Stravinsky and His World

by Levitz, Tamara

  12. Adolfo de la Huerta, official note dated 1 July 1941, microfilm 130.1, 478, PSS.

  13. Stravinsky to Ricardo Ortega, 4 July 1941, microfilm 130.1, 480, PSS.

  14. When they were arranging Stravinsky’s visas in 1940, Ricardo Ortega asked Stravinsky: “Could not you use your influence with your friends in Washington to speed this matter up?” See Ortega to Stravinsky, 13 July 1940, microfilm 129.1, 1499, PSS.

  15. This fact puts into perspective Stravinsky’s pampered complaints about the “inconvenience” of negotiating his entry into the U. S. at the Mexican border.

  16. I am inspired in this project by Brigid Cohen’s “Diasporic Dialogues in Mid-Century New York: Stefan Wolpe, George Russell, Hannah Arendt, and the Historiography of Displacement,” Journal of the Society for American Music 6/2 (2012): 143–73.

  17. Valérie Dufour wrote the first study of Stravinsky’s network of French-speaking friends in Belgium, France, Russia, Italy, and Switzerland, thereby establishing a foundation for a transnational rather than national perspective on Stravinsky’s music. See Stravinsky et ses exégètes (1910–1940) (Brussels: Editions de l’Université de Bruxelles, 2006). Musicologist Natalia Braginskaya is currently working on Stravinsky’s transnational activities in multiple countries outside of Russia after 1910.

  18. Adriana Cavarero, Relating Narratives: Storytelling and Selfhood, trans. from the Italian by Paul A. Kottman (New York: Routledge, 2000), 35–71.

  19. Ibid., 19.

  20. Stravinsky offered his most cogent critique of the label “modernist” in an interview with a reporter in Manchester in 1934, in which he stated that it was the generic nature of the label that bothered him most: “I do not think it just to give an age a label, and call it ‘the age of steel’ or ‘the age of noise’ for there are so many other manifestations of the age, at least equally as appropriate. If you are going to give it a handle, why not ‘the age of social unrest’ or something like that?” “Stravinsky and His Music: A Condemnation of the ‘Watertight Compartment’ Outlook. Decisions only Posterity Can Make,” Manchester Guardian, 22 February 1934.

  21. Homi K. Bhabha, “Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism,” in Text and Nation: Cross-Disciplinary Essays on Cultural and National Identities, ed. Laura García-Moreno and Peter C. Pfeiffer (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1996), 193.

  22. A. Joan Saab, “Modernist Networks: Taxco, 1931,” Modernism/Modernity 18/2 (April 2011): 291. Stravinsky acknowledged Mexican fashion influence by later telling Robert Craft, “The Mexicans are the only men who know how to wear hats. Even Carlos Chávez’s derby is just right.” See Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Dialogues and a Diary (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1963), 193.

  23. Brent Hayes Edwards, The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 2: see 1–15.

  24. I see the attempt to define cosmopolitanism as style as a fault of Rebecca L. Walkowitz’s Cosmpolitan Style: Modernism Beyond the Nation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).

  25. For a discussion of “critical cosmopolitanism,” see ibid., 9.

  26. See Yvan Nommick and Antonio Alvarez Cañibano, eds., Los Ballets Russes de Diaghilev en España (Granada: Archivo Manuel de Falla/INAEM, 2000).

  27. Ortega y Gasset had announced the new intellectual generation or “generación del 14,” in his speech “Vieja y nueva política” (Old and new politics) on 28 March 1914. This speech coincided with Manuel de Falla’s and Joaquín Turina’s return from Paris. See Consuelo Carredano, “Adolfo Salazar en España: Primeras incursiones en la crítica musical: La Revista musical hispano-americana (1914–1918),” Anales del Instituto de investigaciones estéticas 84 (2004): 119–144.

  28. See Manuel de Falla, “El gran músico de nuestros tiempo: Igor Stravinsky,” La Tribuna, 5 June 1916; and Adolfo Salazar, “Los Bailes Rusos: Disertaciones y Soliloquios, Igor Stravinsky,” Revista musical hispano-americana 8/6 (June 1916): 7–14. The critics were not unanimous on Petrushka, however. Salazar’s co-editor at the Revista, Rogelio Villar, wrote a scathing critique of it a few months later. On these harsh debates, see Carredano, “Adolfo Salazar en España,” 141–43.

  29. See Salazar to Stravinsky, 10 July, 4 and 20 August 1916, in Adolfo Salazar, Epistolario 1912–1958, ed. Consuelo Carredano (Madrid: Amigos de la Residencia de Estudiantes/Fundación Scherzo/INAEM, 2008), 19, 21–23.

  30. The private performance of the Rite took place on 11 June 1916. Salazar already knew the Three Japanese Lyrics, the first two of which Manuel de Falla performed in a version for piano and voice with Madeleine Leymo in a concert of the Sociedad Nacional de Música on 13 December 1916. Salazar sent the program of this concert to Stravinsky. See Salazar to Stravinsky, 26 December 1926, Epistolario, 45.

  31. Stravinsky, Chroniques de ma vie (Paris: Denoël, 1962), 72.

  32. Ibid., 73–74.

  33. Ibid., 79. Stravinsky uses the expression “casseroles automatiques” for “out-of-tune instruments.”

  34. On Stravinsky’s activities and reception in Spain during these years, see Carol Hess, “Stravinsky in Spain, 1921–25,” in Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 1898–1936 (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002), 161–98.

  35. See Adolfo Salazar, “Crónicas musicales: Ravel, Strawinsky y el perfil moderno: Varios conciertos,” El Sol, 19 April 1921. For insight into the aesthetic of neoclassicism in Spain in this period, see Ruth Piquer Sanclemente, Clasicismo moderno, neoclasicismo y retornos en el pensamiento musical español (1915–1939) (Berlin: Editorial Doble J, 2010).

  36. See Ortega y Gasset, “Incitaciones: Musicalia,” El Sol, 24 March 1921. See also “Incitaciones: Apatía artística,” El Sol, 18 October 1921.

  37. See, for example, Adolfo Salazar, “La vida musical: Strawinsky, ‘Pulcinella,’ ‘El Pájaro de Fuego,’” El Sol, 26 March 1924; and Hess, Manuel de Falla and Modernism in Spain, 180–86.

  38. Adolfo Salazar, “Polchinela y Maese Pedro,” Revista de Occidente 11 (May 1924): 229–37.

  39. Oriol Martorell provides details and reviews of all the programs in “Stravinsky a Barcelona: Sis visites i dotze concerts,” d’arte 8–9 (November 1983): 99–129.

  40. Hess, “Stravinsky in Spain, 1921–25,” 184. A cobla is a traditional ensemble of shawms, brass, flabiol, and tambor.

  41. Jeroni de Moragas, “Stravinsky a l’Ateneu,” La Publicitat, 20 March 1924; quoted in Oriol, “Stravinsky a Barcelona,” 103–4.

  42. Rafael Moragas, unpublished MS., Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya, quoted in Oriol Martorell, “Stravinsky a Barcelona,” 124n31. See Stravinsky’s and Falla’s correspondence in Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, ed. Robert Craft (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1984): 2:160–76.

  43. These photo albums are kept at the PSS.

  44. Stravinsky could become highly agitated if faced with the prospect of touring without Soulima or one of his intimate friends. He lashed out viciously at his son in spring 1939 when the latter refused to accompany him to Italy. On this story, see Tamara Levitz, Modernist Mysteries: Perséphone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 355–56.

  45. Stravinsky announced to a reporter in Chicago, in German, “I am Stravinsky” (Ich bin Stravinsky) in “Stravinsky, in German, Says He’s French,” Chicago American, 26 March 1935. Stravinsky said, “My music is ‘global’—it belongs to the whole world,” in “Sachlichkeit in der Musik: Eine Stunde mit Igor Stravinsky,” Prager Presse, 23 February 1930. He told Edward Downes that his music was not “cosmopolitan because I do not like the word—but something which has grown out of the sum of European culture, especially the Latin culture,” in “Igor Stravinsky: Plans and Views of a Tonal Giant Who Is Wintering in Cambridge,” Boston Evening Transcript, 21 October 1939.

  46. Stravinsky discusses Villa-Lobos in Jean-Louis Roux, “Igor Strawinsky,” Le Quartier Latin (Montréal), 23 March 1945.

  47. Stravinsky, quoted in “A Stravinsky no le gusta come toc
an su música en ‘Fantasia,’” La Esfera (Caracas), 9 April 1953.

  48. SPD, 215. See also Craft’s exposé on Dushkin and the published letters in “‘Dear Samsky,’” in Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, 2:293–311.

  49. Samuel Dushkin to Stravinsky, 2 November 1931, microfilm 94.1, 263, PSS.

  50. See “Stravinsky Is a Genius: Thrills in a Fine Hallé Program,” Manchester Evening Chronicle, 23 February 1934; “Les Concerts: Igor Strawinsky Salle Rameau,” La Nouvelliste (Lyon), 19 December 1934; and “Masterly Concert Puzzles L.A. Audience,” Illustrated Daily News (Los Angeles), 1 March 1935.

  51. The programs of all their concerts, as well as details about their tours, are kept in the PSS.

  52. Jesús Bal y Gay, “La música en la Residencia,” Residencia, commemorative issue published in Mexico (December 1963): 79; quoted in Margarita Sáenz de la Calzada, La Residencia de Estudiantes: Los Residentes (Madrid: Publicaciones de la Residencia de Estudiantes, 2011), 169.

  53. On the cultural activities of the Residencia de Estudiantes, see Sáenz de la Calzada, La Residencia de Estudiantes, 105–26; and Isabel Pérez-Villanueva Tovar, La Residencia de Estudiantes 1910–1936: Grupo Universitario y Residencia de Señoritas (Madrid: Publicaciones de la Residencia de Estudiantes, 2011): 401–530.

  54. This program is kept in microfilm 126.1, 862, PSS. The program notes quote extensively from Adolfo Salazar’s writings.

  55. Available on Igor Stravinsky: Composer & Performer, vol. 2, Andante (2003).

  56. Stravinsky to Dushkin, 8 January 1936, microfilm 94.1, 617–18, PSS. Craft translates morale as “artistic” in Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, 2:305.

  57. Stravinsky to Dushkin, 24 October 1937, microfilm 94.1, 837-38, PSS. Craft translates the French incorrectly to imply this was good for Dushkin’s career in Stravinsky, Selected Correspondence, 2:309.

  58. Stravinsky wrote Ocampo shortly after his trip to Argentina that Germany was out of the question for performing Perséphone in light of the news and that Spain was as well because they were forbidding money from leaving the country. “Isn’t it lovely!” (C’est gai!) he commented. See Stravinsky to Ocampo, 10 July 1936, microfilm 98.1, 689, PSS.

  59. See Omar Corrado, “Stravinsky y la constelación ideológica argentina en 1936,” Latin American Music Review 26/1 (Spring/Summer 2005): 88–101; and Levitz, Modernist Mysteries: Perséphone, 336–39.

  60. See Omar Corrado, “Victoria Ocampo y la música: una experiencia social y estética de la modernidad,” Revista Musical Chilena 61/208 (July–December 2007): 37–65.

  61. Victoria Ocampo, Autobiografía: IV Viraje (Buenos Aires: Sur, 1982), 8.

  62. Ocampo remembers this event nostalgically in a letter to Stravinsky dated 6 December 1949, microfilm 98.1, 862, PSS.

  63. Ocampo met Ansermet in 1917, and got to know him after he became involved with the Orquesta de la Asociación del Profesorado Orquestal (A.P.O.) in 1924. See Vies croisées de Victoria Ocampo et Ernest Ansermet: Correspondance 1924–1969, ed. Jean-Jacques Langendorf (Paris: Buchet-Chastel, 2005).

  64. Ocampo, Autobiografía: IV Viraje, 92.

  65. Ocampo to Stravinsky, 24 December 1935, microfilm 98.1, 621, PSS. The letter is in French but Ocampo writes “at home” in English.

  66. When Nicolas Nabokov wrote urging him to protest Ocampo’s imprisonment in 1953, Stravinsky showed uncharacteristic concern, asking Nabokov to refrain from a public campaign that might harm more than help her. See the correspondence between Stravinsky, Louise Crane, Nicolas Nabokov, and the Congress for Cultural Freedom, microfilm 98.1, 881–89, PSS.

  67. Stravinsky kept the cartes de visite of the many acquaintances he met in Buenos Aires, among them Armando Carvajal, director of the Conservatorio de Santiago de Chile. See microfilm 127.1, 1928–41, PSS.

  68. Ocampo to Stravinsky, n.d., ca. March 1936, microfilm 98.1, 653–54, PSS.

  69. Stravinsky to Ocampo, 10 July 1936, microfilm 98.1, 689, PSS.

  70. Stravinsky asks for the cowhide in a letter to Ocampo dated 27 May 1941, microfilm 98.1, 782, PSS. Ocampo is quoted here from her letter of reply dated 12 November 1941, 784–90. She wrote again about the cowhide ca. 1948, 858.

  71. See “Stravinsky Speaks to the Spanish-Speaking World,” in this volume; also, see “Stravinsky compone al piano para sentir las notas en sus nervios,” El Universal (Caracas), 9 April 1953.

  72. See Charles Ludwig, “‘I Love America,’ Composer Declares,” Cincinnati Times-Star, 4 March 1925. Stravinsky distinguished Marxist materialism from capitalism and treated the two as unrelated.

  73. Stravinsky, Cleveland News, 22 February 1937; quoted in SPD without a proper source, 334. Stravinsky gives a similar argument in Wilhelm Gregor, “‘Nicht jede music kann vom Publikum verstanden werden’: Gespräch mit Igor Stravinsky,” Neues Politisches Volksblatt, March 1933.

  74. Elliott Arnold, “Called By Many the Biggest Man in Music, Igor Stravinsky Goes a Bit Ga-Ga on Swing,” New York World-Telegram, May 1940 (kept in PSS, no exact date).

  75. See Sáenz de la Calzada, La Residencia de Estudiantes, 251–302.

  76. Revista de Revistas 31/1576 (4 August 1940).

  77. Alfonso Reyes to Victoria Ocampo, 24 June 1940, in Alfonso Reyes and Victoria Ocampo, Cartas Echadas: Correspondencia 1927–1959 (Medellín, Mexico: Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, 1983), 37.

  78. Stravinsky kept a blurry photograph of Mexican workers carrying large objects for him as he walks on a country road with an oversized basket. See photo labeled “50 STRAW 1345” “Mexico 1941,” kept in an unnumbered binder in the PSS. Stravinsky displays the souvenirs he bought in 1941—a sombrero and blanket—in Igor and Vera Stravinsky: A Photograph Album, 1921–1971, ed. Robert Craft, Rita McCaffrey, and Vera Stravinsky (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982), photo 167. On his trip to Tepotzotlán, see Stravinsky and Craft, Dialogues and a Diary, 163.

  79. Jesús Bal y Gay and Rosita García Ascot, “Igor Strawinksy,” in Nuestros trabajos y nuestros días (Madrid: Fundación Banco Exterior, 1990), 144.

  80. Ibid., 140–41.

  81. Ibid., 146–47.

  82. Robert Craft included a list of the Tchaikovsky sources in Craft and Stravinksy, Expositions and Developments (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1959), app. C, 158; Lawrence Morton analyzed them in far greater detail in “Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky’s ‘Le Baisir de la fée.’” The Musical Quarterly 48/3 (July 1962): 313–26; and Richard Taruskin provided a detailed updated list in Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works through Mavra (Berkeley: University of California, 1996), 2:1610–13. Stravinsky’s recording of the Divertimento with the Orquesta was released as Stravinsky & Prokofiev Conduct Their Works (Woodstock, NY: Parnassus CD, PACD 96023, 2000).

  83. Stravinsky, quoted in Florent Fels, “Un Entretien avec Igor Strawinsky à propos de l’enregistrement au phonographe de ‘Petrouchka,’” Les Nouvelles Littéraires, 8 December 1928.

  84. Adolfo Salazar, “La Vida Musical: Tchaikovsky y Stravinsky—‘El Beso del Hada,’” Excelsior (Mexico City), 29 July 1940.

  85. “The emotion is there all right,” Stravinsky told Norman Cameron in 1934. “I myself feel it and express it, and for those who cannot or will not share it, I can only suggest that they consult a psychiatrist!” See Igor Stravinsky, “I—As I See Myself (In an interview with Norman Cameron),” The Gramophone, August 1934, 85–86.

  86. See Miriam Bratu Hansen, “Benjamin’s Aura,” Critical Inquiry 34 (Winter 2008): 336–75.

  87. “Stravinsky and His Music: A Condemnation of the ‘Watertight Compartment’ Outlook.”

  88. Stravinsky, quoted in Maurice Romain, “De Quoi le succès est-il fait?” Excelsior, 11 September 1935.

  89. Perhaps for this reason Stravinsky’s son Soulima felt people had not talked enough about the importance of the “tamed Romanticism” in the Divertimento. “I think that later we will discover the secret channels through which this work penetrated into contemporary thought,” h
e wrote. See “Les Goûts d’Igor Strawinsky,” Spectateur 2/81 (17 December 1946): 2, 6.

  90. Stravinsky, quoted in Michel Georges-Michel, “Grands Européens en Amérique: Igor Strawinsky,” La Marche des temps, 11 February 1945.

  91. Morton, “Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky’s ‘Le Baisir de la fée,’” 314–15.

  92. Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 2:1614.

  93. Stravinsky created headlines in 1938 when he turned down a lucrative Hollywood contract because it gave the studios the right to make changes after he had submitted the score. See Darius Milhaud, “Le Respect de soi-même, de son art et le cinema: Une leçon morale d’Igor Strawinsky,” Figaro, 19 January 1938.

  94. Stravinsky to Ocampo, 10 April 1941, microfilm 98.1, 781, PSS.

  95. “Igor Stravinsky: ‘The Anthem Has a Fine Melody, but the Organization—Terrible,’” San Francisco Chronicle, 6 January 1942.

  96. Marcel Valois, “Avec Igor Stravinsky,” Chronique musicale (Montréal) (March 1945): 35.

  97. Pierre Schaeffer, “Musique de Californie,” Opéra, 2 January 1946.

  98. Louise Weiss, “Musiciens en Californie: Igor Stravinski ne veut pas travailler pour Hollywood,” no source, February 1946, copy kept in binders of photocopied interviews, PSS. A few years later, Stravinsky told another reporter that he left France because of the cold, and because of his fear of getting sick. He no longer had to bundle up in sweaters and furs in California. See O. B., “Der Einsiedler von Hollywood,” Der Abend, 21 February 1949.

  99. Charles Oulmont, “Strawinsky nous parle …,” La Musique (September 1946): n.p., copy kept in binders of photocopied interviews, PSS. Oulmont bases his commentary on conversations with Alexandre Tansman. See also Albert Goldberg’s “The Sounding Board: Dynamic Stravinsky Active But Quiet Here,” Los Angeles Times, 21 September 1947.

  100. Albert Goldberg, “The Sounding Board: The Transplanted Composer,” Los Angeles Times, 14 May 1950.

  Stravinsky Speaks to the Spanish-Speaking World

  INTRODUCTION BY LEONORA SAAVEDRA

  INTERVIEWS TRANSLATED BY MARIEL FIORI