Stravinsky

by Stephen Walsh

  60 AMC, 62–3.

  61 For instance, to Craft on 26 January 1960 (PSS).

  62 Libman first aired her complaints about Ishlon in a letter to Craft of 8 October 1959 (PSS). Later she accused her of withholding publicity photographs and taking unilateral decisions about program publicity.

  63 SCF (94), 217. The postscript is candidly dated “1994.”

  64 The actual text in DB, 194, is roughly accurate (with Craft’s usual editorial tinkerings), but obscures the previous omission with an invented first sentence.

  65 AMC, 63.

  66 New York Herald Tribune, 21 December 1959.

  67 The other six-part Gesualdo motet completed by Stravinsky, “Da pacem, Domine,” was listed in the program-book layout but not in the program notes, nor in any of the newspaper review program listings, and it is not mentioned in any review, even those that refer to “Assumpta est Maria.” It seems fairly clear that it was not sung. The seven-part completion, “Illumina nos,” was never in the program, pace Christian Goubault, Igor Stravinsky (Paris: Champion, 1991), 295.

  68 Jay S. Harrison, “Robert Craft and His Unique Life,” New York Herald Tribune, 20 December 1959.

  69 AMC, 81.

  70 “Stravinsky Conducts Own New Work at Town Hall,” New York Herald Tribune, 11 January 1960.

  71 Bois, Près de Strawinsky, 116.

  72 AMC, 81.

  73 Libman implies, however, that Stravinsky had in 1959 turned down a fee twice as large for a less demanding appearance with CBS’s “chief rival.” See AMC, 153.

  74 As reported in the New York Times on 1 February 1960. The program was shown in CBS’s “Leonard Bernstein and the Philharmonic” series on 31 January.

  28 LARGO AL FACTOTUM

  1 Jay S. Harrison, “Robert Craft and His Unique Life,” New York Herald Tribune, 20 December 1959.

  2 Letter of 23 March 1959 (private collection); emphasis in the original.

  3 Soulima Stravinsky, interview with Thor Wood.

  4 This and some other information in this paragraph is from private conversations in 2002 with John McClure, who succeeded David Oppenheim as Columbia’s Director of Masterworks in 1959. McClure told me that he was not always personally present at routine tape-editing sessions.

  5 The percussionist William Kraft told me in 2001 that he considered some, possibly all, of the edited Petrushka recording to have used takes conducted by Craft.

  6 For instance, Stephen Spender, who told me in 1992 that he took Craft to one side during a visit to Kenneth Clarke at Saltwood Castle in 1963.

  7 The Disney letter (consisting mainly of a quotation from the Los Angeles Times, and signed “A. G.”) had appeared in the Saturday Review of 30 January 1960. Stravinsky’s reply, dated 4 February 1960, appeared in the Saturday Review on 12 March, and was subsequently reprinted in Expo, 146, note 1.

  8 For instance, the claim that he only visited Disney’s studio once (false), and the (misleading) appeal to his Disney contract without mentioning the fact that the contract expressly gave Disney carte blanche to alter the score as he wished. Stravinsky may or may not have been upset by what he heard on his second visit, but he nevertheless sold Disney a similar option on three other works soon afterwards. See above, chapters 7 and 8.

  9 Some of these reminiscences were scurrilous, and in particular certain remarks about Nijinsky’s hereditary syphilis, which had to be excised after his widow’s lawyers threatened to withdraw permission to print the long letter from the dancer that is the main feature of this memoir (see Mem, 38–40).

  10 Mem, 65; cf. SCS, pp. 360, 449. Also Mem, 17–25, and Souvtchinsky’s letter to Marya Yudina, 26 April 1960, partly printed in Bretanitskaya (ed.), Pyotr Suvchinsky i ego vremya, 335–6.

  11 For example, in one draft of Mem, Stravinsky is made to say that after his father’s death he moved to a room on another floor of the house. Another passage has Scriabin reporting to Stravinsky on the supposed brawl at the Moscow premiere of The Rite of Spring. Both these inventions are firmly crossed out in the draft.

  12 AMC, 70.

  13 Reported to Francis Steegmuller by Samuel Dushkin (Columbia, Steegmuller).

  14 Private communication, 1992.

  15 SPD, 424.

  16 Private communication from Denise Strawinsky.

  17 Letter of 12 June 1960, Etta Dahl to Lawrence Morton (UCLA, Morton).

  18 Letter to Sheldon Meyer, 9 May 1962 (UCLA, Morton).

  19 Letter to Boulez, 11 August 1971 (PSS).

  20 Original in English, sic. The note was copied by Francis Steegmuller when he was researching a possible Stravinsky biography in about 1970, working with the composer’s papers in his New York apartment. Since Steegmuller must have been reading many documents in the composer’s hand, I trust his annotation “in IS’s hand.” The copy is in Columbia, Steegmuller, but the original has not surfaced among the composer’s papers in PSS.

  21 Letter of 28 October 1959 (PSS).

  22 Letter of 6 September 1957. Not all the preceding communications survive, but their content can be deduced from those that do.

  23 See especially the elaborate denunciation of the children in CherP reprinted most recently in Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life, 130–201. For a veiled allusion to the Venice incident, see pp. 194–5, note 60.

  24 See, for instance, his letter of 18 March 1961 (PSS).

  25 See above, chapter 8. Stravinsky was also irritated with Theodore over his slowness in thanking Eugene Berman for recommending him as designer for Mavra at La Scala, Milan, early in 1960. “I’m afraid he will make enemies,” he wrote to Denise on 17 February (PSS).

  26 AMC, 164. See above, chapter 6. Craft notes that this revived Tobias idea was the suggestion of Stravinsky’s Los Angeles friend, the Rev. James McLane. See ImpLif, 124.

  27 The FFF’s original letter is dated 5 February 1959; Stravinsky’s proposal for a Seven Last Words is in his letter of 9 March. The entire brief correspondence is in PSS.

  28 Letter of 29 January 1960 (PSS).

  29 Sacher’s letter is dated 15 February (PSS). Other details here are from AMC, 164–7. I consider Libman reliable in such matters, since her information comes substantially from correspondence and other documents, some of which also survive in PSS copies, while others (notably Craft’s presumably handwritten letters to her) remain inaccessible.

  30 See his letters to Libman of 16 and 23 April 1960 (PSS), also AMC, 167. Libman had had a meeting with Graff on the 18th.

  31 Craft’s notes for the meetings, on 4–6 May 1960, survive in PSS. See next chapter.

  32 Letter of 5 July 1960 (PSS).

  33 Letter of 1 March 1960 (PSS).

  34 Craft told Watkins on 1 March that the Monumentum was finished, but four weeks later Stravinsky told Roth that he had “just” finished it, having written to Roth’s assistant, Rufina Ampenoff, earlier in the month without mentioning the piece (letters of 28 and 10 March, respectively). The difference is probably between the sketch drafts and the fair copy (the score is dated, simply, March 1960). Gesualdo’s birth year is disputed; see Vincis and Dal Molin, “Mo(nu)mentum di Carlo Gesualdo,” 229, note 34.

  35 So he claims in “Influence or Assistance?,” Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life, 44.

  36 Conv, 24. Asked what he now felt about music as accompaniment to recitation (in connection with Persephone), Stravinsky had replied: “Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.”

  37 Letter of 1 July 1960, in SSCIII, 425.

  38 Letter to Paul Sacher, 25 June 1960 (PSS). He told Sacher he would finish in September 1961, but no doubt he was deliberately giving himself good leeway.

  39 “Ich fühle Luft von anderen Planeten,” from Georg’s poem “Entrückung,” set by Schoenberg in the vocal finale of his second string quartet.

  40 Letter of 18 September 1959 (PSS). The likelihood, however, is that Stravinsky did not read the letter until his return home in mid-January.

  41 Letter to Stravinsky of 23 September 1959 (PSS).

 
; 42 Letter of 5 September 1959 (PSS).

  43 Letter to Souvtchinsky, 27 January 1960 (PSS).

  44 See Horgan, Encounters with Stravinsky, 122–31, for a detailed account of these events. Horgan himself took the part of the Speaker in Oedipus Rex.

  45 Letter of 30 March 1960 (PSS).

  46 Letter of 19 September 1960 (PSS).

  47 Letters of 27 January 1960 (PSS).

  48 ImpLif, 245, note 4.

  49 Bucknell (ed.), Christopher Isherwood Diaries: 1939–1960, 849 (entry for 25 March 1960).

  50 Ibid., 866 (entry for 18 June).

  51 Ibid., 849.

  52 See AMC, 86–99, for Libman’s account of the negotiations.

  53 AMC, 116.

  54 Or so one gathers from hints in DB. Libman does not mention problems with Alcazar. Vera’s published diary refers to a row with Libman in Mexico about money, and reports “too much trouble with Libman, Alcazar.” (DB, 201). But the first Libman reference is an editorial addition, while the second reads, in the original, “to much trouble,” which may or may not be a spelling mistake.

  55 DB, 201. The word “ever” is not in the original (so: worst of what?), but as the alteration in DB is by Craft it presumably does reflect his opinion that the Lima orchestra was the worst he had ever come across professionally.

  56 Lawrence Morton told Souvtchinsky (letter of 19 November 1960, in UCLA, Morton), that the change of plan was due to the death of the conductor Dimitri Mitropoulos, but this looks like another invention of Craft’s. Mitropoulos died in Milan on 2 November, and by the next day Stravinsky was telling Booseys’ New York manager, David Adams, not only that they were returning early but that their boat tickets were booked and hotel dates confirmed (letter of 3 November 1960, in SSCIII, 427). This would have been smart work even for a close family bereavement.

  57 SCF (94), 145.

  58 “How I would like to live again in Paris,” she had written to Lawrence Morton on 10 May 1960 (UCLA, Morton).

  59 Goddard Lieberson had written to Aristotle Onassis in November 1957, suggesting that the shipping tycoon give Stravinsky a house in Monaco in return for a new ballet (see Joseph, Stravinsky Inside Out, 14). Nadia Boulanger approached Prince Rainier on the same subject at about the same time (letter to Stravinsky of 8 January 1958, in PSS). As late as January 1962 Craft was telling Nabokov that they were definitely buying a house in Monte Carlo (letter of 1 January: HRC, Nabokov). But they never did.

  60 This time it was his publisher who was making the necessary enquiries. See Roth’s letter to Stravinsky of 18 October 1960 (PSS).

  29 SINKING THE ARK

  1 Stravinsky’s text is a slight paraphrase of part of the very first prayer of Dekker’s first “birde,” “The Dove”: “A Prayer for a childe before he goeth to his study, or to schoole.”

  2 SCF (94), 234–5.

  3 Liebermann, Actes et entractes (Paris: La Guilde du livre, 1976), 24–5. Stravinsky may have feared something in the manner of Chagall’s ostentatious designs for the Ballet Theater Firebird in 1945; but when he remarks (in Conv, 102) that Chagall had done an ink portrait of him and given it to him “as a memento of our collaboration,” he is embroidering slightly, since there was no collaboration, and the two only met for the first time in New York the following year.

  4 Letter of 29 January 1961 (PSS).

  5 Letter of 5 July 1960 to David Adams. Roth enclosed a copy of his reply to Adams, setting out the contractual position severely and in detail, with his letter of the same date to Stravinsky (PSS).

  6 Letter to Graff, 3 November 1960, copy in PSS.

  7 SCF (94), 219.

  8 13 November 1960. The cutting is in PSS.

  9 Horgan, Encounters with Stravinsky, 140.

  10 As noted in Betty Bean’s letter to Stravinsky of 28 January 1952 (PSS), and SCF (94), 71.

  11 ASS, 96–7, with a facsimile of the inscription. Craft attributes the “Frère Jacques” story to Horgan and even repeats it as a formal quotation from Encounters with Igor Stravinsky, but there is in fact no trace of it in any edition of that book.

  12 See his letter of 28 January 1961 (PSS). The Firebird recording was eventually “chosen” as the record-club selection for June 1962. See Schuyler Chapin’s letter to Stravinsky, 21 May 1962 (PSS).

  13 Letter of 19 August 1961 (PSS). Stravinsky is complaining about the need to satisfy Soviet audiences, but in truth the situation with American audiences was not much different, as Stravinsky hints in his letter to Souvtchinsky of 28 January 1961, just after recording The Firebird.

  14 These various documents survive in PSS. See Joseph, Stravinsky Inside Out, 150–1, for a brief survey of their contents.

  15 See his letter of 16 April 1960 to Libman (PSS), abstracted in AMC, 165. The Sextant press release was dated 13 April.

  16 Expo, 123–7.

  17 Expo, 126, 127, note 1.

  18 Letter of 9 March 1959 (PSS).

  19 Letter to Stravinsky, 23 February 1961 (PSS). See also DB, 201.

  20 Craft states (SCF [72], 110) that these were the last performances Stravinsky conducted of The Rite, but this is incorrect. He conducted it again in Stockholm on 24 September 1961, an occasion recorded in the revised 1994 edition of SCF, p. 248. For a detailed account of the Taxco visit, see ibid., 238–9.

  21 See Stravinsky’s letters to Liebermann of 9 February (PSS) and to Roth of 27 February 1961 (SSCIII, 429), respectively.

  22 Letter of David Adams to Stravinsky, 17 April 1961 (PSS).

  23 Sic. AMC, 169.

  24 The Symphony of Psalms recording was never in fact released. For the concert on 5 June, Eudice Shapiro played the Violin Concerto, but for the recording at the end of June the soloist was Isaac Stern.

  25 SCF (94), 240.

  26 Letter of 12 June 1961 (PSS).

  27 Tikhon Khrennikov, “Serdechnïy privet ot Stravinskogo,” Ogonyok, August 1961.

  28 Letter of 16 January 1961, in A. M. Kuznetsov (ed.), “Pis’ma I. F. Stravinskogo M. V. Yudinoy,” Nevel’skiy sbornik, no. 3 (St. Petersburg: 1998), 40.

  29 Yudina to Stravinsky, letter of 29 April 1960 (PSS). See also Souvtchinsky to Stravinsky, 12 May 1960 (PSS). Stravinsky sent a card of acknowledgment to Yudina with a covering note via Souvtchinsky, both dated 7 May: see Kuznetsov, op. cit., 39, and PSS, respectively.

  30 Letter of 10 May (PSS).

  31 Letter of 12 May 1961 (PSS).

  32 Letter of 12 June 1961 (PSS).

  33 “Stravinsky Shakes a Stick at Red Music, Washington Post, 24 December 1960.

  34 Letter of 13–19 March 1961, in Bretanitskaya (ed.), Pyotr Suvchinsky i ego vremya, 346–8.

  35 Khrennikov, “Serdechnïy privet ot Stravinskogo.”

  36 Letter of 12 June.

  37 Letter of 16 June (PSS). On his Russian transcript of this letter kindly supplied to the present author, after the remark about Khrennikov needing Shostakovich’s approval, the editor, the late Viktor Varunts, cannot contain his fury: “Can you beat this stupidity of Souvtchinsky’s!”

  38 In the mid-sixties, Stravinsky sent money to Bachnicki’s daughter, who was in poor health and difficult circumstances in Warsaw.

  39 Letter to Stravinsky, 18 December 1961 (PSS).

  40 Letter of 28 August 1961, in Bretanitskaya (ed.), Pyotr Suvchinsky i ego vremya, 353. Souvtchinsky had sounded Stravinsky on this possibility in his letter of 15 August, to which Stravinsky had replied on the 19th (PSS).

  41 Letter of 20 September 1961, in Pyotr Suvchinsky i ego vremya, 354–5. The Russian original reads literally; “Is it possible that you really thought that—to Helsinki—‘sit and go’??!!” (‘sel i poyekhal’), referring to the Russian custom of sitting in silence for a short time before leaving on a journey.

  42 Letter to Yudina, 23 October 1961, in Pyotr Suvchinsky i ego vremya, 356–7.

  43 Letter to Souvtchinsky, 10 December 1961 (PSS).

  44 SCF (94), 242.

  45 Rimsky-Korsakov’s reaction is described in V. V. Yastrebtsev
, Reminiscences of Rimsky-Korsakov, ed. and trans. Florence Jonas (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 420.

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

  47 See SCF (94), 243–8, for Craft’s detailed account of the production and the meetings with Bergman.

  48 See SCS, 518.

  49 AMC, 151.

  50 Encounters with Stravinsky, 149. See also Craft’s description in SCF (94), 249–50.

  51 These changes were the subject of his long letter to Crosby of 17 August 1961 (PSS).

  52 See the letter from Cambridge University Press to Stravinsky, 9 December 1960 (PSS).

  53 Wellington Evening Post, 16 November 1961, quoted in SPD, 542.

  54 Letter of 26 December 1961 to Eliot, SPD, 542–3.

  55 Not surprisingly, the anthem was not used in the new hymnal, which instead includes an “Alleluya” arranged by Elizabeth Poston from the “Andantino” of Les Cinq doigts. See D. Holbrook and E. Poston (eds.), The Cambridge Hymnal (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), no. 183. See also Stravinsky’s remarks on the Mass in Expo, 77.

  56 SCF (94), 253–4.

  57 T&C, 59. The authenticity of the text is, of course, more than suspect, but in this particular case there are good reasons for accepting the factual basis.

  58 Letter of 22 May 1961, in SSCIII, 431.

  59 In his autobiography, Craft maintains that Stravinsky had already decided on the Abraham story that afternoon, but this is contradicted by Berlin’s letter of 7 November (quoted in extenso on the same page of Craft’s book), which shows that he sent both texts. Of course, Berlin may have got into a muddle, but this seems highly unlikely; or he may still have been angling for the Creation story, even in the knowledge that Stravinsky had rejected it, which would have been out of character and probably a waste of his time. By far the likeliest explanation is that Craft, for neither the first nor the hundredth time, has simply got things wrong. For what it is worth, Sir Isaiah Berlin told me in 1992 that the Abraham story was his choice (the “very well-told tale” was his phrase to me). He may indeed have selected it as one possibility, but there is no doubt that the final choice was Stravinsky’s. See ImpLif, 228–9.