Conversations With Igor Stravinsky

by Igor Stravinsky

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

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, Autobiography, Classical Music

140 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1959

About the author

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely acknowledged as one of the most important and influential composers of 20th century music.

He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1946. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works.

He also published a number of books throughout his career, almost always with the aid of a collaborator, sometimes uncredited. In his 1936 autobiography, Chronicles of My Life, written with the help of Walter Nouvel, Stravinsky included his infamous statement that "music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all."

Reviews

[Dougal Graham]

Stravinsky bitching about literally everyone is so iconic I love him

[Anni]

I returned the book in the library, couldn't finish it. Yes, Stravinsky was an interesting figure in the art music scene. Yes, I love his music. Yes, this book is recommended reading for anyone interested in the 20th century mindset within the arts. But no no no, I just got bored somewhere in the middle, all those Russian names and anecdotes about who-said-what-to-whom-and-where. I learned about my limitations as a reader. Sorry.

[Gaetano Venezia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Mostly of historical curiosity, these conversations do not reveal much unique insight into Stravinsky's music or life.* But for the dedicated Igorophile, these conversations might offer new glimpses into his music, the work of his contemporaries, and important artistic relationships. The most insightful and surprising portions concern Stravinsky's thoughts on music theory. Infamous for avoiding a unifying theory or consistent style (except his own brand of recomposition*), Stravinsky nonetheless holds strong value judgments. Some judgments complement his music and standard critical reception of it, but others are counterintuitive given his reputation. For example, unusual and inventive orchestration marks his work—from the unusual register/timbre of the opening bassoon in The Rite of Spring to the mandolin solos in Agon—and yet he claims that instrumentation is good "when you are unaware that it is instrumentation" (see more in another quote below**). Concise, controversial statements such as this reward a close read, but the payoff isn't big and many will get bored of the high society social history that takes up a significant portion of the conversations.

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* For a smart musical and cultural analysis of Stravinsky's work, I highly recommend The Apollonian Clockwork .
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Quotes
[Robert Craft] R.C. The musical idea: when do you recognize it as an idea?
[Igor Stravinsky] I.S. When something in my nature is satisfied by some aspect of an auditive shape. But long before ideas are born I begin work by relating intervals rhythmically.

R.C. What is theory in musical composition?
I.S. Hindsight. It doesn’t exist. There are compositions from which it is deduced. Or, if this isn’t quite true, it has a by-product existence that is powerless to create or even to justify.

R.C. Do you regard musical form as in some degree mathematical?
I.S. It is at any rate far closer to mathematics than to literature—not perhaps to mathematics itself, but certainly to something like mathematical thinking and mathematical relationships.

I.S. ...to compose is to solve a problem.

** I.S. It is not, generally, a good sign when the first thing we remark about a work is its instrumentation; and the composers we remark it of—Berlioz, Rimsky-Korsakov, Ravel—are not the best composers. Beethoven, the greatest orchestral master of all in our sense, is seldom praised for his instrumentation; his symphonies are too good music in every way and the orchestra is too integral a part of them. How silly it sounds to say of the trio of the Scherzo of the Eighth Symphony: ‘What splendid instrumentation’—yet, what incomparable instrumental thought it is.

I.S. The presentation of works in their original language is a sign of a rich culture in my opinion. And, musically speaking, Babel is a blessing.

R.C. You have often remarked that the period of harmonic discovery is over, that harmony is no longer open to exploration and exploitation. Would you explain?
I.S. Harmony, considered as a doctrine dealing with chords and chord relations, has had a brilliant but short history. This history shows that chords gradually abandoned their direct function of harmonic guidance and began to seduce with the individual splendours of their harmonic effects. Today harmonic novelty is at an end. As a medium of musical construction, harmony offers no further resources in which to inquire and from which to seek profit. The contemporary ear requires a completely different approach to music.

I.S. Jazz patterns and, especially, jazz instrumental combinations did influence me forty years ago, of course, but not the idea of jazz. As I say, that is another world. I don’t follow it but I respect it. It can be an art of very touching dignity as it is in the New Orleans jazz funerals. And, at its rare best, it is certainly the best musical entertainment in the U.S.

R.C. Have you ever considered whether a piece of ‘classic’ music is more difficult to kill by mis-performance than a ‘romantic’ piece?
I.S. . . . . [Alban Berg's] Kammerkonzert depends strongly on mood or interpretation. Unless mood dominates the whole, the parts do not relate, the form is not achieved, detail is not suffused, and the music fails to say what it has to say—for ‘romantic’ pieces are presumed to have messages beyond the purely musical messages of their notes. The romantic piece is always in need of a ‘perfect’ performance. By perfect one means inspired—rather than strict or correct. In fact, considerable fluctuations in tempo are possible in a ‘romantic’ piece (metronomes are marked circa in the Berg, and performance times sometimes diverge as much as ten minutes). There are other freedoms as well, and ‘freedom’ itself must be conveyed by the performer of a ‘romantic’ piece. It is interesting to note that conductors’ careers are made for the most part with ‘romantic’ music. ‘Classic’ music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it, and we think we need him for his métier alone, not for his mediumistic abilities—I am speaking of my music [specifically Agon in this passage].
. . .
I have often said that my music is to be ‘read’, to be ‘executed’, but not to be ‘interpreted’. I will say it still because I see in it nothing that requires interpretation (I am trying to sound immodest, not modest).

I.S Last year, Time called my San Marco performance of my Canticum Sacrum ‘Murder in the Cathedral’. Now I don’t mind my music going on trial, for if I’m to keep my position as a promising young composer I must accept that; but how could Time or anybody know whether I ably conducted a work I alone knew?

I.S. . . . . How much poorer we are without the sacred musical services, without the Masses, the Passions, the round-the-calendar cantatas of the Protestants, the motets and Sacred Concerts, and Vespers and so many others. These are not merely defunct forms but parts of the musical spirit in disuse.
. . .
Glory, glory, glory; the music of Orlando Lassus’s motet praises God, and this particular ‘glory’ does not exist in secular music. And not only glory . . . but prayer and penitence and many others cannot be secularized. The spirit disappears with the form. I am not comparing ‘emotional range’ or ‘variety’ in sacred and secular music. The music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—it is all secular—is ‘expressively’ and ‘emotionally’ beyond anything in the music of the earlier centuries: the Angst in Lulu, for instance (gory, gory, gory), or the tension, the perpetuation of the moment of epitasis, in Schoenberg’s music. I say, simply, that without the Church, ‘left to our own devices’, we are poorer by many musical forms.

I.S. . . . in music advance is only in the sense of developing the instrument of the language—we are able to do new things in rhythm, in sound, in structure. We claim greater concentration in certain ways and therefore contend that we have evolved, in this one sense, progressively. But a step in this evolution does not cancel the one before. Mondrian’s series of trees can be seen as a study of progress from the more resemblant to the more abstract; but no one would be so silly as to call any of the trees more or less beautiful than any other for the reason that it is more or less abstract.

[Jdamaskinos · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting interview-conversation held between Stravinsky and Kraft in the late 50's. It is fascinating to realise how rich a life Stravinsky lived just by making the acquaintance of so important and influential people including all the major composers, poets, painters of the first half of the 20th century and beyond. The reader can learn what Stravinsky thought about Richard Strauss's music, about his admiration for the atonalists, his views for Rodin, Monet and Modigliani and many others. Also, a part of his correspondence with Debussy, Ravel and the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas is published in this book. We can also learn what truly happened in the scandalous premiere of 'Le sacre du printemps' and the composer's view about Diaghilev. Finally, the connoisseurs will find a great deal of the composer's thoughts on 'technical' aspects of his art such as rhythm, tonality, tempo, dynamics, instrumentation, what genius in art consists of and musical education. The latter may make the reading of this book tedious for the non-experts, however, all interested in arts and music in particular will find loads of exciting views by this real pioneer of music in the 20th century.

[Keshav Kannan · Rating 5 out of 5]

testicular eggs:

R.C. You often speak of the weight of an interval. What do you mean?

I.S. I lack words and have no gift for this sort of thing anyway, but perhaps it will help if I say that when I compose an interval I am aware of it as an object (when I think about it in that way at all, that is), as something outside me, the contrary of an impression.

Let me tell you about a dream that came to me while I was composing Threni . . . After working late one night I retired to bed still troubled by an interval. I dreamed about this interval. It had become an elastic substance stretching exactly between the two notes I had composed, but underneath these notes at either end was an egg, a large testicular egg. The eggs were gelatinous to the touch (I touched them ) and warm, and they were protected by nests. I woke up knowing that my interval was right. ( For those who want more of the dream, it was pink— I often dream in color. Also, I was so surprised to see the eggs I immediately understood them to be symbols. Still in the dream, I went to my library of dictionaries and looked up "interval," but found only a confusing explanation which I checked the next morning in reality and found to be the same.)

rachmaninoff is afraid of showers:

Some people achieve a kind of immortality just by the totality with which they do or do not possess some quality or characteristic. Rachmaninov's immortalizing totality was his scowl. He was a six-and-a-half-foot-tall scowl.

I suppose my conversations with him, or rather with his wife, for he was always silent, were typical:

Mme. Rachmaninov: What is the first thing you do when you rise in the morning? (This could have been indiscreet, but not if you had seen how it was asked.)

Myself: For fifteen minutes I do exercises taught me by a Hungarian gymnast and Kneipp Kur maniac, or rather I did them until I learned that the Hungarian had died very young and very suddenly, then I stand on my head, then I take a shower.

Mme. Rachmaninov: You see, Serge, Stravinsky takes showers. How extraordinary. Do you still say you are afraid of them? And you heard Stravinsky say that he exercises? What do you think of that? Shame on you who will hardly take a walk.

Rachmaninov: (silence)

gay sex:

Ravel came to Clarens to live with me, and we worked together there in March-April 1913. At that same time also, I composed my Japanese Lyrics and Ravel his Trois Poemes de Mallarmé which I still prefer to any other music of his. I remember an excursion I made with Ravel from Clarens to Varese, near Lago Maggiore, to buy Varese paper. The town was very crowded and we could not find two hotel rooms or even two beds, so we slept together in one.

music of the future:

R.C. Will you make any prediction about the "music of the future ?

I.S. There may be add-a-part electronic sonatas, of course, and precomposed symphonies ("Symphonies for the Imagination"— you buy a tone row, complete with slide rules for duration, pitch, timbre, rhythm, and calculus tables to chart what happens in bar 12 or 73 or 200) , and certainly all music will be mood-classified (kaleidoscopic montages for contortuplicate personalities, simultaneous concerts binaurally disaligned to soothe both men in the schizophrenic, etc.), but mostly it will very much resemble "the music of the present": for the man in the satellite— super-hi-fi Rachmaninov.

[Renan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brief and niche booklet.

It reads like an interview, sometimes interspersed with letters received by Stravinsky, but it was clearly written, not spoken; so much so that when Stravinsky talks about music (part 1 and 4), it is hard to follow as a non-musician.

Part 2 is more of general interest and has the gossip one would want to give color to those stone-faced, black/white composers and characters. such as Diaghilev, Debussy ("I own him the most") and Ravel ("we slept on the same bed").

Quotes:

[Petr Šrajer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Robert Craft se ptá a Igor Stravinský vypráví. O sobě a své hudbě, ale hlavně o ostatních (především) umělcích, se kterými se v průběhu svého života setkal a se kterými spolupracoval. Muzikolog Robert Greenberg tvrdí, že Stravinský byl chodící "Who is Who" encyklopedie dvacátého století a kniha Conversations with Igor Stravinsky to potvrzuje.

Třešničkou na dortu je potom televizní záznam části jejich rozhovoru: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJIXo...

[Justin Chesarek · Rating 2 out of 5]

It’s a 140 page book that took two months to read. Stravinsky is difficult to follow on a lot of this. The questions are largely softball, but the answers are so dense and indirect most of the time. Unless you are a scholar of this sort of music, I’d pass on this one.

[Mansi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant, allows you to see inside the mind of one of the greatest composers of the 20th century. Lots of colorful detail.

[Lyle]

I can’t rate this a 5 with my multiple disagreements here and there with I.S., but this is a fascinating, honest as well as juicy and artistically incredibly enriching read.

[Igor Capelari · Rating 2 out of 5]

Stravinsky tem muita cultura, mas o livro não tem nada de muito interessante.

[Gijs Grob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Dit boekje bundelt twee boekjes: Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (1958) en Memories and Commentories (1959) en bestaat uit interviews van Robert Craft met Stravinsky in dialoogvorm, waarin Stravinsky babbelt over componeren, instrumentatie en hedendaagse muziek (Boulez, Stockhausen), maar waarin hij vooral herinneringen ophaalt aan andere beroemdheden als Nijinsky, Diaghilev, Debussy, Rimsky-Korsakov, Auden etc.

De toon is luchtiger dan in zijn autobiografie (An Autobiography) en hoewel Stravinsky zijn scherpe kritieken niet onder stoelen of banken steekt, heeft hij over elke beroemdheid ook wel wat goeds te zeggen. Daarmee ontstaan er opvallend meerkantige portretten van de mensen die hij gekend heeft. Bovendien is hij een goed anekdoteverteller, wat de herinneringen prettig leesvoer maakt.

Is het allemaal interessant? Ja en nee. Soms wordt het gezegde wel erg kras of juist erg niemendallerig. Maar omdat Stravinsky Stravinsky is en vanwege de goeie anekdoten is het een prettig kijkje in het 20ste eeuwse muziekleven en dat van hemzelf in het bijzonder.

Met brieven van vrienden als Nijinsky, Ravel, Prokofiev en De Falla.

[Gijs Grob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interviews met Stravinsky, vooral over andere beroemdheden. Bevat een grappige beschrijving van de futuristen en enkele lieve brieven van Debussy en Ravel.