Stravinsky and His World

Tamara Levitz

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780691159881, 9780691159874
• eBook ISBN: 9781400848546
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Classical Music

A new look at one of the most important composers of the twentith century

Stravinsky and His World brings together an international roster of scholars to explore fresh perspectives on the life and music of Igor Stravinsky. Situating Stravinsky in new intellectual and musical contexts, the essays in this volume shed valuable light on one of the most important composers of the twentieth century.

Contributors examine Stravinsky's interaction with Spanish and Latin American modernism, rethink the stylistic label "neoclassicism" with a section on the ideological conflict over his lesser-known opera buffa Mavra, and reassess his connections to his homeland, paying special attention to Stravinsky's visit to the Soviet Union in 1962. The essays also explore Stravinsky's musical and religious differences with Arthur Lourié, delve into Stravinsky's collaboration with Pyotr Suvchinsky and Roland-Manuel in the genesis of his groundbreaking Poetics of Music, and look at how the movement within stasis evident in the scores of Stravinsky's Orpheus and Oedipus Rex reflected the composer's fierce belief in fate. Rare documents—including Spanish and Mexican interviews, Russian letters, articles by Arthur Lourié, and rarely seen French and Russian texts—supplement the volume, bringing to life Stravinsky's rich intellectual milieu and intense personal relationships.

The contributors are Tatiana Baranova, Leon Botstein, Jonathan Cross, Valérie Dufour, Gretchen Horlacher, Tamara Levitz, Klára Móricz, Leonora Saavedra, and Svetlana Savenko.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• A Note on Transliteration and Titles of Works
• Credits and Permissions
• Stravinsky in Exile
• Who Owns Mavra? A Transnational Dispute
• Stravinsky’s Russian Library
• The Futility of Exhortation: Pleading in Stravinsky’s Oedipus Rex and Orpheus
• Symphonies and Funeral Games: Lourié’s Critique of Stravinsky’s Neoclassicism
• Arthur Lourié’s Eurasianist and Neo-Thomist Responses to the Crisis of Art
• Igor the Angeleno: The Mexican Connection
• Stravinsky Speaks to the Spanish-Speaking World
• The Poétique musicale: A Counterpoint in Three Voices
• Stravinsky: The View from Russia
• Stravinsky’s Cold War: Letters About the Composer’s Return to Russia, 1960–1963
• “The Precision of Poetry and the Exactness of Pure Science”: The Parallel Lives of Vladimir Nabokov and Igor Stravinsky
• Index
• Notes on Contributors