Stravinsky, Igor (Feodorovich)

Stravinsky, Igor (Feodorovich), great Russian-born French, later American composer, one of the supreme masters of 20^th-century music, whose works exercised the most profound influence on the evolution of music through the emancipation of rhythm, melody, and harmony, son of Feodor (Ignatievich) Stravinsky and father of (Sviatoslav) Soulima Stravinsky ; b. Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg, June 17, 1882; d. N.Y., April 6, 1971. He was brought up in an artistic atmosphere; he often went to opera rehearsals when his father sang, and acquired an early love for the musical theater. He took piano lessons with Alexandra Snetkova, and later with Leokadia Kashperova, who was a pupil of Anton Rubinstein; but it was not until much later that he began to study theory, first with Akimenko and then with Kalafati (1900–03). His progress in composition was remarkably slow; he never entered a music school or a cons., and never earned an academic degree in music. In 1901 he enrolled in the faculty of jurisprudence at Univ. of St. Petersburg, and took courses there for 8 semesters, without graduating; a fellow student was Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov, a son of the composer. In the summer of 1902 Stravinsky traveled in Germany, where he met another son of Rimsky-Korsakov, Andrei, who was a student at the Univ. of Heidelberg; Stravinsky became his friend. He was introduced to Rimsky-Korsakov, and became a regular guest at the latter’s periodic gatherings in St. Petersburg. In 1903–04 he wrote a piano sonata for the Russian pianist Nicolai Richter, who performed it at Rimsky-Korsakov’s home. In 1905 he began taking regular lessons in orchestration with Rimsky-Korsakov, who taught him free of charge; under his tutelage, Stravinsky composed a Sym. in E-flat major; the second and third movements from it were performed on April 27, 1907, by the Court Orch. in St. Petersburg, and a complete performance of it was given by the same orch. on Feb. 4, 1908. The work, dedicated to Rimsky-Korsakov, had some singularities and angularities that showed a deficiency of technique; there was little in this work that presaged Stravinsky’s ultimate development as a master of form and orchestration. At the same concert, his Le Faune et la bergère for Voice and Orch. had its first performance; this score revealed a certain influence of French Impressionism. To celebrate the marriage of Rimsky-Korsakov’s daughter Nadezhda to the composer Maximilian Steinberg on June 17, 1908, Stravinsky wrote an orch. fantasy entitled Fireworks. Rimsky-Korsakov died a few days after the wedding; Stravinsky deeply mourned his beloved teacher and wrote a funeral song for Wind Instruments in his memory; it was first performed in St. Petersburg on Jan. 30, 1909. There followed a Scherzo fantastique for Orch., inspired by Maeterlinck’s book La Vie des abeilles. As revealed in his correspondence with Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky had at first planned a literal program of composition, illustrating events in the life of a beehive by a series of descriptive sections; some years later, however, he gratuitously denied all connection of the work with Maeterlinck’s book.

A signal change in Stravinsky’s fortunes came when the famous impresario Diaghilev commissioned him to write a work for the Paris season of his company, the Ballets Russes. The result was the production of his first ballet masterpiece, The Firebird, staged by Diaghilev in Paris on June 25, 1910. Here he created music of extraordinary brilliance, steeped in the colors of Russian fairy tales. There are numerous striking effects in the score, such as a glissando of harmonics in the string instruments; the rhythmic drive is exhilarating, and the use of asymmetrical time signatures is extremely effective; the harmonies are opulent; the orchestration is coruscating. He drew 2 orch. suites from the work; in 1919 he reorchestrated the music to conform to his new beliefs in musical economy; in effect he plucked the luminous feathers off the magical firebird, but the original scoring remained a favorite with conductors and orchs. Stravinsky’s association with Diaghilev demanded his presence in Paris, which he made his home beginning in 1911, with frequent travels to Switzerland. His second ballet for Diaghilev was Pétrouchka, premiered in Paris on June 13, 1911, with triumphant success. Not only was the ballet remarkably effective on the stage, but the score itself, arranged in 2 orch. suites, was so new and original that it marked a turning point in 20^th-century music; the spasmodically explosive rhythms, the novel instrumental sonorities, with the use of the piano as an integral part of the orch., the bold harmonic innovations in employing 2 different keys simultaneously (C major and F-sharp major, the “Pétrouchka Chord”) became a potent influence on modern European composers. Debussy voiced his enchantment with the score, and young Stravinsky, still in his 20s, became a Paris celebrity. Two years later, he brought out a work of even greater revolutionary import, the ballet Le Sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring; Russian title, Vesna sviashchennaya, literally Spring the Sacred); its subtitle was “Scenes of Pagan Russia.” It was premiered by Diaghilev with his Ballets Russes in Paris on May 29, 1913, with the choreography by Nijinsky. The score marked a departure from all conventions of musical composition; while in Petrouchka the harmonies, though innovative and dissonant, could still be placed in the context of modern music, the score of Le Sacre du printemps contained such corrosive dissonances as scales played at the intervals of major sevenths and superpositions of minor upon major triads with the common tonic, chords treated as unified blocks of sound, and rapid metrical changes that seemingly defied performance. The score still stands as one of the most daring creations of the modern musical mind; its impact was tremendous; to some of the audience at its first performance in Paris, Stravinsky’s “barbaric” music was beyond endurance; the Paris critics exercised their verbal ingenuity in indignant vituperation; one of them proposed that Le Sacre du printemps should be more appropriately described as Le Massacre du printemps. On May 26, 1914, Diaghilev premiered Stravinsky’s lyric fairy tale Le Rossignol, after Hans Christian Andersen. It too abounded in corrosive discords, but here it could be explained as “Chinese” music illustrative of the exotic subject. From 1914 to 1918 he worked on his ballet Les Noces (Russian title, Svadebka; literally, Little Wedding), evoking Russian peasant folk modalities; it was scored for an unusual ensemble of chorus, soloists, 4 pianos, and 17 percussion instruments.

The devastation of World War I led Stravinsky to conclude that the era of grandiose Romantic music had become obsolete, and that a new spirit of musical economy was imperative in an impoverished world. As an illustration of such economy, he wrote the musical stage play L’Histoire du soldat, scored for only 7 players, with a narrator. About the same time, he wrote a work for 11 instruments entitled Ragtime, inspired by the new American dance music. He continued his association with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in writing the ballet Pulcinella, based on themes by Pergolesi and other 18^th-century Italian composers. He also wrote for Diaghilev 2 short operas, Renard, to a Russian fairy tale (Paris, May 18, 1922), and Mavra, after Pushkin (Paris, June 3, 1922). These 2 works were the last in which he used Russian subjects, with the sole exception of an orch. Scherzo à la russe, written in 1944. Stravinsky had now entered the period usually designated as neo-Classical. The most significant works of this stage of his development were his Octet for Wind Instruments and the Piano Concerto commissioned by Koussevitzky. In these works, he abandoned the luxuriant instrumentation of his ballets and their aggressively dissonant harmonies; instead, he used pandiatonic structures, firmly tonal but starkly dissonant in their superposition of tonalities within the same principal key. His reversion to old forms, however, was not an act of ascetic renunciation but, rather, a grand experiment in reviving Baroque practices, which had fallen into desuetude. The Piano Concerto provided him with an opportunity to appear as soloist; Stravinsky was never a virtuoso pianist, but he was able to acquit himself satisfactorily in such works as the Piano Concerto; he played it with Koussevitzky in Paris on May 22, 1924, and during his first American tour with the Boston Sym. Orch., also under Koussevitzky, on Jan. 23, 1925. The Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation commissioned him to write a pantomime for string orch.; the result was Apollon Musagète, given at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., on April 27, 1928. This score, serene and emotionally restrained, evokes the manner of Lully’s court ballets. He continued to explore the resources of neo-Baroque writing in his Capriccio for Piano and Orch., which he performed as soloist, with Anser-met conducting, in Paris, on Dec. 6, 1929; this score is impressed by a spirit of hedonistic entertainment, harking back to the style galant of the 18^th century; yet it is unmistakably modern in its polyrhythmic collisions of pandiatonic harmonies. Stravinsky’s growing disillusionment with the external brilliance of modern music led him to seek eternal verities of music in ancient modalities. His well-nigh monastic renunciation of the grandiose edifice of glorious sound to which he himself had so abundantly contributed found expression in his opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex; in order to emphasize its detachment from temporal aspects, he commissioned a Latin text for the work, even though the subject was derived from a Greek play; its music is deliberately hollow and its dramatic points are emphasized by ominous repetitive passages. Yet this very austerity of idiom makes Oedipus Rex a profoundly moving play. It had its first performance in Paris on May 30, 1927; its stage premiere took place in Vienna on Feb. 23, 1928. A turn to religious writing found its utterance in Stravinsky’s Symphony of Psalms, written for the 50^th anniversary of the Boston Sym. Orch. and dedicated “to the glory of God.” The work is scored for chorus and orch., omitting the violins and violas, thus emphasizing the lower instrumental registers and creating an austere sonority suitable to its solemn subject. Owing to a delay of the Boston performance, the world premiere of the Symphony of Psalms took place in Brussels on Dec. 13, 1930. In 1931 he wrote a Violin Concerto commissioned by the violinist Samuel Dushkin, and performed by him in Berlin on Oct. 23, 1931. On a commission from the ballerina Ida Rubinstein, he composed the ballet Persephone; here again he exercised his mastery of simplicity in formal design, melodic patterns, and contrapuntal structure. For his American tour he wrote Jeu de cartes, a “ballet in 3 deals” to his own scenario depicting an imaginary game of poker (of which he was a devotee). He conducted its first performance at the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y. on April 27, 1937. His concerto for 16 instruments entitled Dumbarton Oaks, named after the Washington, D.C., estate of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, who commissioned the work, was first performed in Washington, on May 8, 1938; in Europe it was played under the noncommittal title Concerto in E-flat; its style is hermetically neo-Baroque. It is germane to note that in his neo-Classical works Stravinsky began to indicate the key in the title, e.g., Serenade in A for Piano (1925), Concerto in D for Violin and Orch. (1931), Concerto in E-flat (Dumbarton Oaks, 1938), Sym. in C (1938), and Concerto in D for String Orch. (1946).

With World War II engulfing Europe, Stravinsky decided to seek permanent residence in America. He had acquired French citizenship on June 10, 1934; in 1939 he applied for American citizenship; he became a naturalized American citizen on Dec. 28, 1945. To celebrate this event, he made an arrangement of the Star-Spangled Banner, which contained a curious modulation into the subdominant in the coda. He conducted it with the Boston Sym. Orch. on Jan. 14, 1944, but because of legal injunctions existing in the state of Mass. against intentional alteration, or any mutilation, of the national anthem, he was advised not to conduct his version at the second pair of concerts, and the standard version was substituted. In 1939–40 Stravinsky was named Charles Eliot Norton lecturer at Harvard Univ.; about the same time, he accepted several private students, a pedagogical role he had never exercised before. His American years form a curious panoply of subjects and manners of composition. He accepted a commission from the Ringling Bros, to write a Circus Polka “for a young elephant.” In 1946 he wrote Ebony Concerto for a swing band. In 1951 he completed his opera The Rake’s Progress, inspired by Hogarth’s famous series of engravings, to a libretto by W.H. Auden and C. Kaliman. He conducted its premiere in Venice on Sept. 11, 1951, as part of the International Festival of Contemporary Music. The opera is a striking example of Stravinsky’s protean capacity for adopting different styles and idioms of composition to serve his artistic purposes; The Rake’s Progress is an ingenious conglomeration of disparate elements, ranging from 18^th-cenrury British ballads to cosmopolitan burlesque. But whatever transmutations his music underwent during his long and productive career, he remained a man of the theater at heart. In America he became associated with the brilliant Russian choreographer Balanchine, who produced a number of ballets to Stravinsky’s music, among them his Apollon Musagète, Violin Concerto, Sym. in 3 movements, Scherzo à la russe, Pulcinella, and Agon. It was in his score of Agon that he essayed for the first time to adopt the method of composition with 12 tones as promulgated by Schoenberg; Agon (the word means “competition” in Greek) bears the subtitle “ballet for 12 tones,” perhaps in allusion to the dodecaphonic technique used in the score. Yet the 12-tone method had been the very antithesis of his previous tenets. In fact, an irreconcilable polarity existed between Stravinsky and Schoenberg even in personal relations. Although both resided in Los Angeles for several years, they never met socially; Schoenberg once wrote a canon in which he ridiculed Stravinsky as Herr Modernsky, who put on a wig to look like “Papa Bach.” After Schoenberg’s death, Stravinsky became interested in examining the essence of the method of composition with 12 tones, which was introduced to him by his faithful musical factotum Robert Craft; Stravinsky adopted dodecaphonic writing in its aspect of canonic counterpoint as developed by Webern. In this manner he wrote his Canticum sacrum ad honorem Sancti Marci nominis, which he conducted at San Marco in Venice on Sept. 13, 1956. Other works of the period were also written in a modified 12-tone technique, among them The Flood, for Narrator, Mime, Singers, and Dancers, presented in a CBS-TV broadcast in N.Y. on June 14, 1962; its first stage performance was given in Hamburg on April 30, 1963.

Stravinsky was married twice; his first wife, Catherine Nosenko, whom he married on Jan. 24, 1906, and who bore him 3 children, died in 1939; on March 9, 1940, Stravinsky married his longtime mistress, Vera, who was formerly married to the Russian painter Serge Sudeikin. She was born Vera de Bosset in St. Petersburg, on Dec. 25, 1888, and died in N.Y. on Sept. 17, 1982, at the age of 93. An ugly litigation for the rights to the Stravinsky estate continued for several years between his children and their stepmother; after Vera Stravinsky’s death, it was finally settled in a compromise, according to which 2/9 of the estate went to each of his 3 children and a grandchild and 1/9 to Robert Craft. The value of the Stravinsky legacy was spectacularly demonstrated on Nov. 11, 1982, when his working draft of Le Sacre du printemps was sold at an auction in London for the fantastic sum of $548, 000. The purchaser was Paul Sacher, the Swiss conductor and philanthropist. Even more fantastic was the subsequent sale of the entire Stravinsky archive, consisting of 116 boxes of personal letters and 225 drawers containing MSS, some of them unpubl. Enormous bids were made for it by the N.Y. Public Library and the Morgan Library, but they were all outbid by Sacher, who offered the overwhelming purse of $5, 250, 000, which removed all competition. The materials were to be assembled in a specially constructed 7- story Sacher Foundation building in Basel, to be eventually opened to scholars for study.

In tribute to Stravinsky as a naturalized American citizen, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 2-cent stamp bearing his image to mark his centennial in 1982, an honor theretofore never granted to a foreign-born composer (the possible exception being Victor Herbert, but his entire career was made in America).

Few composers of his day escaped the powerful impact of Stravinsky’s music; ironically, it was his own country that rejected him, partly because of the opposition of Soviet ideologues to modern music in general, and partly because of Stravinsky’s open criticism of Soviet ways in art. But in 1962 he returned to Russia for a visit, and was welcomed as a prodigal son; as if by magic, his works began to appear on Russian concert programs, and Soviet music critics issued a number of laudatory studies of his works. Yet it is Stravinsky’s early masterpieces, set in an attractive colorful style, that continue to enjoy favor with audiences and performers, while his more abstract and recursive scores are appreciated mainly by specialists.

Works

DRAMATIC : Le Rossignol, “lyric tale” in 3 acts, after Hans Christian Andersen (1908–14; Paris Opéra, May 26, 1914, Monteux conducting; in 1917 the second and third acts were scored as a ballet, Le Chant du rossignol; Paris Opéra, Feb. 2, 1920; also, in 1917, fragments from the second and third acts were used for a symphonic poem under the same title); L’Oiseau de feu (The Firebird), ballet (Paris Opéra, June 25, 1910; 3 suite versions: 1911, 1919, and 1945; 2 sections arranged for Violin and Piano, 1926); Pétrouchka, ballet (Paris, June 13, 1911, Monteux conducting; rev. 1946; excerpts officially designated as a “suite” in 1946); Le Sacre du printemps, ballet, “scenes of pagan Russia” (1911–13; Paris, May 29, 1913, Monteux conducting; first concert perf., Moscow, Feb. 18, 1914, Serge Koussevitzky conducting; first Paris concert perf., April 5, 1914, Monteux conducting); Renard, burlesque chamber opera (1915–16; Paris, May 18, 1922); L’Histoire du soldat, ballet with Narrator and 7 Instrumentalists (Lausanne, Sept. 28, 1918; concert suite with original instrumentation, London, July 20, 1920, Ansermet conducting; also Petite suite for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano extracted from the score, 1919); Pulcinella, ballet “after Pergo-lesi” with solos, trios, and a duet for Soprano, Tenor, and Bass (Paris Opéra, May 15, 1920; an orch. suite was extracted from it in 1922, and first perf. in Boston, Dec. 22, 1922, rev. 1947; 2 chamber pieces, Suite italienne); Les Noces (The Wedding), ballet-cantata, subtitled “choreographic Russian scenes,” revision for Soloists, Chorus, 4 Pianos, and 17 Percussion Instruments (1921–23; Paris, June 13, 1923; orig. scored with Full Orch., 1914–17); Mavra, comic opera, after Pushkin (Paris Opéra, June 3, 1922); Oedipus Rex, opera-oratorio, after Sophocles (concert perf., Paris, May 30, 1927; stage perf., Vienna, Feb. 23, 1928; rev. 1948); Apollon Musagète, classic ballet for String Orch. (Washington, D.C., April 27, 1928; rev. 1947); Le Baiser de la fée, ballet on themes of Tchaikovsky (Paris Opéra, Nov. 27, 1928; in 1934 several sections were collected for an independent symphonic piece called Divertimento; entire ballet rev. 1950); Persephone, melodrama in 3 parts for Female Narrator, Tenor, Chorus, and Orch., after André Gide (1933; Paris Opéra, April 30, 1934; rev. 1949); Jeu de cartes,”ballet in 3 deals” (1935–37; N.Y., April 27, 1937); Orpheus, ballet (1946–47; N.Y., April 28, 1948); The Rake’s Progress, opera, after Hogarth W.H. Auden and C. Kaliman (1948–51; Venice, Sept. 11, 1951, composer conducting); Agon, ballet for 12 Dancers (1954–57; Los Angeles, June 17, 1957); Noah and the Flood, also called The Flood, biblical spectacle narrated, mimed, sung, and danced (CBS-TV, N.Y., June 14, 1962; first stage perf., Hamburg, April 30, 1963). ORCH .: Sym. in E-flat major, op.l (1905–07; first partial perf., second and third movements only, St. Petersburg, April 27, 1907; first complete perf., St. Petersburg, Feb. 4, 1908; rev. version, Montreux, Switzerland, April 2, 1914); Scherzo fantastique, op.3 (1907; St. Petersburg, Feb. 6, 1909); Fireworks, op.4 (St. Petersburg, June 17, 1908; reorchestrated and first perf. in St. Petersburg, Jan. 22, 1910); Chant funèbre for Wind Instruments, on the death of Rimsky-Korsakov (1908; St. Petersburg, Jan. 30, 1909; score lost); 2 suites for Small Orch.: No. 1 (1917–25; orch. arrangement of Nos. 1–4 of the 5 pièces faciles for Piano, 4-Hands: Andante, Napolitana, Espanola, and Balalaika) and No. 2 (1921; orch. arrangement of 3 pièces faciles and No. 5 of 5 pièces faciles for Piano, 4-Hands: March, Waltz, Polka, and Galop); Symphonies of Wind Instruments, in memory of Debussy (1918–20; London, June 10, 1921; rev. 1945–47); Le Chant du rossignol, symphonic poem after the opera Le Rossignol (Geneva, Dec. 6, 1919); Concerto for Piano, with Wind Instruments, Double Basses, and Percussion (Paris, May 22, 1924; rev. 1950); 4 études: Danse, Excentrique, Cantique, and Madrid (1928; orch. arrangement of 3 pieces for String Quartet, and Étude for Pianola; Berlin, Nov. 7, 1930; rev. 1952); Capriccio for Piano and Orch. (Paris, Dec. 6, 1929; rev. 1949); Concerto in D for Violin and Orch. (Berlin, Oct. 23, 1931; adapted in 1940 for Balanchine’s ballet Balustrade); Divertimento (sections of the ballet Le Baiser de la fée, combined in 1934); Praeludium for Jazz Ensemble (1936–37; rev. version, Los Angeles, Oct. 19, 1953); Concerto in E-flat, Dumbarton Oaks, for Chamber Orch. (Washington, D.C., May 8, 1938); Sym. in C (1938–40; Chicago, Nov. 7, 1940); Tango, arrangement by Felix Günther of the piano piece (Philadelphia, July 10, 1941, Benny Goodman conducting; Stravinsky’s own orchestration, Los Angeles, Oct. 19, 1953); Danses concertantes for Chamber Orch. (Los Angeles, Feb. 8, 1942); Circus Polka for Piano (commissioned by the Ringling Bros. Circus, to accompany the elephant numbers; arranged for Band by David Raksin, 1942; arranged by Stravinsky for sym. orch., Cambridge, Mass., Jan. 13, 1944, composer conducting); 4 or ch., Cambridge, Mass., Jan. 13, 1944, composer conducting); Sym. in 3 movements (1942–45; N.Y., Jan. 24, 1946); Ode (Boston, Oct. 8, 1943); Scènes de ballet (orig. composed for Billy Rose’s Broadway show The Seven Lively Arts, Philadelphia, Nov. 24, 1944; rev. for concert performance, N.Y., Feb. 3, 1945); Scherzo à la russe (1944; San Francisco, March 22, 1946; orig. for Big Jazz Band); Ebony Concerto for Clarinet and Swing Band (1945; N.Y., March 25, 1946); Concerto in D for String Orch., Basier (1946; Basel, Jan. 21, 1947); Greeting Prelude (“Happy Birthday,” written for Monteux’s 80^th birthday; Boston, April 4, 1955); Très Sacrae Cantiones for Chamber Orch., after Gesualdo (1957–59); Movements for Piano and Orch. (1958–59; N.Y., Jan. 10, 1960); Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa ad CD Annum, instrumental surrealization of 3 madrigals by Gesualdo for 4 Wind Instruments, 8 Brass, and Strings (Venice, Sept. 27, 1960); Variations: Aldous Huxley, In Memoriam (1963–64; Chicago, April 17, 1965; as a ballet, N.Y., March 31, 1966); Canon, from finale of The Firebird, in memory of Monteux (Toronto, Dec. 16, 1965). CHAMBER : 3 pieces for String Quartet (1914); Ragtime for 11 Instruments (1918; London, April 27, 1920); Petite suite for Violin, Clarinet, and Piano (1919; arranged from L’Histoire du soldat); 3 pieces for Clarinet (Lausanne, Nov. 8, 1919); Concertino for String Quartet (1920; rev. for 12 Instruments, 1952); Octet for Wind Instruments (Paris, Oct. 18, 1923); Duo concertant for Violin and Piano (Berlin, Oct. 28, 1932); Russian Dance for Violin and Piano, from Pétrouchka (1932); Suite italienne No. 1 for Cello and Piano, and No. 2 for Violin and Piano (both from Pulcinella; 1932, 1934); Pastorale for Violin, Oboe, English Horn, Clarinet, and Bassoon (1933; arrangement of vocal Pastorale); Divertimento for Violin and Piano, based on material from Le Baiser de la fée (1934); Élégie for Violin and Viola (1944); Septet for Piano, and String and Wind Instruments (1952; Washington, D.C., Jan. 24, 1954); Epitaphium for Prince Max of Fürstenberg for Flute, Clarinet, and Harp (Donaueschingen, Oct. 17, 1959); Double Canon for String Quartet (1959); 8 instrumental miniatures for 15 Players (Toronto, April 29, 1962; instrumentation of Les Cinq Doigts for Piano); Fanfare for a New Theater for 2 Trumpets (N.Y., April 19, 1964). Piano : 2 sonatas (1903–04; 1924); 4 Études, op.7 (1908); Le Sacre du printemps for Piano, 4-Hands (1912); 3 pièces faciles for Piano, 4-Hands (1915); 5 pièces faciles for Piano, 4-Hands (1917); Étude for Pianola (1917); Piano-Rag-Music (1919); 3 movements from Pétrouchka (1921); Les Cinq Doigts (1920–21); Serenade in A (1925); Concerto for 2 Solo Pianos (1931–35; Paris, Nov. 21, 1935); Tango (1940); Circus Polka (1942); Sonata for 2 Pianos (Edgewood Coll. of the Dominican Sisters, Madison, Wise, Aug. 2, 1944). VOCAL : Le Faune et la bergère for Mezzo-soprano and Orch. (1906; St. Petersburg, Feb. 4, 1908); Pastorale, “song without words” for Soprano and Piano (1908; also for Soprano, Oboe, English Horn, Clarinet, and Bassoon, 1923); 2 Poems of Verlaine for Baritone and Piano (1910; with Orch., 1951); 2 Poems ofBalmont for High Voice and Piano (1911; also for High Voice and Chamber Orch., 1954); Le Roi des étoiles (Zvezdoliki), cantata for Men’s Chorus and Orch. (1912; Brussels Radio, April 19, 1939); 3 poems from the Japanese for Soprano, 2 Flutes, 2 Clarinets, Piano, and String Quartet (1912–13); Pribaoutki (Peasant Songs) for Voice and 8 Instruments (1914; Vienna, June 6, 1919); The Saucer, 4 Russian songs for Women’s Voices (1914–17; as 4 Russian Peasant Songs, with 4 Horns added, 1954); Berceuses du chat, suite of 4 songs for Woman’s Voice and 3 Clarinets (1915–16; Vienna, June 6, 1919); Paternoster for Chorus (1926); Symphony of Psalms for Chorus and Orch. (Brussels, Dec. 13, 1930); Credo for Chorus (1932); Ave Maria for Chorus (1934); Tango for Wordless Voice and Piano (1940); Babel for Male Narrator, Men’s Chorus, and Orch. (1944; Los Angeles, Nov. 18, 1945; 7^th and final movement of Genesis Suite, in collaboration with Schoenberg, Shilkret, Tansman, Milhaud, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and Toch); Mass for Men’s and Boy’s Voices and 10 Wind Instruments (1944–48; Milan, Oct. 27, 1948); Cantata for Soprano, Tenor, Women’s Chorus, and 5 Instruments (Los Angeles, Nov. 11, 1952); 3 songs for Mezzo-soprano, Flute, Clarinet, and Viola, after Shakespeare (1953; Los Angeles, March 8, 1954); In Metnoriam Dylan Thomas for Tenor, String Quartet, and 4 Trombones (Los Angeles, Sept. 20, 1954); 4 Russian Songs for Soprano, Flute, Guitar, and Harp (1954); Canticum sacrum ad honorem Sancti Marci nominis for Tenor, Baritone, Chorus, and Orch. (Venice, Sept. 13, 1956, composer conducting); arrangement for Chorus and Orch. of J.S. Bach’s Choral-Variationen über das Weihnachtslied “Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her” (Ojai, May 27, 1956, Robert Craft conducting); Threni for 6 Solo Voices, Chorus, and Orch., after Jeremiah (Venice, Sept. 23, 1958); A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer, cantata for Speaker, Alto, Tenor, Chorus, and Orch. (1960–62; Basel, Feb. 23, 1962); The Dove Descending Breaks the Air, anthem, after T.S. Eliot (Los Angeles, Feb. 19, 1962, Craft conducting); Elegy for J.F.K. for Mezzo-soprano or Baritone, 2 Clarinets, and Corno di Bassetto (Los Angeles, April 6, 1964); Abraham and Isaac, sacred ballad for Baritone and Chamber Orch., after Hebrew texts (1962–64; Jerusalem, Aug. 23, 1964); lntroitus (T.S. Eliot in Memoriam) for 6 Men’s Voices, Harp, Piano, Timpani, Tam-tams, Viola, and Double Bass (Chicago, April 17, 1965); Requiem Canticles for 4 Vocal Soloists, Chorus, and Orch. (Princeton, N.J., Oct. 8, 1966); The Owl and the Pussycat for Voice and Piano, after Lear (Los Angeles, Oct. 31, 1966). Nondescript : Do Not Throw Paper Towels in Toilet for Treble Voice Unaccompanied, to text from poster in men’s room at Harvard Univ. (dated Dec. 16, 1939).

Writings

Chroniques de ma vie (2 vols., Paris, 1935; Eng. tr., 1936, as Chronicles of My Life); Poétique musicale (Paris, 1946; Eng. tr., 1948, as Poetics of Music); with R. Craft, Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (N.Y., 1958), Memories and Commentaries (N.Y., 1959), Expositions and Developments (N.Y., 1962), Dialogues and a Diary (N.Y., 1963), Themes and Episodes (N.Y., 1967), and Retrospections and Conclusions (N.Y., 1969); Themes and Conclusions, amalgamated and ed. from Themes and Episodes and Retrospections and Conclusions (1972); R. Craft, ed., Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence (2 vois., N.Y, 1982, 1984). A sharp debate raged, at times to the point of vitriolic polemical exchange, among Stravinsky’s associates as to the degree of credibility of Craft’s reports in his dialogues, or even of the factual accounts of events during Stravinsky’s last years of life. Stravinsky was never a master of the English language; yet Craft quotes him at length as delivering literary paragraphs of impeccable English prose. Craft admitted that he enhanced Stravinsky’s actual words and sentences (which were never recorded on tape), articulating the inner, and at times subliminal, sense of his utterances. Craft’s role was made clear beyond dispute by Stravinsky himself, who, in a letter to his publishing agent dated March 15, 1958, urged that the title of the book be changed to Conversations with Igor Stravinsky by Robert Craft, and emphatically asserted that the text was in Craft’s language, and that in effect Craft “created” him.

Bibliography

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—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire