Stravinsky and His World

by Levitz, Tamara

  53. Stravinsky conducted his Petrushka Suite on 5 April 1925 at the Liceu on a program that included his Symphony no. 1 and Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (in which he performed as the soloist).

  54. Catalan title: “Conversant amb Strawinsky,” La Veu de Catalunya, 25 March 1928. José Farran i Mayoral (1883–1955) was a humanist intellectual who translated Plato, Aristotle, and other authors into Catalan. A librarian, teacher, and critic, he published several books on critical and political subjects. See, for example, Diàlegs critics (Barcelona: Societat Catalana d’Edicions, 1926).

  55. José Farran i Mayoral first contacted Stravinsky after hearing him conduct Feu d’artifice, Le Chant du rossignol, and the suite from Firebird with the Orquestra Pau Casals at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona on 13 March 1925. He had not yet met Stravinsky, but he wanted to express his admiration for the “clarity” and “perfection” of his music. “What fairy-tale music!” (Quelle musique de fées!) he exclaimed in a letter written in French. See José Farran i Mayoral to Stravinsky, 14 March 1925, microfilm 122.1, 710-13, PSS.

  56. Stravinsky arrived in Barcelona to participate in two concerts of his music at the Liceu on 22 and 25 March 1928. He received 8,000 pesetas to conduct his Symphony no. 1, The Rite of Spring, and Petrushka Suite in the first concert, and Feu d’artifice, Scherzo fantastique, The Rite of Spring, and Firebird Suite in the second. See Stravinsky’s contract with Juan Mestres Calvet and related materials, microfilm 123.1, 2264-89, PSS. Ferran Callicó was a Catalan graphic artist, painter, and writer. I believe it is his unsigned drawing of Stravinsky that is reprinted in Luis Gongora’s “Igor Strawinsky y el surrealismo.”

  57. On Stravinsky’s relationship to the neo-Thomist philosopher Jacques Maritain and the religious philosophy as expressed here see Tamara Levitz, Modernist Mysteries: Perséphone (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 117–81, 331–41.

  58. San Juan de la Cruz and Santa Teresa de Avila are two of the greatest Spanish mystic writers.

  59. In Spanish, Teresina del Niño Jesús.

  60. Vladimir Solovyov, a Russian philosopher and theologian, was read and admired in Stravinsky’s Russian émigré circle in Paris, especially by his friend Pyotr Suvchinsky.

  61. Ramon Llull was a thirteenth-century Franciscan philosopher and logician from Majorca.

  62. Excerpts from Oedipus Rex were performed in Barcelona on 13 March 1928 with soprano Pilar Ruff, pianist Pere Vallribera, and Sebastià Sánchez-Juan as the narrator. The composer Joaquim Homs and artist Josep Franch-Clapers attended (for the notice, see microfilm 123.1, 2272, PSS). Farran i Mayoral wrote Stravinsky that “[the triumph of] Oedipus filled me with enthusiasm. I wanted to shake your dear hand.” José Farran i Mayoral to Stravinsky, 7 September 1928 (date unclear), microfilm 123.1, 2291–92, PSS.

  63. See Joan Llongueres, “Primer Festival Strawinsky al Liceu,” Veu de Catalunya, 23 March 1928. Llongueres focuses primarily on The Rite of Spring in this article.

  64. Oedipus Rex was not performed in Barcelona in 1929, and Stravinsky did not return there that year. Oedipus received its Spanish premiere with the Russian Opera Company in a program with Musorgsky’s Sorochinsky Fair at the Liceu in Barcelona on 23 December 1933. On 16 November 1933, the Associació de Música ‘Da Camera’ also programmed an all-Stravinsky concert in which Samuel Dushkin performed the Violin Concerto in D, Soulima Stravinsky performed the Capriccio for Piano and Orchestra, and Stravinsky himself conducted his Symphony of Psalms (with the Orfeó Gracienc). This was Stravinsky’s fourth visit to Barcelona, and his first since 1928.

  65. The Spanish premiere of The Rite of Spring at the Liceu on 22 March (repeated on 25 March 1928) was a huge triumph for Stravinsky, although reviews were mixed. See Martorell, “Stravinsky a Barcelona: Sis visites i dotze concerts,” 107–10.

  66. Stravinsky conducted the Petrushka Suite at the Gran Teatre de Liceu on the day this interview appeared, 25 March 1928.

  67. In articles he wrote for La Veu de Catalunya, Farran i Mayoral occasionally expressed his gratitude toward Stravinsky for having “purified” modern music and resisted its revolutionary strain. See, for example, José Farran i Mayoral, “Igor Strawinsky,” La Veu de Catalunya, 22 March 1928.

  68. Stravinsky complained for years about how U.S. journalists had misinterpreted his relationship to modernism after interviewing him upon his arrival in New York in 1925. For an example of the type of journalism Stravinsky regretted, see Henrietta Malkiel, “Modernists Have Ruined Modern Music, Stravinsky Says,” Musical America, 10 January 1925.

  69. Pauleta Pàmies i Serra (1850–1937) was a celebrated Catalan ballerina and dance teacher, and director of the Companyia de Dansa of the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona.

  70. Himnes Homèrics, translated into verse by Joan Maragall with a literal translation by Pere Bosch-Gimpera (Barcelona: l’Avenç, 1913).

  71. Nicolas Boileau-Despréaux (1636–1711) was a French poet who famously reformed French poetry in his L’Art poétique (1674), in which he established the rules for French verse. Stravinsky greatly valued this book. The muses in Apollon do not speak verses from L’Art poétique; rather, Stravinsky used a couplet from L’Art poétique as the epigraph for the “Variations de Calliope.”

  72. Spanish title: Luis Góngora, “Igor Strawinsky y el surrealismo: ‘Mi arte define el gran músico—es hijo de la pura dialéctica cristiana’, ‘Schoenberg es un químico de la músico,’” La Noche, 12 March 1936. Juan Mestres Calvet planned a “Stravinsky Festival” made up of two concerts that took place at the Liceu on 12 and 15 March 1936 with the Orquestra de Gran Teatre del Liceu and Joan Balcells conducting the Orfeó Gracienc. Stravinsky’s Divertimento was heard for the first time in Barcelona at the first concert, with the pieces Gongora mentions here in the order he lists them. The second concert on March 15 included Stravinsky’s Apollon musagète, Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (with his son Soulima as soloist), Symphony of Psalms, and The Firebird. Stravinsky and Soulima received 7,500 pesetas for these concerts. See the contract between Juan Mestres Calvet and Stravinsky, microfilm 127.1, 1412, PSS. The program can be viewed on 1422–42.

  73. From The Fairy’s Kiss.

  74. Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments.

  75. The “S.” stands for Svetislav.

  76. Although articles on Stravinsky in the Spanish press were often illustrated with Picasso’s drawings of the composer, this particular interview is illustrated with what I believe to be Ferran Callicó’s drawing of Stravinsky’s face.

  77. In Spanish, “mi propio yo.” It is interesting to see Stravinsky discussing here how “his own I” or self contributes to his compositional process, especially in light of the critical tendency to identify his music of these years with objectivity and erasure of self.

  78. Stravinsky’s remarks on Communism and Christianity must have had particular relevance in Barcelona at this time due to the tremendous political turmoil caused by the national election of the Popular Front in February.

  79. The Second Viennese School may have been on journalists’ minds because of the imminent premiere of Alban Berg’s Violin Concerto at the 14th International Society for Contemporary Music Festival in Barcelona on 19 April 1936. Critics in Barcelona had engaged with Schoenberg’s music since before World War I, and in 1932 the composer lived there for several months at the invitation of his student Roberto Gerhard.

  80. That is, their compositional technique. Stravinsky is referring here to Alois Hába.

  81. Stravinsky’s Chroniques de ma vie was published in Argentina by Sur, the publishing house that Victoria Ocampo owned. Although she wrote the prologue for the volume, the text itself was translated by Guillermo de Torre.

  82. Concerto for Harpsichord, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Violin and Cello.

  83. Gustavo Pittaluga González del Castillo (1906–1975) was a Spanish composer, conductor, and essayist and member of the Grupo de los Ocho (Group of Eight)—a group founded in the early 1930s on th
e model of Les Six in France and connected to the Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid. Gustavo Pittaluga conducted Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments at the Auditorio de la Residencia de Estudiantes in Madrid on 25 May 1935. This concert included Francis Poulenc’s Concerto for Two Pianos and Orchestra and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for Four Pianos in A Minor. The soloists were Rosa García Ascot, Francis Poulenc, Soulima Stravinsky, and Leopoldo Querol.

  84. Spanish title of this unsigned article: “Igor Strawinsky nos habla de las orientaciones futuras de la música y de su arte,” La Nación, 25 April 1936. Stravinsky traveled to Argentina aboard the German luxury ocean liner Cap Arcona.

  85. Athos Palma first approached Stravinsky about conducting his ballets at the Teatro Colón in a letter of 26 December 1935. The Cuban impresario Ernesto de Quesada and Victoria Ocampo facilitated the connection between the two men. Palma was most interested in the ballets, which were known in Buenos Aires, but he promised Stravinsky he would try to arrange concerts for Soulima in Argentina, and that he would tentatively stage Perséphone and Oedipus Rex. He also offered to pay for his and Soulima’s voyage to Argentina (see Athos Palma to Stravinsky, 26 December 1935, microfilm 127.1, 1690, PSS). Palma and Stravinsky ironed out the details about the trip when they met in Paris in February 1936.

  86. On Ernest Ansermet, see the introduction to these interviews.

  87. This interview is illustrated with a professional photograph of Stravinsky and Soulima in formal concert attire, signed by both men with the dedication “For the Nación and the nation of Argentina.”

  88. Stravinsky is referring here to Vittorio Rieti (1898–1994), who composed Barabau for the Ballets Russes in 1925, and Goffredo Petrassi (1904–2003). Stravinsky had heard Conrad Beck’s Serenade for Flute, Clarinet and Strings at the Internationales Zeitgenössisches Musikfest in Baden-Baden in April 1936, where he and Soulima had also performed the German premiere of his Concerto for Two Solo Pianos. On the role Nazi ideology played in the programming of this festival, see Joan Evans, “‘International with National Emphasis’: The Internationales Zeitgenössisches Musikfest in Baden-Baden, 1936–39,” in Music and Nazism, eds. Michael H. Kater and Albrecht Riethmüller (Laaber: Laaber Verlag, 2003), 102–13.

  89. Stravinsky appears here to be talking about the vanguard that formed around the premiere of Satie’s Parade and his own Mavra, and in opposition to musical impressionism. Strangely, he associates this vanguard also with Ravel. See “Who Owns Mavra? A Transnational Dispute,” in this volume.

  90. Stravinsky has somewhat confused this story. Manuel de Falla did complain to the president of the Republic, Niceto Alcalá Zamora, about the looting of churches after King Alfonso XIII founded the Second Spanish Republic on 14 April 1931. He also refused the honorary citizenship of Seville with the famous words “If God is now officially denied all recognition, how could I, His poor creature, accept it?” But his relationship to the Spanish Right was more complex than Stravinsky indicates. See Carol Hess, “Falla, the Spanish Civil War, and America,” Diagonal: Journal of the Center for Iberian and Latin American Music (2011), available online at http://www.cilam.ucr.edu/diagonal/issues/2011/Hess.pdf.

  91. Stravinsky’s political remarks caused a public relations disaster in Argentina and Uruguay. Leftist critics condemned his commentary on the Soviet Union and Spain, whereas rightwing Christian journalists praised his orthodoxy. On this debate, see Levitz, Modernist Mysteries: Perséphone, 337–39; and Corrado, “Stravinsky y la constelación ideológica argentina en 1936,” 88–101.

  92. Stravinsky accompanied his performance with Soulima of his Concerto for Two Pianos at the Salle Gaveau in Paris on 21 November 1935 with a lecture presentation on the music, which was subsequently published as “Quelques confidences sur la musique,” Conferencia, Journal de l’Université des Annales 29 (15 December 1935): 43–47; repr. in Eric White, Stravinsky: The Composer and His Works, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 581–85. This concert was sponsored by the Université des Annales.

  93. Spanish title of this unsigned article: “El eminente compositor y director Igor Stravinsky, que llegó ayer a México y que dirigerá un concierto de la Orquesta Sinfónica de México,” El Universal, 23 July 1940. This title also serves as a caption above a photograph of Stravinsky reading contemplatively with his glasses in his hands.

  94. Carlos Chávez invited Stravinsky to Mexico City to conduct the Orquesta Sinfónica de México in a series of concerts. On 26 and 28 July Stravinsky conducted Cherubini’s Anacreonte Overture, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 2, his own Divertimento from The Fairy’s Kiss, and the suite from Petrushka. On 2 August he conducted his Apollon musagète, Divertimento, Jeu de cartes, and Firebird Suite. He was paid $2,502.50 for these concerts.

  95. At Harvard Stravinsky gave six lectures in French in the 1939–40 academic year as part of his appointment as the Charles Eliot Norton Professor. These lectures were published in French as Poétique musicale (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1942), and translated into Spanish as Poética musical (Buenos Aires: Emecé, 1946). See Valérie Dufour’s essay in this volume, “The Poétique musicale: A Counterpoint in Three Voices.”

  96. Alfonso Reyes (1889–1959) was a Mexican writer who served for varying terms as a diplomat in France, Spain, and Brazil from 1913 to 1938.

  97. Spanish title: “Una hora con Stravinsky: El Gran Compositor se halla en esta Capital,” El Nacional, 23 July 1940. Arqueles Vela (1899–1977) was a Mexican writer involved in Estridentismo—a Futurist-influenced avant-garde movement founded in 1921 that embraced the social concerns of the Mexican Revolution and was located in Xalapa. The title of this article appears under a large photograph of Stravinsky standing with Carlos Chávez and Vera Stravinsky with the caption: “A great composer has arrived. Igor Stravinsky, composer of The Firebird and The Rite of Spring, among other famous pieces, is in Mexico as of yesterday. Here we can see him with Maestro Chávez. Stravinsky will conduct the Orquesta Sinfónica de México as guest conductor.”

  98. Alfonso Reyes, Visión de Anáhuac (1519), in Obras Completas (Mexico City: Letras Mexicanas, 1956), 13–34.

  99. Racialidad is perhaps a translation of racialité, the quality of having a race. Until recently, the Spanish term raza had meant “people.” It is unclear whether Stravinsky originally used the French “race,” or whether he intended to say “race” or “racial type.”

  100. Stravinsky may have read Paul Valéry’s “Première leçon du cours de poétique” (1937) while he was Valéry’s neighbor in France in the late 1930s. This essay was later published in Variétés V (Paris: Gallimard, 1944), 295–322.

  101. I could not find a source for this alleged quote.

  102. When Degas complained to Mallarmé that he had many ideas and yet found it difficult to compose a sonnet, Mallarmé apparently replied, “But, Degas, it is not with ideas that we write verse. It is with words.” Paul Valéry tells this story in “Poésie et pensée abstraite” (1939), also published in ibid., 158–59.

  103. Spanish title: “El arte no sería arte si no se hicera por la gloria de Dios dice Strawinsky al llegar a México; No hay modernismo en la música, afirma el célebre maestro,” Excélsior, 25 July 1940. The author of this article, Ana Salado Alvarez, was a prominent Mexican journalist and daughter of the writer, journalist, and diplomat Victoriano Salado Alvarez (1867–1931) from Teocaltiche. The article is illustrated with a photograph of Stravinsky standing with Vera and Carlos Chávez with the caption “Stravinsky in Mexico: Igor Stravinsky, who will soon conduct the symphony, in the company of his wife and Maestro Chávez, upon his arrival in Mexico.” The photograph is from the same photo shoot, but taken at a different angle from the photograph used with Arqueles Vela’s article, translated in this section.

  104. Salado Alvarez may have been referring to the fact that he bundled up inordinately while in Mexico (according to existing photographs), for fear of catching a cold.

  105. Salado Al
varez based this article on the same conversation with Stravinsky that Arqueles Vela used to write his article on the composer.

  106. Stravinsky is referring to Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

  107. Harvard University Press published Stravinsky’s Poetics of Music in French in 1942; it was translated into English by Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl in 1947.

  108. The Russian classical ballerina Ana Pavlova (1881–1931) first visited Mexico in 1919, and she had performed La Fantasía mexicana, inspiring some Mexican critics to believe she would elevate Mexican folk and popular dance forms to a universal art. She returned once again in 1925 to perform Petipa’s classic Don Quixote. Her impact on Mexican literature and dance was tremendous. See Alberto Dallal, “Anna Pávlova en México,” Anales del Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas 15/60 (1989): 163–78. The Spanish pianist and conductor José Iturbi (1895–1980) performed and conducted in Mexico for the first time in 1933 on a hugely successful tour organized by the impresario Ernesto de Quesada.

  109. Ernest Ansermet was the guest conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de México in October 1934, when he conducted Stravinsky’s Les Noces and Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments with Claudio Arrau as soloist. Although Carlos Chávez is not mentioned here, he performed Stravinsky’s works regularly with the Orquesta Sinfónica, especially after he did the first all-Stravinsky program in 1930.

  110. Salado Alvarez is referring to what later became known as the Toreo de Cuatro Caminos, a vast space on the limits of Mexico City where a bullfighting ring was established in 1894. Although the Ukranian National Chorus appears to have visited Mexico City in the 1920s, it remains unclear how they could have performed Petrushka, which has no vocal parts and was not part of their repertoire.

  111. Ernest Ansermet conducted The Firebird when the Ballets Russes performed it at the Teatro Colón during their tour to Argentina in September 1917.

  112. This is a reference to the Nativity.