Stravinsky

by Stephen Walsh

  49 Menet was in any case a seven-hour drive from Évian, and a no-less-complicated rail journey, added to which Françoise was, according to Soulima, in a state of nervous exhaustion and constantly on the verge of tears, for which reason the couple returned early to Urbana. Craft’s implication that Soulima failed to visit his father out of pure negligence is at best an oversimplification. See SCF (94), 525–6.

  50 SB, 214–15.

  51 SB, 211.

  52 SB, 223–4.

  53 SB, 223. The well-known photographs by Lord Snowdon of Stravinsky at Évian were taken the day or two before they left.

  54 Letter of 16 December 1970, in SPD, 496–7.

  55 Steegmuller had been contemplating a book on Diaghilev, and presumably the idea of a Stravinsky biography came out of the discussion of his need to consult the composer’s papers.

  56 Donal Henahan, “Stravinsky Ready to Sell His Papers,” New York Times, 2 December 1970.

  57 CherP, 177–8.

  58 The letter is summarized in AMC, 381–2.

  59 This is clear from Vera’s reply.

  60 The point is hardly worth answering, but it should be noted that for well over twenty years Robert Craft was almost wholly dependent on financial support, in one form or another, from Stravinsky.

  61 A draft of the letter, dated 15 December, is in CherP, 178–9.

  62 Letter of 23 December 1970 (SCNY).

  63 These and other items are listed in the family’s objections to the Executors’ accounting, filed in New York on the 20th of June 1975, but they relate either explicitly or implicitly mainly to transactions alleged to have taken place before Stravinsky’s death (SCNY).

  64 Tribute by Carter in Perspectives of New Music, ix/2 and x/1 (Spring/Summer–Fall/ Winter, 1971), 2.

  65 SCF (94), 536.

  66 Bagazh, 180. The “chambermaids” are presumably the nurses.

  67 SCF (94), 536. Craft dates this incident to 12 February 1971, as does Nabokov the incident of the chambermaids.

  68 DB, 236, note 6.

  69 AMC, 380. Craft disputes Libman’s account (“greatly exaggerated”), but it is broadly confirmed by DB, 237.

  70 AMC, 366.

  71 SCF (94), 538.

  72 T&C, 178–81, cf. “Stravinsky: The Last Interview,” in New York Review of Books (1 July 1971), 3–4. The fundamental lie of Themes and Conclusions might prompt the suspicion that the SCF account of Stravinsky’s improvement at this period was partly designed to support the likelihood of his having written the articles. The problem with untruth, of course, is that it is logically self-perpetuating.

  73 T&C, 182–4; cf. SCF (94), 539.

  74 T&C, 184.

  75 SCF (94), 539; AMC, 383.

  76 SCF (94), 540–1.

  77 Ibid., 540. Craft explains this away as a mishearing of “has” for “had,” but it seems clear that the “four” is part of the reversion to the remote past, a reversion unwelcome to the diarist.

  78 Strictly he had not, as the apartment had been bought in Vera’s name. This was good sense, of course, but it neatly illustrates the children’s fears about the possible switching of funds.

  79 SCF (94), 543.

  80 I have conflated the accounts in SCF (94), 544–5, and AMC, 384 and 19.

  81 AMC, 19–21, amplified by Libman’s verbal reminiscence to Francis Steegmuller at a lunch in New York on 26 July 1971. Steegmuller’s notes are in Columbia, Steegmuller.

  82 The accounts of Stravinsky’s death in SCF (72), 409, and SCF (94), 545-6, actually differ in a number of significant and puzzling details. For instance, in 1972 the diary tells us that Craft alone held the dead man’s hand and kissed his cheeks before Vera arrived, but by 1994 it is reporting that he and Vera sat together and performed these rites. Moreover, it seems highly unlikely that the kissing and hand-holding Craft describes would have taken place with the corpse’s eyes open, as anyone who has witnessed death will surely confirm. It is also of note that in his earlier chronicle Craft describes the eye-recognition incident as occurring after the intern has pronounced death, but in the revised text the eyes are alive only before death, and there is no recognition. Libman at first thought Craft a “fiend” for writing and rewriting his account of the death eleven times “just after the event,” but later changed her mind, realizing that “people express their feelings in different ways” (Columbia, Steegmuller). Certainly nobody could ever accuse Craft of an unfeeling attitude to Stravinsky’s death, even if his descriptions may suggest too urgent a need to participate in it.

  83 Letter of 6 April 1926, now in PRKIII, 184; also SSCII, 40. See SCS, 431 and 646, note 26.

  84 SCF (94), 546.

  85 SCF (94), 547.

  86 Francis Steegmuller, “Burial in Venice,” The New Yorker (1 May 1971), 102.

  87 “Das gewöhnliche Bagagi”: Der Rosenkavalier, Act 1.

  37 BUT NONE DO THERE EMBRACE

  1 SCF (94), 548–9.

  2 AMC, 41.

  3 One such photograph is reproduced in AMC, facing page 209.

  4 See above, chapter 36, pp. 551, 555. In February Rothschild had valued the music manuscripts at $200,000. The following April, in Venice for the composer’s funeral, Craft told Steegmuller that the whole archive had been valued at $500,000. Admittedly, valuations for tax or probate are likely to be well below market value. Boosey and Hawkes’s control of publication rights was also probably an inhibiting factor on any sale. Not until 1977 did Vera buy back the rights, at the punitive price of $90,000.

  5 Bleak House, chapter 1.

  6 Letter of 18 May 1981 (UCLA, Morton).

  7 This is apparent not only from correspondence, but also from his contribution to Tony Palmer’s Stravinsky film, Once at a Border …, including the unused outtakes, now in PSS.

  8 Craft, “End of a Chronicle,” New York Review of Books (1 July 1971), 4–14. See also SCF (94), 549.

  9 Paradise Lost, xii, 641.

  10 Letter of 1 August 1971 (SCNY)

  11 Letter of 7 September 1979, George V. Bobrinskoy Jr. to Surrogate Millard L. Midonick, quoting case precedent. See above, chapter 36, note 28.

  12 Sacher’s wife, Maja Stehlin, was the widow of Emmanuel Hoffmann, a son of the founder of the pharmaceutical company. The other manuscripts were apparently the full score of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments, the short scores of the piano and violin concertos, the score of Pulcinella, the piano score of Renard, and the sketches for the Concerto in D for strings and A Sermon, a Narrative, and a Prayer.

  13 Letter to Martin Garbus (Vera’s lawyer), 14 May 1980 (SCNY).

  14 Simon and Schuster, 1978. The book was nominally by Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft, but the text and the selection of archival material appear to have been entirely Craft’s work. The family had tried to block its publication, but without success.

  15 “Catherine and Igor Stravinsky,” New York Review of Books (22 November 1979), 33–6.

  16 Letter of 9 January 1981 to Surrogate Millard L. Midonick (SCNY).

  17 Letter of 10 February 1981 (copy in the possession of John Stravinsky).

  18 Ken Sandler, “Stravinsky Archives: UCLA, Art Are Winners,” Los Angeles Times, 15 May 1982.

  19 For these and other details, see Craft, ImpLif, 302–5.

  20 Notes by Francis Steegmuller of a conversation with Lillian Libman, 26 July 1971 (Columbia, Steegmuller). Libman also told Steegmuller that Vera disliked Rita.

  21 ImpLif, 339.

  22 SSCI (1982), SSCII (1984), and SSCIII (1985).

  23 The essay first appeared in the collection, Robert Craft, Present Perspectives (New York: Knopf, 1984), 31–85. Craft told Morton (letter of 5 August 1983) that he had indemnified Knopf against legal action, but such indemnities are in any case enshrined in most standard book contracts. Craft’s correspondence with Knopf (letter of 8 August 1983) merely asserts that he can prove that Kitty was not married when she had her baby, as if the rest of the essay were utterly devoid of questionable matter.

&nb
sp; 24 Letter to Lawrence Morton, 28 April 1983 (UCLA, Morton).

  25 “The Paul Sacher Foundation at the Crossroads. The Purchase of the Igor Stravinsky Archive,” in Paul Sacher in Memoriam (Paul Sacher Stiftung: Basel, 2000), 37–40.

  26 As reported in the New York Times on 16 June. Since the trustees’ letter announcing the auction was sent on the 13th, the connection seems fairly clear. According to an unconfirmed report in the New York Times (24 June 1983), the unnamed bidder was the Morgan trustee and oil tycoon, Fred R. Koch.

  27 As well as CherP, DB (published in 1985) should also be mentioned as a dumping ground for a large number of disagreeable asides about individual members of the Stravinsky family, many of them of only cursory relevance to the actual diaries, and some of them demonstrably false.

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  PRINCIPAL SOURCES

  AMC Lillian Libman, And Music at the Close: Stravinsky’s Last Years (London: Macmillan, 1972).

  ASS Robert Craft, A Stravinsky Scrapbook 1940–1971 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1983).

  CASIII Claude Tappolet (ed.), Correspondance Ansermet–Strawinsky (1914–1967), vol. 3 (Geneva: Georg, 1992).

  CherP Robert Craft, “Cher père, chère Vera,” in Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992).

  Chron Igor Stravinsky, Chronicle of My Life (London: Victor Gollancz, 1936).

  Conv Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (London: Faber and Faber, 1959).

  CwC Conversations with Craft. A series of six radio interviews with Stephen Walsh (BBC Radio 3: Soundscape Productions, 1995); also outtakes.

  DB Robert Craft (ed.), Dearest Bubushkin: The Correspondence of Vera and Igor Stravinsky, 1921–1954, with Excerpts from Vera Stravinsky’s Diaries, 1922–1971, trans. Lucia Davidova (London: Thames and Hudson, 1985).

  Dial Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Dialogues and a Diary (London: Faber and Faber, 1968).

  Expo Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments (London: Faber and Faber, 1962).

  ImpLif, Robert Craft, An Improbable Life (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002).

  ISPS Viktor Varunts (ed.), I. Stravinsky: Publitsist i sobesednik (Moscow: Sovetskiy Kompozitor, 1988).

  IVSPA Vera Stravinsky, Rita McCaffrey, and Robert Craft, Igor and Vera Stravinsky: A Photograph Album, 1921 to 1971 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982).

  M&C Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Memories and Commentaries: New One-volume Edition (London: Faber and Faber, 2002).

  Mem Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Memories and Commentaries (London: Faber and Faber, 1960).

  PMP M. G. Kozlova and N. R. Yatsenzo (eds.), S. S. Prokof’yev i N. Ya. Myaskovsky: Perepiska (Moscow: Sovetskiy Kompozitor, 1977).

  Poet Igor Stravinsky, Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947).

  PRK Viktor Varunts (ed.), I. F. Stravinsky: Perepiska s russkimi korrespondentami. Materialï k biografi, in three published volumes (Moscow: Kompozitor, 1997, 2000, 2003).

  R&C Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Retrospectives and Conclusions (New York: Knopf, 1969).

  SB K. Yu. Stravinskaya, O I. F. Stravinskom i evo blizkikh (Leningrad: Muzïka, 1978).

  SCF (72), Robert Craft, Stravinsky: The Chronicle of a Friendship 1948–1971 (London: Gollancz, 1972).

  SCF (94) Robert Craft, Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship. Revised and Expanded Edition (Nashville and London: Vanderbilt University Press, 1994).

  SCS Stephen Walsh, Stravinsky, A Creative Spring: Russia and France 1882–1934 (vol. 1 of the present biography) (New York: Knopf, 1999; London: Jonathan Cape, 2000).

  Sfam Theodore and Denise Strawinsky, Stravinsky: A Family Chronicle 1906–1940, trans. Stephen Walsh (London: Schirmer, 2004); edited translation of T. and D. Strawinsky, Au coeur du foyer (Bourg-la-Reine: Zurfluh, 1998), which in its turn incorporated a revised text from Theodore Strawinsky, Catherine & Igor Stravinsky: A Family Album (London: Boosey and Hawkes, 1973) (CISFam in SCS).

  SNB Strawinsky: Sein Nachlass. Sein Bild (Basle: Kunstmuseum Basel in Zusammenarbeit mit der Paul Sacher Stiftung, 1984).

  SPD Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978).

  SSCI, II, III Robert Craft (ed.), Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, 3 vols. (London: Faber and Faber, 1982, 1984, 1985).

  T&C Igor Stravinsky, Themes and Conclusions (London: Faber and Faber, 1972).

  T&E Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Themes and Episodes (New York: Knopf, 1967).

  SECONDARY SOURCES

  Acosta, M. de Here Lies the Heart (London: André Deutsch, 1960).

  Adorno, T. W. Philosophy of Modern Music, trans. A. Mitchell and W. Bloomster (London: Sheed and Ward, 1973).

  _________. Quasi una fantasia: Essays on Modern Music, trans. R. Livingstone (London: Verso, 1992).

  Aguila, J. Le Domaine Musical: Pierre Boulez et vingt ans de création contemporaine (Paris: Fayard, 1992).

  Alm, I. “Stravinsky, Balanchine, and Agon: An Analysis Based on the Collaborative Process,” Journal of Musicology, 7 (1989), 254–69.

  Andriessen, L., and E. Schönberger. The Apollonian Clockwork: On Stravinsky, trans. J. Hamburg (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

  Ansen, A. The Table Talk of W. H. Auden (Princeton: Ontario Review Press, 1990).

  Ansermet, A. Ernest Ansermet, mon père (Lausanne: Payot, 1983).

  Ansermet, E. Les Fondements de la musique dans la conscience humaine (Neuchâtel: A la Baconnière, 1961).

  Armitage, M. Accent on Life (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1965)

  Auberjonois, F. (ed.). “René Auberjonois (1872–1957): Lettres et souvenirs,” Études de lettres, III/5 (Lausanne: Université de Lausanne, October–December 1972).

  Auden, W. H. “Craftsman, Artist, Genius,” The Observer (11 April 1971).

  Auden, W. H., and N. H. Pearson (eds.). Poets of the English Language (5 volumes, New York: Viking, 1950).

  Baltensperger, A. “Strawinsky’s ‘Chicago Lecture’ (1944),” Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung, no. 5 (January 1992), 19–23.

  Barron, S. “Degenerate Art”: The Fate of the Avant-Garde in Nazi Germany (Los Angeles: Harry N. Abrams, 1991).

  Bedford, S. Aldous Huxley: A Biography. Volume Two: 1939–1963 (London: Chatto & Windus, 1974).

  Berger, A. “Stravinsky and the Younger American Composers,” The Score, 12 (June 1955), 38–46.

  _________. Reflections of an American Composer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002). Bernard, M. (ed.). Pesni russkavo naroda (Moscow: Jurgenson, 1886).

  Bertensson, S., and J. Leyda. Sergei Rachmaninoff: A Lifetime in Music (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001).

  Bois, M. Près de Strawinsky (Paris: Marval, 1996).

  Boretz, B. (ed.). “Stravinsky: A Composer’s Memorial,” Perspectives of New Music, ix/2 and x/1 (1971).

  Boucourechliev, A. Stravinsky, trans. M. Cooper (London: Victor Gollancz, 1987).

  Boulez, P. Stocktakings From an Apprenticeship, trans. S. Walsh (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991).

  Bretanitskaya, A. (ed.). Pyotr Suvchinskiy i evo vremya (Moscow: Kompozitor, 1999).

  Brinnin, J. M. Dylan Thomas in America (Readers Union edition, London: Dent, 1957).

  Brooks, J. “Mildred Bliss Tells Nadia Boulanger to Think of Herself for Once,” in Locke, R. P., and C. Barr (eds.) Cultivating Music in America: Women Patrons and Activists since 1860 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1997).

  _________. “Nadia Boulanger and the Salon of the Princesse de Polignac,” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 46 (1993), 415–68.

  Buckle, R., and J. Taras. George Balanchine: Ballet Master (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1988).

  Burde, W. Strawinsky: Leben, Werke, Dokumente (expanded ed., Mainz: Schott, 1992).

  Burt, F. “
An Antithesis,” The Score, 18 (December 1956), 7–17; The Score, 19 (March 1957), 60–74.

  Carpenter, H. W.H. Auden (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1981).

  Carr, M. Multiple Masks: Neoclassicism in Stravinsky’s Works on Greek Subjects (Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2002).

  Carter, E. The Writings of Elliott Carter, ed. E. and K. Stone (Bloomington and London: Indiana University Press, 1977).

  _________. Collected Essays and Lectures, ed. J. Bernard (Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 1997).

  Casella, A. Music in My Time, trans. S. Norton (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955).

  Chaplin, C. My Autobiography (London: The Bodley Head, 1964).

  Chimènes, M. (ed.). Francis Poulenc: Correspondance 1910–1963 (Paris: Fayard, 1994); English trans. (of an earlier, less full edition) by Sidney Buckland, as Francis Poulenc: Echo and Source (London: Gollancz, 1991).

  Claudel, P. Journal (Paris: Gallimard, 1969).

  Claudel, P., and J. Madaule. Connaissance et reconnaissance: Correspondance 1929–1954 (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1996).

  Cocteau, J. Le Coq et l’arlequin (Paris: Stock, 1979).

  _________. Journal d’un inconnu (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1953).

  _________. Past Tense, trans. R. Howard (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1987).

  Conrad, D. Dodascalies: ma chronique du XXe siècle (Arles: Actes Sud, 1997).

  Copland, A., and V. Perlis. Copland 1900–1942 (London: Faber and Faber, 1984).

  _________. Copland since 1943 (London and New York: Marion Boyars, 1992).

  Corle, E. (ed.). Igor Stravinsky (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1949).

  Craft, R. (ed.). Avec Stravinsky (Monaco: Éditions du Rocher, 1958).

  Craft, R. Stravinsky: Glimpses of a Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992).

  _________. Prejudices in Disguise (New York: Knopf, 1974).

  _________. Present Perspectives (New York: Knopf, 1984).

  _________. The Moment of Existence (Nashville and London: Vanderbilt University Press, 1996).

  _________. Small Craft Advisories (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1989).