Igor Stravinsky (Critical Lives)

210 Pages·2015·5.815 MB·English

by  Jonathan Cross

Igor Stravinsky
Titles in the series Critical Lives present the work of leading cultural figures of the modern
period. Each book explores the life of the artist, writer, philosopher or architect in question
and relates it to their major works.
In the same series
Roland Barthes Andy Stafford Franz Kafka Sander L. Gilman
Georges Bataille Stuart Kendall Frida Kahlo Gannit Ankori
Charles Baudelaire Rosemary Lloyd Yves Klein Nuit Banai
Simone de Beauvoir Ursula Tidd Akira Kurosawa Peter Wild
Samuel Beckett Andrew Gibson Lenin Lars T. Lih
Walter Benjamin Esther Leslie Stéphane Mallarmé Roger Pearson
John Berger Andy Merrifield Gabriel García Márquez Stephen M. Hart
Jorge Luis Borges Jason Wilson Karl Marx Paul Thomas
Constantin Brancusi Sanda Miller Henry Miller David Stephen Calonne
Bertolt Brecht Philip Glahn Yukio Mishima Damian Flanagan
Charles Bukowski David Stephen Calonne Eadweard Muybridge Marta Braun
William S. Burroughs P hil Baker Vladimir Nabokov Barbara Wyllie
John Cage Rob Haskins Pablo Neruda Dominic Moran
Albert Camus Edward J. Hughes Georgia O’Keeffe Nancy J. Scott
Fidel Castro Nick Caistor Octavio Paz Nick Caistor
Coco Chanel Linda Simon Pablo Picasso Mary Ann Caws
Noam Chomsky Wolfgang B. Sperlich Edgar Allan PoeKevin J. Hayes
Jean Cocteau James S. Williams Ezra Pound Alec Marsh
Salvador Dalí Mary Ann Caws Marcel Proust Adam Watt
Guy Debord Andy Merrifield John Ruskin Andrew Ballantyne
Claude Debussy David J. Code Jean-Paul Sartre Andrew Leak
Fyodor Dostoevsky Robert Bird Erik Satie Mary E. Davis
Marcel Duchamp Caroline Cros Arthur Schopenhauer Peter B. Lewis
Sergei Eisenstein Mike O’Mahony Susan Sontag Jerome Boyd Maunsell
Michel Foucault David Macey Gertrude Stein Lucy Daniel
Mahatma Gandhi Douglas Allen Igor Stravinsky Jonathan Cross
Jean Genet Stephen Barber Leon Trotsky Paul Le Blanc
Allen Ginsberg Steve Finbow Richard Wagner Raymond Furness
Derek Jarman Michael Charlesworth Simone Weil Palle Yourgrau
Alfred Jarry Jill Fell Ludwig Wittgenstein Edward Kanterian
James Joyce Andrew Gibson Frank Lloyd Wright Robert McCarter
Carl Jung Paul Bishop
Igor Stravinsky
Jonathan Cross
reaktion books
In memoriam John Everill Cross (1930–2014)
Published by Reaktion Books Ltd
Unit 32,Waterside
33–48Wharf Road
London n1 7ux, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk
First published 2015
Copyright © Jonathan Cross 2015
All rights reserved
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission
of the publishers
Printed and bound in Great Britain
by Bell & Bain, Glasgow
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
isbn 978 1 78023 494 6
Contents
Preface: Finding Igor 7
Prelude: How Stravinsky Became ‘Stravinsky’ 11
1 A Son of St Petersburg 18
2 Russian Ballets 34
3 Portrait of a Scandal 48
4 A First Exile: Switzerland, War and Revolution 61
5 A Creative Epiphany: Paris Style and Neoclassicism 76
6 To the Glory of God 105
7 An Extraordinary Creative Partnership:
Stravinsky and Balanchine 119
8 Another War, Another Country 136
9 An Opera About Opera 146
10 A Crisis and a Way Forward 159
11 A Citizen of the Modern World 171
Postlude: Stravinsky Remains 187
References 193
Select Bibliography 201
Select Discography and Videography 204
Acknowledgements 206
Photo Acknowledgements 208
Igor Stravinsky,c. 1930.
Preface: Finding Igor
Think of a symbol of Russia, of the Russian folk. What first springs
to mind? Most likely a wooden doll, nested inside a number of
other wooden dolls of gradually increasing size, decorated as
a peasant girl or woman with black eyes and sharply etched
eyelashes, rosy red cheeks, and always wearing a headscarf and
apron emblazoned with bright flowers. This is , the
матрёшка
matryoshka. Matryona or Matriosha was a common peasant-girl’s
name. At the root of the word is the Latin mater, related to the
modern Russian words for mother, mat’, matushka. For the
Russian, then, the matryoshka is intimately linked to the image
of mother and motherhood, and thence to the notion of Russia
as motherland. Rooted in the skills and traditions of an ancient
people in touch with the earth, these little wooden dolls stand for
an enduring idea of Rus’. For the outsider, the matryoshka doll has
also often been read as a symbol of the inscrutable Russian mind:
in Winston Churchill’s famous phrase, uttered at the outbreak of
the Second World War, Russia ‘is a riddle wrapped in a mystery
inside an enigma’.
It is certainly true that there was a long tradition of wood-
working in Russia. One famous centre of folk art was the city of
Sergiev Posad, which lies about 70kilometres north of Moscow.
The ‘first Sergiev Posad toy was made in the 13th century by St
Sergius of Radonezh . . . [The] tsar’s children received toys from
Sergiev Posad as early as 1628. . . [and by] 1880, there were 322
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toy workshops in Sergiev Posad’.1But no matryoshki. The matryoshka
doll as it is now known first appeared in Sergiev Posad only in
1899.2The idea for a nested doll actually came from aJapanese
import. It is generally accepted that the first Russian matryoshka
doll was made and painted in the Abramtsevo workshop, an artists’
colony founded on an estate just outside Sergiev Posad by the
wealthy railway magnate Savva Mamontov and his wife Elizaveta.
Abramtsevo became a crucible for art, for opera, and for the
encouragement of a neo-nationalist Russian aesthetic. The
matryoshka, though rooted in peasant crafts, was born of both an
aristocratic and a modern desire to preserve a rapidly vanishing
past and to sell this idea of Russia to a wider public. The doll
became an object of international desire when, in 1900, an
example was exhibited at the Exposition Universelle in Paris
alongside other Russian folk art. It won an award, and the orders
soon started to flood in, keeping generations of Russian artisans
in employment. One travelling Russian who was at the exhibition,
and who saw the doll there, was a man by the name of Sergey
Diaghilev. It prompted him to think that this enthusiasm in Paris
for the import of iconic Russian objects might extend beyond
mass-produced wooden figurines.
So, it turns out that what in the West has come to be identified
with an authentic expression of the ancient Russian folk spirit is
in fact an invention prompted by those potent twins of modernity:
nostalgia and commerce.
In 1898, just a year before the matryoshka, a group of well-to-do
young St Petersburg artists and thinkers, under the leadership of
Diaghilev, made a dramatic public debut under the banner of Mir
iskusstva, the ‘World of Art’, a journal and movement devoted to
the radical presentation of a neo-Russian art derived from folk
traditions. Some of them had even had contact with Abramtsevo.
Their influence on the early Igor Stravinsky was to prove decisive.
Within just one decade, Stravinsky and his collaborators had taken
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