Robert Craft - Böcker

This initial selection from the extraordinary lifetime of letters to and from Igor Stravinsky, annotated by his friend and associate Robert Craft, includes correspondence with W. H. Auden, Jean Cocteau, Lincoln Kirstein and other friends, as well as Stravinsky's letters to Nadia Boulanger, Ernest Ansermet, and Craft himself. The book presents a wealth of previously unpublished information about Stravinsky's relationships with other musicians, and about his methods of composition.The opening section, based on letters to Stravinsky from his first wife Catherine, is among the most important material yet made available for an understanding of the composer's personal and family life. If the exchanges with Auden (The Rake's Progress) and Cocteau (Oedipus Rex) take first place for general interest, the letters to Ansermet - who conducted more performances of Stravinsky's music than anyone but the composer himself - give a remarkable view of the musical and ballet worlds, especially of the Diaghilev period, and of the great impresario himself.This book, accompanied by two further volumes, is a major contribution to the Stravinsky canon and to the cultural history of the twentieth century.

In this second volume of Igor Stravinsky's correspondence - selected and annotated by his friend and associate Robert Craft - we are given a wealth of material relating to the composer's association with dance, to his relationship with other composers and musicians, and to the daily, financial, and familial concerns of his life.Of particular value is his correspondence with Serge Diaghilev, with Vaslav Nijinsky, with Léon Bakst, and with Émile Jaques-Dalcroze. There is a history in letters of Firebird, Stravinsky's most popular ballet score, and of Jeu de Cartes, his first Balanchine commission. Also included are letters to and from Pierre Monteux - a correspondence that began in 1912 (the year before the scandalous première of Le Sacre du Printemps, with Monteux conducting) and lasted for forty-five years. A vivid picture of musical life in the émigré community in Hollywood during the 1950s and 1960s emerges from the correspondence with Ernst Krenek, while Stravinsky's letters to Nicolas Nabokov are an invaluable record of musical activities during the last thirty years of his life, including the premiere of his opera The Rake's Progress. Together with the accompanying two volumes, this book affords an extraordinary insight into the life and work of a complex, brilliant artist.

At the centre of this third and final volume of letters to and from Igor Stravinsky is four decades of the composer's correspondence with his publishers. Stravinsky's letters to Schotts cover the years 1928-39 and the publication of the Violin Concerto, the Concerto per due pianoforte soli, Jeu de Cartes, the Concerto in E flat, and the Symphony in C. His letters to Associated Music Publishers span the years 1940-7, while twenty-two years of correspondence with Boosey & Hawkes reveals much about the development of Stravinsky's works in progress, the performances of his music, and his projects and plans. These letters offer fascinating glimpses into his daily life - musical and otherwise - clearly exhibiting his meticulousness, his immense vitality, and his unbounded creativity.Here also is Stravinsky's correspondence with Debussy, Satie, Ravel and Poulenc, and with literary collaborators, C. F. Ramuz (Histoire du Soldat), and André Gide (Perséphone). The correspondence with Charles-Albert Cingria, one of Stravinsky's closest friends, shows how the composer was influenced by Cingria's views on art, literature, and religion, while the letters from musicologist and organist, Jacques Handschin (the only Russian contemporary of Stravinsky's who was an influence on him in later life), contain the sole published reference to the possibility that before the Russian Revolution, Stravinsky may have been 'leftist-minded'.A fascinating collection on its own, this volume joins the first two to form an essential document in the history of twentieth-century music.

Conversations with Igor Stravinsky is the first of the celebrated series of conversation books in which Stravinsky, prompted by Robert Craft, reviewed his long and remarkable life. The composer brings the Imperial Russia of his childhood vividly into focus, at the same time scanning what were at the time the brave new horizons of Boulez and Stockhausen with extraordinary acuity.Stravinsky answers searching questions about his musical development and recalls his association with Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet. There are sympathetic and extraordinarily illuminating reminiscences of such composers as Debussy and Ravel ('the only musicians who immediately understood Le Sacre du Printemps'), while mischievous squibs are directed at others, most notably perhaps against Richard Strauss, all of whose operas Stravinsky wished 'to admit ... to whichever purgatory punishes triumphant banality'.The conversations are by no means confined to musical subjects, ranging uninhibitedly across all the arts: Stravinsky gives unforgettable sketches of Ibsen, Rodin, Proust, Giacometti, Dylan Thomas and T S Eliot.'The conversations between Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft are unique in musical history. The penetration of Craft's questions and the patience and detail of Stravinsky's answers combine to produce an intimate picture of a man who has sometimes puzzled, often delighted, and always intrigued ...' The Sunday Times

'The conversations between Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft are unique in musical history.' Sunday TimesThe contents of the celebrated series of Conversations, dating from the last fifteen years of Stravinsky's life, were taken down by Robert Craft in informal talks with the composer. Craft lived for twenty-one years with the Stravinskys in their Hollywood home, or nearby, and for two more years in a next-door hotel room in New York. In the early 1950s he accompanied the composer on his concert tours, and from the mid-1950s to the end of Stravinsky's life co-conducted his concerts.Memories and Commentaries, the second of the series, is a brilliant portrait gallery in which Stravinsky, prompted by Craft, sets down with characteristic wit and insight his memories of such famous writers and musicians as Romain Rolland, Reynaldo Hahn, Lord Berners and Manuel de Falla. There are long sections devoted to Diaghilev, to Russian composers, to Stravinsky's childhood and youth in Russia, and detailed accounts of his collaboration with Benois (The Nightingale), Gide (Persephone) and Auden (The Rake's Progress).The Conversations books are the only published writings attributed to Stravinsky that are actually by him, in the sense of fidelity to the substance of his thoughts, making them required reading for all students and lovers of Stravinsky.

'The conversations between Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft are unique in musical history.' Sunday TimesExpositions and Developments is the third in the legendary series of Stravinsky's conversations with Robert Craft. In this volume Stravinsky delves deep into his memory and brings to light, in the most absorbing detail, reminiscences of his childhood, youth and early manhood in Russia. A most remarkable evocation of St Petersburg, the city that the composer still loves best, forms part of the earlier, 'expository' section of the book. In his 'developments', Stravinsky moves outside Russia and unfolds a wealth of information and racy anecdote, most of which has a direct bearing on his music. The extensive chronological sweep of these conversations embraces not only a vivid account of how the Rite of Spring was composed and first performed but also his first thoughts about The Flood, one of his most recent works.This unique series of memories offers not only indispensable documentation but also exceptional literary distinction, and is essential reading for all students and lovers of Stravinsky.

'The conversations between Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft are unique in musical history.' Sunday TimesDialogues is the fourth volume in the legendary series of Stravinsky's conversations with Robert Craft. Originally published in l968 as Dialogues and a Diary, Robert Craft's diary of his travels with Stravinsky (1948-62) was omitted from this edition because it had appeared in fuller form in Craft's book Stravinsky: The Chronicle of a Friendship (1972). The composer's reminiscences here include the composition of Oedipus Rex (with letters to Cocteau), remarks on 'Music and the Statistical Age', a devastating review of recordings of The Rite of Spring, and racy sketches of Evelyn Waugh, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, and other friends.'Was I merely trying to refit old ships while the other side - Schoenberg - sought new forms of travel? ...the true business of the artist is to refit old ships. He can say again, in his way, only what has already been said.'This unique series of memories offers not only indispensable documentation but also exceptional literary distinction, and is essential reading for all students and lovers of Stravinsky.'A rewarding and stimulating book, full of illuminating insights into music past and present, and irresistibly readable ...' Daily Telegraph

'The conversations between Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft are unique in musical history.' Sunday TimesDialogues is the final volume in the legendary series of Stravinsky's conversations with Robert Craft. In his Foreword, dated March 1971 shortly before his death, Stravinsky wrote of his 'final work of words': 'They are hardly the last words about myself or my music that I would like to have written, and in fact they say almost nothing about the latter, except tangentially, in comments on Beethoven. It is almost five years now since I have completed an original composition, a time during which I have had to transform myself from a composer to a listener. The vacuum which this left has not been filled, but I have been able to live with it thanks, in the largest measure, to the music of Beethoven. It is certain, now that I will not be granted powers such as have recently enable Casals to publish a book at an age six years greater than mine. But I am thankful that I can listen to and love the music of other men in a way I could not do when I was composing my own.' Although Stravinsky may have written nothing new about his music in his last years, Themes and Conclusions collects together a number of his programme notes about his own works, among them the Symphonies of Wind Instruments and Jeu de Carte: and there are waspish letters to the press, wide-ranging interviews, prefaces and reviews, and a whole section entitled 'Squibs'. Readers who enjoyed the earlier volumes of recollections will find this final volume equally enlightening, diverting and enriching.This unique series of memories is essential reading for all students and lovers of Stravinsky.