Stravinsky and His World

by Levitz, Tamara

  3. Igor Stravinsky to Pyotr Suvchinsky

  Hollywood

  12 June 1961

  Dearest Pyotr Petrovich!

  Your package with Balmont pleased me very much, as did your letter (5 June). Of course, this is a bibliographic rarity and I will have to thank Yudina and Balmont’s daughter63 (what is her address?), but now I am insanely busy ….

  Our international festival here lasted for about a week. I conducted my Violin Concerto and Symphony of Psalms. Yesterday the festival ended with a concert of Soviet music with a (wonderful) Soviet violinist (Igor Bezrodny)64 and the hopeless music of Tikhon Khrennikov and Kara Karayev. It is incredible junk, but it was impossible for me to leave, especially because the previous day all these Soviet musicians came to visit me, we hosted them, and they invited me to celebrate my 80th birthday in Moscow next year (if I’m still alive), saying that I have never and nowhere been received as I will be received in Russia. It goes without saying that it’s scary to think about all that, scary to look ahead to my eightieth birthday. Musical life in Russia is terrifying and it is terrifying to think that they have decided to honor “their venerable musician”; it is terrifying that I shall have to smile when I feel like throwing up. What can I do? These days the press and the radio have already been talking about nothing else. How horrible! I’m not prepared for this, I cannot believe that the invitation is a true act of repentance and an irrevocable change regarding me and my music. After all, Khrennikov is not Yudina, and the cult of Shostakovich is not a myth. So what am I to do about all this? What’s to be done?

  We are here until July. Leaving in August. …

  When will you be in Switzerland? Will wait for news from you by return mail, if possible.

  I embrace you.

  Your I. Stravinsky

  Of course, I knew Yastrebtsev—he was an awful dunce.65

  4. Pyotr Suvchinsky to Igor Stravinsky

  Paris

  16 June 1961

  Dearly beloved Igor Fyodorovich,

  Thank you for your wonderful letter (from 12 June). How I would like to embrace you warmly and give you a kiss right now, this very minute! The French newspapers have already written about your planned visit to Russia, of course.

  I am not one to give you advice, of course, but I think, and I am convinced that you must accept this invitation, and see what happens a year from now.

  If you like, it will be possible to find out through M. V. Yudina what sort of a meeting it will be. But who is really issuing the invitation—the Composers’ Union or the government? Actually, it seems to me that this is irrelevant.66

  Forgive the foolish word, but I see in this the metaphysics of your personality: this happened, and it couldn’t not have happened. Someone in this terrible and inspired country finally came to his senses, and the Light of Reason—you know yourself what it is. You can’t deny it to those who are asking for it. If dear Yudina had any influence on this at all—thanks to her!

  But I am still surprised by this invitation of Khrennikov (whose “music” I know); everything has its hierarchy in Soviet Russia. I don’t think that he would dare to act on his own initiative without the approval of Shostakovich, and the highest musical echelons. But your trip and the celebrations in your honor, will not be to Shostakovich’s advantage. So what is going on?67 Apparently there is something stronger than him and because of this affair—your trip may become a symbol of the liberation of a whole generation of Russian musicians.

  But besides, your visit to Moscow is of course itself already a historical fact (I love “facts” and hate “processes”), an event of historical significance in the full sense of the word, and its consequences for the whole of Russian culture will have the most enormous consequences in every sphere. I am convinced of that and it should help you, dear Igor Fyodorovich, to overcome the emotion and reflexes of musical “vomiting,” which I understand.

  But, in general, spontaneous meetings and expressions of admiration, which always signify gratitude, are somehow typical of Russians and are part of the very essence of Russian cultural experiences.

  Remember how Pushkin was received when he returned from exile and appeared at the Bolshoi Theater.68 Remember how Dostoevsky was met at the unveiling of the Pushkin Monument in Moscow (people fainted!).69 Remember what went on at the train station when Tolstoy left Moscow!70 All that is frightening, but it calls for respect——

  How happy I am that we can see each other in Brussels, or in London, perhaps in Paris!71

  Around 5 June we will be in Saint-Maurice.

  I think you can write a few words to Balmont’s daughter and send them to M. V. Yudina’s address. …

  What do Vera Arturovna and Bob72 think about the invitation from Moscow?

  I embrace you warmly, dear Igor Fyodorovich, with all my heart and thoughts.

  Yours truly

  P. Suvchinsky

  5. Union of Soviet Composers to Igor Stravinsky

  Moscow

  17 June 1961

  Honorable Igor Fyodorovich!

  Allow me in the name of all Soviet musicians to extend my heartfelt congratulations on your birthday.73 We wish you great health and new creative triumphs. We hope to celebrate your eighty-year anniversary with you a year from now in our dear homeland, in Moscow. With you with all our hearts.

  The Secretariat of the Union of Soviet Composers:

  Khrennikov, Shostakovich, Khachaturian,74 Shaporin,75 Kabalevsky76

  6. Igor Stravinsky to the Union of Soviet Composers

  [Hollywood]

  [after 17 June 1961]

  My honorable colleagues, I am profoundly touched by your kind greetings and nice wishes. I am planning with great pleasure to be with you in Moscow a year from now. Please give my heartfelt regards to all Soviet musicians.

  Igor Stravinsky

  7. Igor Stravinsky to Maria Yudina

  Hollywood

  19 June 1961

  My sincerest greetings, most kind M. V. Yudina. I am sending you these lines of gratitude for your nice greetings and birthday wishes, and also because thanks to you I received this bibliographical rarity (with Balmont’s signature)—the eighth volume of Balmont’s poems with “Zvezdolikiy” [“Roi des étoiles”], which his daughter sent me with a very touching inscription. How can I thank you for all this? I kindly ask you to give to Balmont’s daughter the note that I have included.77

  A week ago, Khrennikov, Karayev, Yarustovsky,78 and Bezrodny were here, and three days ago they and the Union of Soviet Composers sent me their heartfelt congratulations and an invitation to come to Moscow next year for my eightieth birthday, signed by Khrennikov, Shostakovich, Khachaturian, Shaporin, and Kabalevsky. I telegraphed my gratitude and said I would be pleased to be with them in Moscow a year from now.

  If all goes well, I will make this pleasure a reality and amplify it by meeting with you.

  Sincerely yours,

  I. Stravinsky

  8. Igor Stravinsky to Pyotr Suvchinsky

  Hollywood

  19 August 1961, the day of Diaghilev’s death in 1929

  Dear Pyotr Petrovich!

  I was happy to receive your letter from 15 August [and to hear] what you tell me about Yudina.

  Of course, if Yudina can correspond with Morton (in what language?) that is the easiest and safest thing to do: he is reliable and well informed.

  It would also be good for me to see her in Helsinki, if they let her leave.79 What a country! On the one hand, Stockhausen and the pianist,80 Nadia Boulanger (why should she go there?),81 my festivals, and on the other hand they refuse to let Yudina leave and confiscate Pasternak’s portraits.82 Some kind of madhouse, a nightmare. Is it really possible that there is some order to all this that we just do not see?

  The older I get the harder it is for me to accept ceremonies, honors, etc. That’s why this whole unexpected Russian story is extremely vexing, all the more because I do not believe it. Is it really possible that they will honor me, the composer of
Canticum Sacrum, Agon, Threni, and Movements with performances of The Firebird and Petrushka? Dear Lord, do I really have to go through all this?

  Your I. Stravinsky83

  9. Maria Yudina to Marianna and Pyotr Suvchinsky

  Moscow

  20 September 1961

  Dear, kind, remote, esteemed Mariannochka Lvovna and Pyotr Petrovich!

  …84 Your lovely note about how desirable it is that I meet my great friend is a wonderful example of your purity of soul and spiritual abstraction in the spirit of——Webern——Forgive me for saying this, but that came from the heart—and it was “salt into the wounds”——“The elbow is near, but you can’t bite it,” dear Pyotr Petrovich!! Did you truly think that going to Helsinki—is a matter of “up and away”??!! …

  MVY

  10. Igor Stravinsky to Pyotr Suvchinsky

  Hollywood

  10 December 1961

  We are back! Phew!!!

  Off to Mexico in a week! Phew!!!85

  … How did my DOMAINE MUSICAL concert with Boulez go?86 Please, let me know.

  When (if) I have time, I will write about my impressions of Cairo, Australia, New Zealand, and Tahiti, and in the meantime I embrace you both.

  Your I. Stravinsky

  How about those mugs?!87 It’s the Soviet mrakobesï88 who are inviting me to this country! And they did not give Yudina a passport so she could travel to Helsinki to see me.89

  Thank you. I am not going there.

  11. Pyotr Suvchinsky to Igor Stravinsky

  Paris

  16 December 1961

  Dear Igor Fyodorovich,

  I am so grateful for your letter, I cannot even tell you! You say “phew,” but I say thrice 33 times—“Thank God!”

  The thing is, Dr. M. Gilbert in Zurich90 scared me very much, because he thought that your trip would be a very difficult one, due to the quick transitions between different climates, temperatures, and pressure levels.

  Did you receive the program of the concert “Domaine musical,” which was dedicated to you? It was a true triumph! An overcrowded hall, Boulez — en pleine forme, all the musicians and singers, who played and sung as if it were a holiday! I haven’t seen such overall enthusiasm in a long time!

  But I think that Catherine Gayer91 can’t sing what she tries to. With the exception of the “Japanese Lyrics,” her voice was not strong enough for anything else——

  As far as the second concert—which was devoted to Schoenberg—is concerned, it was less successful. …92 Only the Serenade op. 24 was performed outstandingly. By the way, about this Serenade: I don’t know if anyone has pointed this out: the presence of L’Histoire du soldat strikes the eye and ear. It generally seems to me that one should truly reconsider all of Schoenberg (and not only him!) in terms of the influence that you had on him. Boulez agrees with me on this. Listening to the Serenade, I am completely convinced that Schoenberg, in spite of his polemical attacks on you, never lost sight of your music and knew it more and better than the “Schoenbergians” think.

  Schoenberg himself, of course, did not admit it, even though there is nothing shameful about this fact. But the truth should nevertheless be restored.

  The “aesthetic fact,” the aesthetic discoveries of the new musical era belong to you and no one else. This fact is hierarchically more important than all the theoretical discoveries and inventions of musical composition, which, of course, are by themselves extremely important. But there is and should be a hierarchy in everything.

  Forgive me for writing so briefly about such important things, but to me this has become something obvious. I talked about it for an entire evening with Boulez and A. Schaeffner——

  The academic M. V. Alpatov from Moscow was here.93 He talked a lot about the preparations for the upcoming musical year, “the year of Stravinsky,” as he put it. I told him to communicate with R. Craft and L. Morton about everything, or else those fools in Moscow will make many stupid mistakes. They apparently don’t know what to play, what to stage——Perhaps Balanchine will be able to give advice and instructions——

  Yudina asked me to send you two programs.94

  Best wishes to you, Vera Arturovna, and Bob for the upcoming holiday and a Happy New Year. …

  Thank you for the clippings; terrifying Soviet mugs, or as Remizov95 used to say: terrifying muzzles! Oh terrible world!

  Yours truly,

  P. Suvchinsky

  12. Pyotr Suvchinsky to Igor Stravinsky

  Paris

  18 December 1961

  Dear Igor Fyodorovich!

  Forgive me for bothering you again, but in my last letter I forgot to tell you that Alpatov, from the Academy of Sciences, who visited me, invited me to come to Moscow. I told him that I decided once and for all never to ask myself this question. I—personally—will never travel to Russia.

  The problem is not my pro-Soviet or anti-Soviet convictions, but that I don’t like to and can’t “go back” to the past. The past becomes “another state of being,” and going back is to my mind as forbidden as looking into the future——

  Besides, in 1929 Gorky offered me to return to Russia together with Count Sviatopolk-Mirsky. Both of them returned, and what came of it? Gorky was poisoned and Mirsky became an alcoholic who died in exile.96 Of course, now that can’t be repeated and there is no danger, but the Stalin era deformed the Soviet mind to such a degree that anyone arriving from Europe will not be treated as what he actually is (for example, I was never a “White” émigré). But to be suspected of anything is an unpleasant feeling and experience. All that, so to speak, is my personal drama, and I am not confusing it with my general conviction that the historical center of our epoch is located in Russia.

  I might agree to visit Russia if it were occupied (God forbid!) by the Chinese or Negroes, but not by Russians; between them and me there is a real quarrel.

  Forgive me for writing you all this, but to whom else would I write it if not you——But I won’t talk about this anymore.

  Happy Holidays once more and a Happy New Year.

  Yours very truly

  P. Suvchinsky

  13. Maria Yudina to Marianna and Pyotr Suvchinsky

  Moscow

  26 December 1961

  … I am preparing a concert in honor of Igor Fyodorovich; the first, for the Leningrad House of Composers proposes no less than two chamber [concerts], as their hall is small. And maybe more than two. The first will probably include: 1) the Septet; 2) In Memoriam Dylan Thomas;97 3) Concerto for two pianos; 4) Duo Concertante for violin and piano or the Sonata for two pianos (1943–44); 5) Serenade for piano (I just recorded it, without waiting for an opportunity to exchange questions and answers with Igor Fyodorovich—it should have been recorded in 1961, so I already waited for a long time!——);98 6) Pastorale, Pribaoutki and also some other early vocal pieces by Igor Fyodorovich.99 It seems like a diverse program and everything promises to be festive. The Duo depends on the violinists; hardly anybody knows it; some are preparing for the Tchaikovsky Competition,100 others are on tour——

  (“This one silently prepared for the Trinity Fair,

  That one, loudly whistling, fashioned a crossbow!!——”)101

  and still others aren’t suitable. That will be decided in a short while. If the Leningrad tenor can sing [In Memoriam Dylan Thomas] in English—good, but I doubt it. … They are already rehearsing Orpheus at the Maly Opera.102 Alas, for a number of reasons, it seems we won’t be able to invite Kasyan Yaroslavich Goleizovsky. …103 Yes, and thank you for both symphonies by Igor Fyodorovich. The one in three movements was performed here, by some conductor from London, but I couldn’t be there—— On January 27 I am supposed to play Stravinsky’s first concerto104 with the Radio Orchestra, in a strange program with Sibelius and—— Dvořák!!!105—How horrible! …

  Dieu vous garde! —Kisses.

  TaV–Votre–

  Rossinante——106

  14. Igor Stravinsky to T. N. Khrennikov

 
[Hollywood]

  31 December 1961

  I received your letter from September after returning from concerts around the world.107 My interrupted composition requires my presence here in June. I deeply regret being unable to come to Moscow, having declined all concerts in June, but I may visit you in late September108 after all the concerts and festivals. Best wishes for the holidays.

  Stravinsky

  On 18 January 1961, Stravinsky, Vera, and Robert Craft were guests of President and Jacqueline Kennedy at a dinner held in Stravinsky’s honor at the White House. A few weeks earlier, on the eve of the new year, Kennedy and Khrushchev had exchanged New Year’s greetings, and two days earlier Stravinsky had received the State Department’s medal. The dinner of filet of sole mousse and lamb was hastily organized and attended by Leonard Bernstein, Nicolas Nabokov, Goddard Lieberson (head of Columbia Records), and others. Robert Craft reported laconically on the president’s comments at the event in his diary: