Stravinsky and His World

by Levitz, Tamara

  Dedications

  Many of the Russian books in Stravinsky’s library include handwritten dedications. Like Stravinsky’s marginalia and carefully preserved newspaper clippings, these books’ signings tell a hidden story of human connections through the medium of the printed word. Some of the most moving dedications in Stravinsky’s library are by Aleksey Remizov (1877–1957), an astonishing Russian writer whom Stravinsky never met, though Remizov provided materials for The Firebird, and in 1914 Stravinsky expressed a wish to collaborate with him.53 Remizov’s highly original works make up a large portion of the Russian section of the library at the Paul Sacher Stiftung. Stravinsky had bought some books in Cambridge, Massachusetts; others were sent from the French publishing house Opleshnik in 1957, at Pyotr Suvchinsky’s request.54 Two of the books include beautiful handwritten dedications by their author.55 The volume Tristan i Isol'da: Bova korolevich (Tristan and Isolde: Bova the prince), contains a dedication Remizov wrote just two days before his death, when he was virtually blind: “To Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky, my genius of a contemporary, in my world of music, full of sound … in this breath of life I preserve my entire life. Aleksey Remizov, 24 July 1957” (see Figure 2).

  “I suddenly found Remizov’s book on my table,” Stravinsky wrote Suvchinsky upon discovering Remizov’s inscription. “No one knows how it got there. A miracle. That was Tristan i Isol'da with an autograph for me, written in a calligraphic scribble by a poor, blind old man. It’s very hard to make out what was written, apart from my own name, of course. That’s very disappointing. Most probably he is responding to the gift I sent him on his birthday, which I tried to send with your help. I’m also sending you this letter to ask you to buy me all twelve of his books published by Opleshnik and listed on the last page of the book he sent.”56 Suvchinsky replied that, yes, “poor Remizov is very, very ill. I asked the Opleshnik publishers (they are a small, primitive company) to send you Remizov’s books. … Remizov received your check some time ago; he was very grateful for it and sent you the book as a gesture of thanks, but he cannot write anymore.”57

  About forty of the books in Stravinsky’s library in the Paul Sacher Stiftung were gifts from friends and strangers in the Soviet Union. A few sent their offerings before Stravinsky traveled there in 1962, paving the way emotionally for his return home. The pianist Maria Yudina and conductor Igor Blazhkov played a pivotal role in establishing the exchange of books with Stravinsky, starting in 1959.58 During this period of intense state propaganda, Soviet citizens valued great classical and modern literature and waited in long lines to purchase it. “It would be unimaginable to think of ‘procuring’ this volume [of Pasternak I sent you] in an ordinary bookstore,” Yudina wrote Suvchinsky in 1961, explaining this situation. “There were thousands of people in line, each signing in when it was their turn. Books were thrown on the market [vïbrasïvali, Soviet slang for “making rare goods available for purchase”] only a hundred copies at a time, and each of us, with God’s help, procured a copy.”59 It proved equally difficult to send books. Yudina never received the first scores Stravinsky sent and twice tried, unsuccessfully, to send him Vladimir Favorsky’s etchings, once through Leonard Bernstein and another time through Van Cliburn.60 “I think it would be better to send letters and parcels to I. F. directly, or through me,” Suvchinsky subsequently warned her. “The truth of the matter is that all these Cliburns and Bernsteins are not friends. Igor Fyodorovich himself is very harsh in his relationships, and very rarely ‘befriends’ anybody.”61 A year later Suvchinsky warned again: “Do not send valuable books, except with responsible people.”62 Yudina subsequently chose to correspond directly with the composer, who also sent her scores.63 Indeed, Yudina sent Stravinsky many interesting and rare books, and also encouraged others to send gifts.64 She understood this as a way of showing gratitude for the music Stravinsky sent her, which she immediately programmed on her concerts.

  Figure 2. Dedication to Stravinsky, written by the author, in Stravinsky’s copy of Aleksey Remizov’s Tristan i Isol'da: Bova korolevich (Paris: Opleshnik, 1957).

  Through Yudina, Stravinsky came to know current Soviet scholarship, and gained access to Russian sources not necessarily available to him otherwise. Yudina sent him Valerian Bogdanov-Berezovsky’s book on his father, for example, which he may have read with great interest if the underlined lines in it are any indication.65 After receiving Suvchinsky’s request to find out which Balmont edition Stravinsky had used for his Zvezdolikiy or Le Roi des étoiles,66 Yudina also arranged to send to Stravinsky a copy of it signed by her close friend, the poet’s daughter from his first marriage, Nina Bruni-Balmont, and also signed originally by the poet himself.67

  The channels of communication with friends and family in the Soviet Union opened significantly after Stravinsky’s visit there in fall 1962. His family ties were strengthened through his contact with his late brother Yury’s daughter Xenia Stravinsky, who subsequently sent him art books. During his visit, friends, family, and strangers bound themselves to him through books, considered material mementos of a past they all shared. Yudina bid him farewell with the gift of a book by Metropolit Moskovskiy Filaret, for example, in which she wrote the sorrowful dedication “Moscow. The sad day of saying good-bye. To our dearest Igor Fyodorovich in memory of two remarkable Russian people. 10 October 62.”68 Besides herself, she was referring to the Russian Orthodox philosopher and theologian Pavel Florensky, who had also signed this book.69 Sadly, Florensky’s autograph was destroyed when the Paul Sacher Stiftung had the book bound in Basel; only a photocopy of it remains.

  Welcomed by the highest echelons of the Soviet government after his official visit, Stravinsky ceased to be a persona non grata, his work no longer rigidly forbidden as the subject of scholarly inquiry. Friends, but also strangers and former enemies began sending him gifts. After his departure, Blazhkov sent him the first Russian translation of his Chroniques de ma vie with a preface by Valerian Bogdanov-Berezovsky.70 “I am pleased with the Russian translation,” he wrote Blazhkov, “but I cannot say the same for Bogdanov-Berezovsky’s preface; he is far from empathetic to my music and to ‘the progressive art of the bourgeois West’ to which he thinks I belong. There are quite a few Bogdanov-Berezovskys in Soviet Russia, a country that has been free of Stalin for only eleven years.”71 Boris Yarustovsky—a former foe, party functionary, and right-hand man of Tikhon Khrennikov, who made his career in the 1948 campaign against “formalist” composers—sent Stravinsky the monograph he had written, inscribed, “To the renowned creator, from a modest Russian musicologist, this little product of an imperfect mind. October 1964.”72 And a few years later Blazhkov, a loyal friend, sent him Irina Vershinina’s Ranniye baletï Stravinskogo (Stravinsky’s early ballets), which Stravinsky liked and read carefully, as two comments in the margins attest.73

  Figure 3. Stravinsky in his library, photograph signed “Paola Foa 1945.”

  After 1962, Stravinsky retained his unfaltering interest in all things Russian. Despite declining health, he eagerly welcomed guests from the Soviet Union.74 He also regularly bought Soviet books. One, the selected works of Mikhail Lermontov, contains one of the last signatures written in the trembling hand of an old, dying man: “Property of Igor Stravinsky, 7 November 1970.”

  NOTES

  I would like to thank Ulrich Mosch, Carlos Chanfon, Claudia Grzonka, and Johanna Blask at the Paul Sacher Stiftung (hereafter abbreviated as PSS) and Silvie Visinand at the Fondation Théodore Strawinsky for their tremendous assistance. I also thank Richard Taruskin for his support and valuable advice, and Tamara Levitz for her selfless editing.

  1. See Edwin Allen, “The Genius and the Goddess,” in Confronting Stravinsky: Man, Musician, and Modernist, ed. Jann Pasler (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 330.

  2. This part of Stravinsky’s library is available to the public but has yet to be studied systematically. Robert Craft created a catalogue of fifty-six titles that include Stravinsky’s autograph or annotati
ons, but it contains mistakes and inaccuracies. See Craft, “Appendix: Selected Source Material from ‘A Catalogue of Books and Music Inscribed to and/or Autographed and Annotated by Igor Stravinsky,’” in Pasler, Confronting Stravinsky, 349–57.

  3. Stravinsky remembered that his father’s library included 7,000 to 8,000 books. See Robert Craft and Igor Stravinsky, Expositions and Developments (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), 49. Sergey Naumov, the son of a famous bookseller in St. Petersburg, thought the library included 12,000 titles and even more volumes. See I. F. Stravinskiy: Perepiska s russkimi korrespondentami. Materialï k biografii (Igor Stravinsky: Russian correspondence. Materials for a biography), ed. Viktor Varunts (Moscow: Kompozitor, 1998), Appendix I, 1:412 (hereafter SPRK).

  4. Pierre Souvtchinsky and John Warrack, “Stravinsky as a Russian,” Tempo 81 (Summer 1967): 5.

  5. See Abram Gozenpud, “Fyodor Ignat'yevich Stravinskiy: Chelovek i khudozhnik” (Fyodor Stravinsky: Person and artist); and Kseniya Stravinskya, “Chto ya slïshala o moyom dede F. I. Stravinskom” (What I heard about my grandfather, Fyodor Stravinsky),” in Fyodor Stravinskiy: Stat'i, pis'ma, vospominaniya (Fyodor Stravinsky: Articles, letters, and memoires), ed. Larisa Kutateladze (Leningrad: Muzïka, 1972), 7–52, 75–81; and Nataliya Braginskaya, “Sledï legendarnoy biblioteki: o klavirakh Berlioza iz biblioteki F. I. Stravinskogo v notnom sobranii Sankt-Peterburgskoy konservatorii” (Traces of a legendary library: Berlioz’s vocal scores from Fyodor Stravinsky’s collection in the St. Petersburg Conservatory Music Library),” Opera musicologica 2/4 (2010): 21–40.

  6. SPRK, 2:453.

  7. Today Yury’s descendants still own a few random volumes by Dostoevsky, Goncharov, and Tolstoy, and some arias by Glinka, Tchaikovsky, and Rubinstein. Nataliya Braginskaya discovered in the St. Petersburg State Conservatory two piano scores containing signatures and notes by Fyodor Stravinsky—Hector Berlioz’s La Damnation de Faust and Les Troyens. See Braginskaya, “Sledï legendarnoy biblioteki,” 24.

  8. Ivan Sakharov, Pesni russkogo naroda, 5 vols. (St. Petersburg: V tipografii Sakharova, 1838–39); Daniil Kashin, Russkiye narodnïye pesni, sobrannïye i izdannïye dlya peniya i fortepiano, 3 vols. (Moscow: Tipografiya Semena Selivanovskago, 1833–34), kept in the PSS; Aleksander Afanas'yev, Narodnïye russkiye skazki, 2nd ed., revised by Koz'ma Soldatenkov, 4 vols. (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Soldatenkova, 1873); Aleksandr Afanas'yev, Poėticheskiye vozzreniya slavyan na prirodu, 3 vols, (Moscow: Izdatel'stvo Soldatenkova, 1865–69). Both works of Afanasyev are kept at the Fondation Théodore Strawinsky. To my disappointment, I did not find either Pyotr Kireyevskiy’s Pesni, sobrannïye P. V. Kireyevskim: Novaya seriya, vol. 1: Pesni obryadnïye (Songs collected by P. V. Kireyevskiy: New series, vol. 1: Wedding songs) a book very important to Stravinsky, or Tereshchenko’s Bït russkogo naroda (Manners and customs of the Russian people), 1848. Varunts erroneously lists the latter as part of the collection in the PSS in SPRK, 2:275n4.

  9. See Vershinina’s comments in Igor' Stravinskiy, Vokal'naya muzïka, ed. Irina Vershinina (Moscow: Kompozitor, 1988), 2:295.

  10. Taruskin cites this source in Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works through Mavra (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 2:1138–42, 1341, 1424. See also SPRK, 2:275.

  11. This edition includes the same content as the Skazaniya (Legends), and thus the error of those who cite the latter is not egregious.

  12. Sakharov, Pesni russkogo naroda, no. 229, 3:331. Taruskin published this scenario in his book but claimed erroneously that this song found its way into the final score at rehearsal number 9. See Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 2:1341,1424. In fact Stravinsky used another song, “Ne klich', ne klich', lebedushka,” in the final score.

  13. Sakharov, Pesni russkogo naroda, no. 164, 3:152. In the score (rehearsal numbers 9–16), Stravinsky adds another A section in the music and also distributes the lines of the poem differently, creating an ABACA form. Instead of including four lines in section A, two in section B, four in A, and four in C as he originally indicated he might as per the square brackets he jotted next to the poem in Sakharov’s book, he set four, two, five, six, and five lines respectively to sections ABACA of the music, inserting an additional eleventh line into the poem himself.

  14. Sakharov, Pesni russkogo naroda, 1:74. The Russian title “Ovsen,” is a nonsense word.

  15. Ibid., no.107, 3:174–175; and no.1, 4: 395. See Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 2:1215–20.

  16. Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 2:1559–60.

  17. Ibid., 2:1559. See Craft’s original remark in “Selected Source Material,” 350.

  18. Stravinsky acquired the third folklore collection at the PSS, Matvey Bernard’s Pesni russkogo naroda (1847; repr., Moscow: Jurgenson, 1886), in a second-hand bookstore in the United States in 1942. See Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Tradition, 2:1626–48.

  19. Viktor Varunts and Svetlana Savenko claim erroneously that Stravinsky brought another edition of Narodnïye russkiye skazki back to Switzerland from Kiev in July 1914. Varunts cites a nonexistent edition of this volume (SPRK, 2:274), whereas Savenko claims Stravinsky bought Aleksey Gruzinskiy’s Russkie narodnïye skazki A. N. Afanas'yeva (Moscow: Ivan Sïtin, 1913–14). See Svetlana Savenko, Mir Stravinskogo (Moscow: Kompozitor, 2001), 33.

  20. Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 1:568, 880.

  21. See “Baba-Yaga,” no. 81 in Afanasyev’s Russian Folktales, 1:375. Stravinsky ticks off “Ilya Muromets i Zmey” and “Alyosha Popovich” twice—in the table of contents of both volumes 3 and 4.

  22. Respectively, nos. 58, 93, 224, and 234 in vol. 4 of Afanasyev’s Russian Folktales.

  23. “Sister Fox” is no. 4c in Afansyev’s Russian Folktales, vol:1, 31. Stravinsky changes “Vedaesh', Ermak … natoshchak?” into “Vedaesh', Ermak zaperdel natoshchak?”

  24. Taruskin notes that Stravinsky used this word in his sketches and changed it in the published score in Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 2:1262.

  25. Igor' Glebov [Boris Asaf'yev], Kniga o Stravinskom (Leningrad: Triton, 1929); translated into English by Robert French as A Book about Stravinsky (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982), with Robert Craft’s “Foreword: Asaf'yev and Stravinsky,” vii–xviii, which was reprinted in Present Perspectives: Critical Writings (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984), 276–92. See also Valérie Dufour, “Boris Asaf'yev,” in Stravinski et ses exégètes (1910–1940) (Brussels: Edition de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2006), 33–50; and Viktor Varunts, “Kommentarii k marginaliyam” (Commentaries on the marginalia), Muzïkal'naya akademiya 4 (1992): 182–184; SPRK, 3:543–45; and Varunts, “Stravinsky protestiert,” Mitteilungen der Paul Sacher Stiftung 6 (March 1993): 35–37.

  26. Varunts misreads a crucial word in Stravinsky’s commentary on Asafyev’s analysis of his Octet, for example, where the composer writes that “I think such dissections are written for the author’s own sake since they convey nothing to others.” Varunts, understanding the word dissections (razborï) as works (rabotï), jumps to the erroneous conclusion that Stravinsky disliked the book in general. See Varunts, “Kommentarii k marginaliyam,” 184; “Stravinsky protestiert,” 37; and SPRK, 3:545.

  27. Stravinsky to Ernest Ansermet, 20 April 1928, in Correspondance Ansermet-Strawinsky (1914–1967), ed. Claude Tappolet (Geneva: Georg Editeur, 1991), 2:147; translated by Robert Craft in Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, ed. Robert Craft (London: Faber & Faber, 1982), 1:191.

  28. Asaf'yev, Kniga o Stravinskom, 108, 211, 291, 312–313, 323, 327; Asafyev, A Book about Stravinsky, 76, 150, 210, 226–227, 234, 237.

  29. For positive accounts of Asafyev’s monograph, see Nicolas Nabokov to Sergey Prokofiev, 21 February 1930, and Jacques Handshin to Stravinsky, 20 February 1931, in SPRK, 3:382 and 420, respectively. See also Pierre Souvtchinsky, “Le Stravinsky d’Igor Glebov,” Musique 6 (15 March 1930): 250–53.

  30. Mikhail Druskin, Sobraniye sochi
neniy v semi tomakh, ed. Lyudmila Kovnatskaya (St. Petersburg: Kompozitor, 2009), 4:493n; Prokofiev to Asafyev, 6 September 1934, quoted in Robert Craft, “Foreword: Asaf'yev and Stravinsky,” viii; and Varunts, “Kommentarii k marginaliyam,” 184.

  31. Pyotr Suvchinsky to Maria Yudina, 26 April 1960, in Mariia Yudina, V iskusstve radostno bït' vmeste: Perepiska 1959–1961 godov (It is joyful to be in art together: Correspondence 1959–1961), ed. Anatoliy Kuznetsov (Moscow: Rosspen, 2009), 288. Stravinsky knew that between 1930 and 1940, as the Stalin regime became harsher, Asafyev aligned himself more closely with it.

  32. Modest Chaykovskiy, Zhizn' Petra Il'icha Chaykovskago (The life and letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky), 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Moscow: Jurgenson, 1903).

  33. Allen, “The Genius and the Goddess,” 330.

  34. “That’s a commonplace.”

  35. Chaykovskiy, Zhizn' Petra Il'icha Chaykovskago, 2:28. See also Stravinsky’s comments in Asaf'yev, Kniga o Stravinskom, 182; and Irina Vershinina, ed., “Pis’ma Stravinskogo k Rerikhu,” Sovetskaya Muzïka 8 (1966): 63.