60 SCF (94), 272.
61 Letter of 21 May 1962 (RGB). The explanation was prompted by the 1962 trip to South Africa.
62 Postcard of 25 September 1961 from Stockholm (UCLA, Morton).
63 AMC, 114.
64 Craft reproduces a page of the fair-copy manuscript of this arrangement in ASS, 103, and states that it was made in Hollywood. Libman, 108, says that it was done on the Mexico flight on the 17th. The arrangement was not incorporated in the Eight Instrumental Miniatures of the following spring, but may well have been the trigger for it.
65 Letter of 24 November, cited in AMC, 151.
66 Letter of 21 November 1961, quoted in SPD, 653, note 122.
67 Letter of 9 December 1961, quoted in ibid.
68 Liebermann wrote with this firm proposal on 9 December. On the 13th Stravinsky counter-proposed that he conduct one ballet per evening (PSS).
69 Letter of 3 January 1962 (HRC, Nabokov). The “Casals business” was the concert Casals had given in the White House on 13 November with Alexander Schneider and Mieczyslaw Horszowski. Casals’s biographer H. F. Kirk describes the concert as “one of the luminous cultural events of the Kennedy administration,” but Stravinsky, whose music Casals disliked, was not invited. See Kirk, Pablo Casals (London: Hutchinson, 1974), 520.
70 Nabokov claims as much in Bagazh, 178.
71 Nabokov conveyed Schlesinger’s request to Stravinsky in a letter of 26 December 1961 (PSS).
30 A GUEST IN HIS OWN COUNTRY
1 AMC, 152.
2 Letter of 18 December 1961 (PSS).
3 Letter of 18 December 1961, Xenya Stravinsky to Igor Stravinsky. See SB, 91.
4 Letter of 29 December, SB, 92.
5 Letter of 2 April 1962, SB, 94–5.
6 These included an interview with Vera, a conversation excerpt between Craft and Stravinsky, and a performance of the Symphony of Psalms.
7 The concerts were in the Lisner Auditorium on 19, 21, and 22 January. The recording was on the 20th.
8 The parts were recorded later and dubbed onto the original tape some time after
9 March, when McClure sent Stravinsky a disc of the cimbalom-less performances for checking.
9 SCF (94), 284.
10 Letter of 4 February 1962 (PSS); emphases his.
11 SCF (94), 285.
12 See Yudina’s letter of 29 January 1962 to Souvtchinsky. Text omitted from Bretanitskaya, op. cit., but supplied to me by Viktor Varunts. The originals of Yudina’s letters to Souvtchinsky were given by his widow to their author’s executor, A. M. Kuznetsov, in 1988 (see Bretanitskaya [ed.], Pyotr Suvchinsky i ego vremya, 324, note).
13 Letter of 21 February (PSS).
14 Stravinsky to Souvtchinsky, 17 March, and Souvtchinsky’s reply of the 25th (PSS).
15 Letter of 21 March (HRC, Nabokov).
16 Letter of 12 April to Souvtchinsky (PSS).
17 The soloists were Jeanne Deroubaix, Hugues Cuénod, and the narrator Derrick Olsen.
18 Stravinsky (or Craft) had already remarked on this change in a footnote in the recently published third volume of conversations, Expo, 111. But this cannot have been influenced by the Sermon reviews.
19 Jacques Lonchampt, Le Monde, 25–26 February 1962.
20 Dial, 72–80.
21 Dial, 78.
22 Letter of 2 April 1962 (PSS). The “letter of intent” was dated 21 April 1960 (PSS).
23 Letter of 15 April (PSS). Stravinsky wanted Graff (and Columbia) to use the formula “under the supervision of the composer,” but Graff seems to have ignored this request.
24 Letter of 22 March 1962 (PSS: the italics are my version of Stravinsky’s invariable habit of typing his work titles—and in this case “flop”—in Roman capitals).
25 See Stravinsky’s letter of 6 April to Schuyler Chapin and John McClure (PSS).
26 SPD, 465.
27 Isaiah Berlin had sent the Abraham and Isaac text just before Christmas; see SCF (94), 279.
28 I deduce that Morton asked for a work because it was a pattern of the spring concerts of 1962 to celebrate Stravinsky’s eightieth birthday with at least one work in every program, and this could also explain why the finished score of the Eight Instrumental Miniatures was dedicated to Morton, a gesture that both delighted and puzzled him, as he admitted to Sheldon Meyer, his editor at Oxford University Press. See chapter 28, note 18; also Dorothy Crawford, Evenings On and Off the Roof, 201.
29 Crawford, 201. The pieces performed at the 26 March concert were (in the Cinq doigts order) nos. 1, 7, 6, and 3, presumably in that order (nos. 1–4 of the Eight Instrumental Miniatures).
30 The canonic additions are discussed by Glenn Watkins in “Canon and Stravinsky’s Late Style,” in Pasler (ed.), Confronting Stravinsky, 235–7. Watkins had written to Stravinsky in January 1961 proposing himself to arrange some of the Cinq doigts for organ, but when Stravinsky made his own instrumentations, Watkins abandoned the organ version.
31 Letter to Isaiah Berlin, 30 January 1962 (copy in HRC, Nabokov).
32 The meeting is described in great detail in Berlin’s letter of 21 May to Kollek (copy in HRC, Nabokov).
33 Letter of 7 November 1961, in ImpLif, 228.
34 SCF (94), 289. According to this version of Craft’s diary, Beckett remarked that de Gaulle was “beginning to sound like Péguy.” The reader interested in textual variants will be surprised to find that in earlier versions (Dial, 256; SCF [72], 154) it was the OAS of whom Beckett said this.
35 James Knowlson, Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett (London: Bloomsbury, 1996), 500.
36 AMC, 109.
37 Ibid., 105.
38 Craft’s autobiography omits all mention of the South African visit, depositing the travellers from Paris at Brazzaville (Congo) without explanation, before rediscovering them in Rome in the next paragraph. No doubt this was one of the sequences that suggested the book’s title. See An Improbable Life, 256.
39 Letter of Anton Hartman to Lillian Libman, 10 February 1962 (PSS).
40 Letter of 16 February 1962 (PSS).
41 SCF (94), 291.
42 Letter of 5 June 1962 to Theodore Kollek (copy in HRC, Nabokov). Berlin had been alerted to Stravinsky’s remarks by a report in the Jewish Chronicle for 1 June (“‘Strange Letter’ to Stravinsky: Tour to Israel nearly cancelled”). It seems, nevertheless, that the Symphony of Psalms was indeed sung in Hebrew when Stravinsky conducted it in Israel in 1964. See below, chapter 32.
43 Spender, Journals 1939–1983, 238. The hyperbole was no doubt deliberate, unless Spender simply misheard. As it happened 17 May, when Stravinsky really had been in Paris, was the last time Spender had seen him, calling on him at the Hotel Berkeley and being treated to an imitation of the rhinoceros the composer now said he was going to South Africa to see (ibid., 227–8).
44 Jack Loughner, “‘Noah’ Almost Got Drowned,” San Francisco News Call Bulletin, 15 June 1962.
45 For Lang’s review, see the New York Herald Tribune, 15 June 1962. The paper printed Stravinsky’s telegram on the 24th in an inset to Lang’s article of that Sunday (“Stravinsky Aims, Fires”), in which the critic naturally took the opportunity to enlarge on his previously quite moderately expressed opinion of The Flood. Lang had a few years previously attacked The Poetics of Music in a Tribune article, “The Position of Igor Stravinsky,” of 18 March 1956.
46 See chapter 27.
47 Graff wrote to him on 29 June, and again on 2 July, informing him of the new date and time (PSS).
48 According to the archive listings at the Hollywood Bowl, this was the 1919 suite, but one cannot be confident about it. Stravinsky always preferred the 1945 revision. The concert was on 26 July.
49 On the 21st. In ImpLif, Craft says that he conducted the premiere on the 19th in Santa Fe Cathedral, in a concert that also included the Cantata conducted by Stravinsky. No other account mentions this performance, however.
50 Encounters with Igor Stravinsky, 150–66.
51 Ibid
., 163.
52 SCF (94), 308.
53 Letter to Nicolas Nabokov, 7 September 1964 (HRC, Nabokov). Berlin is describing Stravinsky’s second visit, at which he was present.
54 SCF (94), 307.
55 Letter of 4 August 1962 to Nabokov (HRC, Nabokov).
56 The contrast with Lawrence Morton, who was writing a book on Stravinsky, is instructive. Morton not only studied Russian, the better to understand Stravinsky’s mind and music, but he also worked hard and successfully to improve his French, in order to correspond more intimately with Boulez (whose own English was as a matter of fact more than adequate).
57 SCF (94), 317.
58 R. Buckle, George Balanchine: Ballet Master, 232–3.
59 As recorded in his father’s account book for 1890. See PRKI, 34. There had been a similar stop in 1883, but this would not have formed part of the then eleven-month-old Igor’s memory (see ibid., 23).
60 SB, 124.
61 SB, 142. I have telescoped two hotel-room experiences described by Xenya, of which the second, in Leningrad, was the occasion for most of the thoughts here quoted. As for the Moscow conversation, according to Xenya it was occasioned by Vera’s and Craft’s absence at the Obratzova Puppet Theatre that afternoon, a performance that Craft claims they attended with the composer in the evening. By no means hostile to Xenya in the few passages where he notes her presence, Craft makes no mention of her ever having remained alone with her uncle. Compare SCF (94), 326, and SB, 122–5.
62 See SCF (94), 313, 317, 319.
63 “Igor’ Stravinskiy: lyubite muzïky!” Komsomol’skaya Pravda, 27 September 1962; Y. Lidin and S. Razgonov, “I. F. Stravinskiy v Moskve,” Moskovskaya Pravda, 26 September 1962. The former article ends with a facsimile of a supposedly (but clearly not) autograph text: “Bravo. Igor Stravinsky. Moskva krasavitsa [the beautiful] 1962.”
64 A. Afonina, “Igor’ Stravinskiy v Sovetskom Soyuze,” Sovetskaya Muzïka, no. 1 (1963), 123–5, reprinted (without attribution) in ISPS, 201–6. In general the article is a balanced and unembroidered account of the visit.
65 I. Vershinina, “Vï ne predstavlyaye,” Ogonyok, October 1962, 4–5. Stravinsky also told Vershinina (not, incidentally, to be confused with the fine Soviet musicologist Irina Vershinina) that his library in Hollywood contained a number of Soviet books that, he implied, he had read with interest. No doubt such remarks arose from leading questions and were intended to please. But, though untruthful, they were probably uttered.
66 Komsomol’skaya Pravda, 27 September. “Makeup” is my translation of the difficult word “slog,” whose dictionary meaning is “style.” To a Russian “slog” is a much more inward quality—closer to “essence”—than the mere outward signals we associate with the word “style.”
67 Craft says that the rehearsals and concerts took place in the Tchaikovsky Hall, but this seems to be an error of identification on his part.
68 SCF (94), 315.
69 Issued on Melodiya, 74321 33220 2.
70 This is a rough précis of the account in SB, 113–16, with additional details from SCF (94), 322.
71 SB, 118; SCF (94), 323.
72 SB, 121–2; SCF (94), 325–6.
73 SCF (94), 329.
74 SB, 132.
75 As late as 25 September, newspaper reports were mentioning Kiev as part of the itinerary, but an exchange in SB (106) between Stravinsky, Yury Shaporin, and the Ukrainian composer Konstantin Dankevich on the 22nd seems already to hint at some political infighting over the question. According to Xenya, Stravinsky himself badly wanted to go to Ukraine.
76 SCF (94), 330.
77 “S nadezhdoy na novïye vstrechi,” Izvestiya, 30 September 1962.
78 A revealing photograph of this dinner is in DB, 208.
79 Quoted in Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich: A Life Remembered (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 375.
80 Quoted verbatim in SCF (94), 328.
81 SCF (94), 335.
82 Ibid.
83 Letter of 27 November 1961, reprinted in Dial, 131–2. See above, chapter 28, for support for the view that such letters were probably written by Craft.
84 SB, 159, where Xenya quotes the speech from memory. SCF (94), 337, gives a slightly different text. The concert to which Stravinsky refers took place on 18 November 1893 (NS), and included the second performance of the Pathétique symphony.
85 SB, 143–7.
86 SCF (94), 333.
87 Ibid., 333–4.
88 Letter of 6 October 1962 (PSS).
89 SCF (94), 332, 337.
90 Letter of 8 October (PSS).
91 The photograph of this dinner in IVSPA, 135, shows how little privacy they would have had, even apart from the interesting possibility of microphones in the chandeliers or the flower vases. Heads turn their way, cameras flash, and so forth. The meeting was a historic event.
92 Mem, 56.
93 SCF (94), 337.
94 See the references in SCF (94), 339, and Elizabeth Wilson, Shostakovich Remembered, 375.
95 “Igor Stravinsky: retour de Moscou,” L’Humanité, 12 October 1962.
96 SCF (94), 341. One other parallel with the Mussolini association is the fact that eighteen months later, on 16 April 1964, Stravinsky cabled birthday greetings to Khrushchev. See SPD, 470. Souvtchinsky was also for a time an admirer of the Soviet leader. “Do you not think that Khrushchev has been showing himself a very clever, farsighted politician?” he wrote to Stravinsky on 23 November 1962, a month after the Cuban missile crisis.
31 THE SACRE PAPERS
1 Quoted in SSCI, 358, note 71.
2 One Russian report even took this phrase as its headline. “Ya videl nezabïvaemïye veshchi,” Smena, 13 October 1962.
3 Jacqueline Leulliot, “Igor Stravinsky à Paris,” L’Aurore, 12 October 1962.
4 Claude Samuel, “Mi offrono una dacia,” L’Europeo, 28 October 1962.
5 Letter to Khrennikov, 19 January 1963 (PSS). Stravinsky had heard about Khrennikov’s reaction from Xenya’s husband, Alexander Yakovlev, who had mentioned it in a letter to Craft. Samuel’s Prokofiev, trans. Miriam John (London: Calder and Boyars, 1971), was originally published in French in 1960 (Paris: Éditions du Seuil).
6 See SCS, 366.
7 I. Nest’yev, “Vechera Igorya Stravinskogo,” Sovetskaya Muzïka, no. 12 (December 1962), 92–5.
8 Ibid., 93.
9 See the program note for the first performance in New York, 24 January 1946.
10 Nest’yev, op. cit.
11 Sergei Prokofiev: His Musical Life (New York: Knopf, 1946); Zhizn Sergeya Prokof’yeva (Moscow: Sovetskiy Kompozitor, 1957).
12 Izvestiya, 7 January 1951, quoted in Boris Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia 1917–1970 (London: Barrie and Jenkins, 1972), 354.
13 Sovetskaya muzïka, 1958, no. 2, quoted in Schwarz, “Stravinsky in Soviet Russian Criticism,” Musical Quarterly, 48 (1962), 351.
14 See Schwarz, Music and Musical Life in Soviet Russia, 363.
15 Letter to Stravinsky of 13 February 1963 (PSS).
16 Respectively, Nabokov to Stravinsky, 31 March (PSS); Souvtchinsky to Stravinsky, 11 April (PSS); Souvtchinsky to Lawrence Morton, 16 April (UCLA, Morton). The main musician to suffer was, as usual, Shostakovich, whose Thirteenth Symphony, first performed in Moscow on 18 December 1962, was the object of petty censorship allegedly because of unacceptable aspects of the Yevtushenko poems it had set.
17 Letter to Stravinsky of 16 February 1963 (PSS).
18 Letter of 25 April 1963 (PSS).
19 Letter of May 1963 from Hamburg, quoted in SB, 169–70.
20 Letter to Souvtchinsky, 21 October 1962 (text omitted from Bretanitskaya [ed.], Pyotr Suvchinsky i ego vremya, but supplied to me by Viktor Varunts).
21 This is the clear, though not stated, implication of her letter to Souvtchinsky of 8 June 1963 (text omitted from Bretanitskaya, but supplied to me by Viktor Varunts).
22 Letter of 28 November 1962 (text om
itted from Bretanitskaya, but supplied to me by Viktor Varunts).
23 Letter of 8 June.
24 Letters of 28 November 1962, 8 June 1963, respectively.
25 Letter to Souvtchinsky of 22 July 1963 (text omitted from Bretanitskaya, but supplied to me by Viktor Varunts).
26 Stravinsky continued to indicate De Profundis as a suitable model for the actual printing of the Hebrew text in Abraham and Isaac. See his letter of 11 March 1963 to Ernst Roth, in SSCIII, 440. As for Britten, Stravinsky wrote to David Adams on 15 February, while still at work on Abraham and Isaac, requesting scores of the War Requiem and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In general, his interest in Britten’s music survived the growing divide between their styles, whatever he may have said in company.
27 See ImpLif, 266. Mario Bois’s statement (Près de Strawinsky, 94) that they went to see the finished film in Paris in December 1963 is inexplicable, not because they were not in Paris at that time, but because his account of Stravinsky’s being shocked at the film’s opening image—a mitred bishop in a brothel—cannot be squared with the fact that he had already seen the film and given permission for his music to be used. The Paris showing, if it took place, must have been in May 1963. What happened in December is that Bois saw the film with Souvtchinsky and Boulez, an outing described by Souvtchinsky in his letter to Stravinsky of 30 December 1963 (PSS).
28 SCF (94), 342.
29 In private conversation, however, Craft has claimed that he himself made the adaptations and that the composer was not involved: CwC, cf, SPD, 473. By an odd coincidence, an actual film of The Soldier’s Tale was made only a few months later, with Brian Phelan as the Soldier, Robert Helpmann as the Devil, and Svetlana Beriosova as the Princess. But this time Stravinsky was not involved in any musical capacity, only as one party to the notoriously complicated rights arrangements with this particular work.
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