 to the Manhattan lawyer Arnold Weissberger, who was acting as Stravinsky’s agent in the negotiations, proposing a fee of $3,500 plus a share of profits; and Stravinsky’s letter of 3 May to Weissberger’s partner, Aaron Frosch.

  34 Letter of 4 July 1957, in SSCIII, 407.

  35 See Charles M. Joseph, Stravinsky Inside Out, 169–70. Joseph prints the questions and answers, and notes that the corresponding text in Craft’s Present Perspectives, 271–2 (now reprinted in M&C, vol. 18), is inaccurate. See Joseph, 289, note 4. In other ways, the present account is much indebted to Joseph’s description, as well as to SCF (94), 165-6; DB, 184 and note 9; and CwC.

  36 CwC.

  37 Cf. Joseph, op. cit., 170.

  38 Diaries, 1939–1960, 704–5.

  39 Joseph, op. cit., 169.

  40 “Stravinsky Honored at Festival Concert,” Los Angeles Times, 19 June 1957.

  41 “An Anniversary—An Evening of Stravinsky,” San Francisco Chronicle, 23 June 1957.

  42 See below, chapter 28, notes 4, 5, and related text.

  43 Letter of 28 June 1957 (PSS).

  44 Letter of 17 June 1957, excerpted in SSCII, 393. Zuppa inglese—“English soup”—is the Italian for the pudding known as “trifle.”

  45 Letter of 21 June, in SSCII, 394. Nabokov had written in English (presumably dictating to an anglophone secretary), and Stravinsky replied in the same language.

  46 SCF (94), 159.

  47 “Answers to 34 Questions: An Interview with Igor Stravinsky,” Encounter, 9/1 (July 1957), 3–7. In the slightly earlier version of the interview in Atlantic Monthly, 199/6 (June 1957), 46–50, the same question figures but without the Tenebrae reference. David H. Smyth has shown that work on Threni began before the earliest dated sketch (29 August). See “Stravinsky as Serialist: The Sketches for Threni,” Music Theory Spectrum, 22, no. 2 (Fall, 2000), 206, note 5.

  48 See Paul Horgan, Encounters with Stravinsky: A Personal Record (rev. ed., Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1989), 49–57, for a firsthand account of this ep
isode. “Mirandi” was Miranda Masocco’s professional name, but it had stuck.

  49 SCF (94), 166.

  50 ASS, 160.

  51 Stravinsky wrote to Arnold Weissberger on 17 August that “we are very much enjoying our staying in England and we have made many side trips in this beautiful country.” Annotated Catalogue of the H. Colin Slim Collection, 303–4. But Craft notes in his diary that the Stravinskys soon became bored with the country and decided to go to London for the weekend (though he admittedly half-contradicts this suggestion in his 1994 “Postscript,” where he recalls that they fell in love with the southwestern coastal region, and with the musicians they met there). See SCF (94), 167, 173.

  52 The only document I have found of the “36 Answers” is an elaborate montage of typed pages and fragments, labelled “An interview with Stravinsky” and dated by Stravinsky “March ’57.” This is much worked over by Craft, with some insertions in Stravinsky’s hand (PSS).

  53 See Conv, 16–17.

  54 Conv, 87, and note 1. But a comparison of this passage with its reprinted form in M&C, 156, gives yet another disconcerting insight into Craft’s editorial method in general. In the later text the Modigliani anecdote is compressed and completely rephrased, and the footnote about the subsequently discovered portrait is partly rewritten and reattributed to Craft himself (as opposed to Stravinsky, writing in the first person). Worst of all, where Stravinsky had originally said of the portrait that “I regret to admit that it does resemble me,” he is now made to say “I have not seen it.” Craft thus either casts doubt on his own veracity or reveals Stravinsky as a liar, or both. Moreover, he seems to treat his readers as idiots who will swallow anything and themselves have no memory.

  55 Conv, 38.

  56 There is some speculation involved here. Nabokov was certainly in Paris, and they did, according to Craft (ASS, 64), discuss the possibility of an NDR concert in Venice. I have concluded from this that the idea of fusing the Venice and Hamburg commissions had already occurred to Nabokov, and that this possibility was raised in Paris. The NDR’s formal letter of offer is dated 9 October 1957 (PSS).

  57 See SPD, plate 15, following p. 400.

  58 Conv, 17–18.

  59 ASS, 64; SCF (94), 170. In Conv, 123, Stravinsky says that he changed the name because Tenebrae suggested a liturgical usage.

  60 Conv, 116–17. A note by Ingolf Dahl in the Morton Archive of UCLA suggests that the flügelhorn part was inspired by an unnamed virtuoso bugler at a poetry and jazz concert in Los Angeles. Such a concert is mentioned in Vera Stravinsky’s diary for 7 December 1957 (see DB, 190), but by that time the big flügelhorn solo in the “De Elegia Prima” had been written.

  61 Stravinsky kept and annotated a cutting of a spiteful piece by the New Yorker’s Paris correspondent, which quoted a dismissive review by the Figaro critic, Bernard Gavoty (invariably nicknamed “Gavnoti” by Stravinsky, after the Russian word “govno,” “shit”). The composer’s marginalia are brutally expressive of his loathing for Parisian musical politics. He writes: “For a Lesbian, as she actually is, one could expect a little more subtlety. But let us not forget she is a friend of Goléa and Gavnoti” (cutting in HRC, Nabokov).

  62 Goléa, Rencontres avec Pierre Boulez (Paris: Julliard, 1958), 196.

  63 Quoted in Aguila, Le Domaine Musical, 189.

  64 Denise Bourdet, Le Figaro littéraire, 19 October 1957, quoted in Aguila, op. cit., 189.

  65 Jacques Schérer, Le“Livre” de Mallarmé. Premières recherches sur des documents inédits (Paris: Gallimard, 1957).

  66 SSCII, 351–2.

  67 Conv, 31–2.

  25 HE HATH SET ME IN DARK PLACES

  1 See Stravinsky’s letter of 15 March 1957 to Nabokov, in SSCII, 393.

  2 Letters of 17 August and 5 September 1957 to Arnold Weissberger (Annotated Catalogue of the H. Colin Slim Collection, 303–4; PSS).

  3 Telegrams of 10 October 1957 (PSS). In the end the charity performance took place on the 27th of November.

  4 See, for instance, Craft in SCF (94), 173, echoed by Joseph, Stravinsky and Balanchine, 256.

  5 Kirstein’s pushiness and sometimes transparent manipulativeness have been well described by Charles Joseph. See, for instance, Stravinsky and Balanchine, 182–3. Kirstein treated Stravinsky with a measure of deference, but from time to time the mask slipped.

  6 See Weissberger’s letter of 12 September. Weissberger also confirmed that the Agon staging was going ahead, another item of information Stravinsky would no doubt have preferred to receive from Kirstein himself.

  7 See the marvelous series of photographs in Taper, Balanchine, 264-72. Taper, who was present, also noted down some of the composer’s remarks. For instance, he observed that Diana Adams had “legs like the Solingen scissors trademark.” See also Joseph, Stravinsky and Balanchine, 261–2.

  8 Letter of 16 November 1957 (PSS).

  9 What was tiresome about it is unclear. It may have been some feeling that Kirstein was neglecting him, but real evidence is lacking.

  10 Telegram of 29 November (PSS).

  11 28 November 1957.

  12 “Three Sides of Agon,” Evergreen Review (Winter, 1959), reprinted in Edwin Denby, Dance Writings (London: Dance Books, 1986), 459–65.

  13 New York World Telegram, 2 December 1957; cf. ibid., 11 September 1944.

  14 New York Herald Tribune, 2 December 1957.

  15 Letter of 9 December 1957, in SSCI, 291.

  16 Quoted in Joseph, Stravinsky and Balanchine, 256.

  17 See Roth’s telegram of 27 December 1957 and Stravinsky’s letter of 28 December in reply (PSS). The point was that Balanchine was to have staged Agon in Milan but was now ruling himself out. Writing to Stravinsky on 6 January, Roth grumbled that he had an unbreakable agreement with La Scala but hoped that, without Balanchine, they might themselves withdraw.

  18 Letter of 10 January 1958 to Liebermann (PSS).

  19 See Nabokov’s letter of 12 February (PSS) and Stravinsky’s reply of 19 February (HRC, Nabokov).

  20 Letter of 19 March 1958 (HRC, Nabokov).

  21 Letter of 27 March 1958 (PSS). Strictly speaking, these vacillations over the length of Threni are inexplicable, since they argue real uncertainty, not prevarication (for which no consistent motive is apparent). Stravinsky may have feared that the work would seem too long, but had then to admit that it could not be shortened.

  22 The premiere of Le Visage nuptial was on 4 December 1957. After the performance, Boulez and Stockhausen sent Stravinsky a joint postcard from Cologne.

  23 Letter of 23 December 1957 (PSS). Begun in Schoenberg’s mid-twenties, Gurrelieder is a huge choral-orchestral work in a post-Wagnerian style, which took more than a decade to reach its final form.

  24 Letter of 25 January 1958 (PSS).

  25 Letter of 19 February, SSCII, 395.

  26 Letter of 1 March (HRC, Nabokov).

  27 Letter of 10 March (HRC, Nabokov).

  28 Letter of 3 March, quoted in SSCII, 395.

  29 Letter of 3 March (PSS).

  30 Letter of 8 March, SSCII, 396.

  31 Letter of 6 December 1957 (PSS).

  32 Letters of 20 May 1958 to P. Huber and P. Sacher, respectively (PSS). Sacher had originally conveyed the proposal in his letter of 2 April. Basle University subsequently approached Britten, whose Cantata Academica is a setting of the text originally submitted to Stravinsky.

  33 Letter of 11 March 1958, SSCII, 396–7.

  34 Letter of 16 March, in SSCII, 397, but very misleadingly translated. The Russian epithet “tyotka” (literally “auntie,” but also colloquially “pansy” or “queer”) is applied to the pianist (whom Stravinsky assumed to be male), but interrogatively: not “Is the pederast Weber really taking on some serious expenditures?” (as if Stravinsky knew him already as both a pervert and a miser), but “He [the pianist, but also of course by implication Weber] must presumably be a pansy if Weber is taking on such serious expenses.” Considering that such sentiments are likel
y to be heavily scrutinized by lawyers before going into print, it seems amazing that nobody could manage actually to translate the text accurately.

  35 Letters of 21 and 29 March (PSS), quoted in SSCII, 397, 399.

  36 Letter of 26 March; SSCIII, 414.

  37 See Joseph N. Straus, Stravinsky’s Late Music, 26–33, for a discussion of Krenek’s influence and a reprint of the two charts; also Clare Hogan, “‘Threni:’ Stravinsky’s ‘Debt’ to Krenek,” in Tempo 141 (June 1982), 22–9.

  38 See Nabokov’s letter to Stravinsky of 2 July 1958, in SSCII, 401.

  39 Letter of 2 July (PSS). For fairly obvious reasons, the account of the Schuh meeting is omitted from SSCII.

  40 See Schuh’s letter of 11 November 1958 to Nabokov (HRC, Nabokov).

  41 With designs by Caspar Neher. The libretto of Rasputin’s End is by Stephen Spender.

  42 SPD, 299. See also SCF (94), 189.

  43 SPD, 437.

  44 Letter of 21 June 1958 (PSS). I have left untranslated the nonexistent Russian adverb “ostil’no” in the final phrase. The funeral anecdote first appeared in print, as far as I know, in Avec Stravinsky, 22 (oddly, without the “we still have Glazunov”), and in English in Conv, 45. See also SCS, 112–3.

  45 De Schloezer, “Chronique musicale,” Nouvelle Revue française, 31 (1 July 1928), 104–8. Cf. SCS, 469, and note 58.

  46 SCF (94), 178.

  47 Craft, in SCF (94), 189, remembers it as a piano, but Stravinsky had asked Roth to get him “a small muted pianino (a spinet or an upright small piano)” (letter of 26 July, in SSCIII, 415), and Roth replied on 5 August that a “muted cembalo” was being installed.

  48 So he claims in SCF (94), 189.