Stravinsky
The Second Exile: France and America, 1934-1971
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
Packed with rich and fascinating detail, the third volume of the magisterial biography of Igor Stravinsky casts a brilliant new light on the greatest composer of the twentieth century. • “Among the best musical biographies of the last half-century, patiently disentangling fact and myth.” ―Minneapolis Star Tribune
This volume begins in 1934, when Stravinsky is fifty-two and living in France. Already regarded by many as the most important composer of his generation, Stravinsky is nevertheless at this point a fairly unhappy expatriate, all too aware of the war clouds beginning to gather. Though he still maintains a family life with his wife and children, much of his time is spent with his mistress, Vera Sudeykina, while traveling around Europe giving concerts in order to earn the money to support his dependents–which include a number of relatives. Composing, of course, remains the center of his existence. But changes are imminent: within only a few years his wife, Katya, will be dead, his family scattered, and Stravinsky himself, together with Vera, starting over again in America.
Stravinsky: The Second Exile follows the composer through the remainder of his long life, years during which he produces such masterworks as The Rake’s Progress and Symphony in C, and achieves a new level of fame as a conductor and raconteur in his own right. With a dazzling command of sources in several languages and a keen feeling for accuracy in situations where truth and falsehood have become blurred, Walsh traces and illuminates Stravinsky’s increasingly complex and often agonized family relationships along with his crucially important connection with his associate Robert Craft. Walsh is also, as a musicologist and critic, able to speak with knowledge and wit about Stravinsky’s work, expertly describing and assessing the composer’s musical journey from the neoclassicism of his late French and early American periods, through his early essays in serial technique, and on finally to the astonishing intricacies of his final compositions.
The first volume of this biography, Stravinsky: A Creative Spring, was received with glowing praise for its insight, narrative skills, and readability. The period covered here, beset as it is with myths and misconceptions, is handled with even greater authority.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In following Igor Stravinsky's journeys from Paris to America and from neoclassicism to serialism, critic and musicologist Walsh concludes his definitive two-volume account of the life of the most acclaimed composer of the 20th century. Details of the composition, performance, recording and reception of the works of this prolific period-neoclassical ones like Oedipus Rex, Orpheus and The Rake's Progress; serialist ones like The Flood, Agon and the Requiem Canticles-absorb the attention of both subject and author. Readers would benefit from some familiarity with Stravinsky's considerable oeuvre, as Walsh comments colorfully on the pieces, but he is mostly concerned with setting the record straight on dates, itineraries, motivations and who said what to whom. In doing so, he often takes issue with Robert Craft, Stravinsky's indispensable assistant, co-conductor and ghostwriter, whose published reminiscences have long stood as the most complete record of the composer's life. Walsh convincingly argues that Craft's intense personal involvement in Stravinsky's life-he describes their relationship as "a miniature ecosystem"-makes him a biased witness or imprecise observer, and Walsh's meticulous consideration makes for a valuable corrective. Amidst all the data, Walsh also demonstrates a gift for lively metaphor that brings his subject to life in flashes-a doer rather than a thinker, a composer devoted to the purity of his art and a perpetually surprising creative genius. Highly recommended. 16pp of halftones, not seen by PW.
