May 31st 2013

Stravinsky Crafted Once Again

by Michael Johnson

Michael Johnson is a music critic with particular interest in piano. 

Johnson worked as a reporter and editor in New York, Moscow, Paris and London over his journalism career. He covered European technology for Business Week for five years, and served nine years as chief editor of International Management magazine and was chief editor of the French technology weekly 01 Informatique. He also spent four years as Moscow correspondent of The Associated Press. He is the author of five books.

Michael Johnson is based in Bordeaux. Besides English and French he is also fluent in Russian.

You can order Michael Johnson's most recent book, a bilingual book, French and English, with drawings by Johnson:

“Portraitures and caricatures:  Conductors, Pianist, Composers”

 here.

Robert Craft knew from an early age that his considerable musical gifts would never be quite enough to make him a great composer, conductor or performer. He decided that instead he would attach himself, Boswell style, to a great musician and chronicle the creative process of a truly monumental personage. 

We are all fortunate that he chose Igor Stravinsky as his subject.

Craft describes the moment lightning struck: ”On April 7 1940 I heard a live broadcast of Stravinsky conducting The Rite of Spring with the New York Philharmonic in Carnegie Hall and resolved to dedicate my life to music, particularly his.” 

Craft and Stravinsky made an odd couple in the contemporary arts world for more than 20 years, Craft with his clean-cut, horn-rimmed good looks and the diminutive Stravinsky trotting alongside, becoming more troll-like with each passing year. They lived closely together, sometimes under the same roof, as Craft collaborated with, nudged and protected the awkward Russian genius. Stravinsky’s wives and children came and went.

Stravinsky, who died in 1971 at the age of 88, is acknowledged as probably the greatest composer of the 20th century and even today remains one of the most intensely studied individuals by music academics. The history of music contains no equivalent creative surge to match Stravinsky’s output from age 27 to 29, during which he produced The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring. He of course went on to experiment in new, untested areas of composition, rarely stopping to try to please the public. 

Craft’s contributions to these studies have been enormously valuable, despite years of sniping by rival music writers and Stravinsky specialists.  He is accused of “crafting” Stravinsky’s image and protecting him from others while molding some material in a self-aggrandizing fashion. One professor called him a “spin-doctor”.

Beyond dispute is the fact that Craft’s several Stravinsky books, including his volumes of conversations, have offered unique glimpses into his subject’s work methods, intellectual life and musical mind. No other composer in the history of music has allowed such intimate scrutiny of his private and public habits. 

Considering Craft’s long history of Stravinsky-watching, and the abundant biographies and analyses by others, I wondered what might be left to say that hasn’t already been said in some related form.

But now in his 90th year, Craft has done it again. His latest book, Stravinsky: Discoveries and Memories, (Naxos Books, $19.99) perhaps his last, is timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the premiere of The Rite of Spring, acknowledged today as the turning point in mainstream composition. The book comes from the relatively modest Naxos book publishing arm and includes a CD of The Rite of Spring conducted by Craft. 

The book is a delightfully fresh and witty collection of personal memories and an unapologetic love letter to his subject. He seems to have swept up all his unused memories, many of them delicious, and packaged them for our pleasure.

The author championed the composer when the music establishment still held back. The shocking Stravinsky harmonies and rhythms would change serious music forever but no one knew that in 1913, or even in the 1940s when these two men became associated.  Craft won a scholarship to the Juilliard School in New York but found the atmosphere rooted in the past. “It proved disappointing,” he writes. “Stravinsky was ignored as well as despised as an iconoclast, which redoubled my passion for his music.” 

They made their first connection out of pure chance – a connection that worked because Stravinsky had a superstitious streak. Craft needed the score of Symphonies of Wind Instruments, and his request, addressed directly to the composer, arrived by mail on the day Stravinsky was beginning a revision of the work. To the spiritual-minded Stravinsky, this was a sign.

In short order, Craft was at Stravinsky’s side and a deep and productive friendship had begun. Recalling this convergence, Craft writes, still in disbelief, that “a twenty-three-year-old rustic with a nervous-wreck temperament” ended up sharing the podium with the “world’s most eminent composer-conductor”. 

Craft and Stravinsky developed a mutual dependency but Craft considers himself the lucky one. “I felt as if all my years of formal education were not worth one hour of this man’s company,” he writes, “since everything he said was filtered through one of the most acute sensibilities of the century.”

Craft’s wide-ranging memory, stimulated by his private archives, offers a casual history of the arts in the 20th century as told through the eyes of a premier participant. Anecdotes bring together their central character with Schoenberg, Diaghilev, Nijinski, Webern, Balanchine, Thomas Mann, Picasso, Dali, T.S Eliot, Aldous Huxley, Babbitt, Cage, Carter and Sessions, to name a few. 

The book happened almost by accident. As his publisher told me in an email: “He was going through his archives and came across new material -- material he hadn’t considered for a very long time, which spurred him on to write the book.”

Some of the material may have been held back to observe old standards of propriety now long gone. Stravinsky’s intense physical association with Belgian composer Maurice Delage, which led to three weeks at the Delage gay agapemone (love-cottage) near Paris with the “notoriously homosexual” Russian Prince Argutinsky, whose letters are still in private hands. Craft notes that Stravinsky later sent Delage a nude photograph “with a prominent upwardly mobile nozzle”. Elsewhere, Ravel is described attending a gay evening dressed in a tutu. 

Craft uncovers one love letter written to Delage during The Rite of Spring composition. Craft calls it a “bombshell” because The Rite is “widely regarded as the epitome of masculinity”.

Glimpses of the great man in creative mode are particularly vivid.  “The act of creation was so strenuous that he immediately began to perspire and, discarding his shirt, continually mopped his head and neck with towels. His facial expression during struggles with harmonic combinations could be painful to watch but when he had found one that satisfied him, he smiled radiantly.” This could take long hours of patience but as he told Craft, “I can wait as an insect can wait.”

Craft’s usefulness as a source of Stravinsky material led him to bridle at other writers who borrowed too freely. Exasperated at Stephen Walsh’s Stravinsky: The Second Exile, Craft complained to the New York Review of Books that his work was being unfairly recycled. “As in his Volume I,” Craft wrote, “the pilfering from my work continues, most often distorted to the point of changing the meanings, sometimes with verbatim quoting, and always without acknowledgement.” 

The debate around the reliability of Craft’s work may continue long into the future but the essential corpus of material he produced will always be an indispensable sourcebook of the great man’s life.

 

Related article - please click the title to proceed:

Bostonians find catharsis in Stravinsky

by Michael JohnsonAdded 29.04.2013
BOSTON -- It was supposed to be a festive occasion – the arrival of spring and the centennial of the premiere – but dark undercurrents from the Boston Marathon bombings dominated a recent performance of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring by...



 


This article is brought to you by the author who owns the copyright to the text.

Should you want to support the author’s creative work you can use the PayPal “Donate” button below.

Your donation is a transaction between you and the author. The proceeds go directly to the author’s PayPal account in full less PayPal’s commission.

Facts & Arts neither receives information about you, nor of your donation, nor does Facts & Arts receive a commission.

Facts & Arts does not pay the author, nor takes paid by the author, for the posting of the author's material on Facts & Arts. Facts & Arts finances its operations by selling advertising space.

 

 

Browse articles by author

More Essays

Mar 17th 2023
EXTRACTS: "The intensifying concentration of wealth, and unjustifiable level of income inequality is proving disastrous in many ways. Here are just a few of them. First, less equal societies typically have more unstable economies, and this country is no exception." --- "Second, there is an incontrovertible link between economic inequality and violent crime. The fact is that rates of violence are higher in more unequal societies." --- "Third, the undeniable fact is that the greater the economic inequality that exists, the worse it is for general health outcomes. What is sometimes overlooked is that income inequality is bad for health outcomes across economic strata, not just for those in poverty. To be sure, poor health and poverty are closely linked; but the epidemiological research shows that high levels of economic inequality “negatively affect the health of even the affluent, mainly because… inequality reduces social cohesion, a dynamic that leads to more stress, fear, and insecurity for everyone.” People live longer in countries with lower levels of inequality, as the World Bank reports. In the United States, for example, “average life expectancy is four years shorter than in some of the most equitable countries.” "
Mar 10th 2023
EDITOR: "Quantum mechanics, the theory which rules the microworld of atoms and particles, certainly has the X factor. Unlike many other areas of physics, it is bizarre and counter-intuitive, which makes it dazzling and intriguing. When the 2022 Nobel prize in physics was awarded to Alain Aspect, John Clauser and Anton Zeilinger for research shedding light on quantum mechanics, it sparked excitement and discussion. But debates about quantum mechanics – be they on chat forums, in the media or in science fiction – can often get muddled thanks to a number of persistent myths and misconceptions. Here are four."
Mar 7th 2023
EXTRACT: "....the destructive logic of the false dualism of man and nature continues to threaten our civilization. The new Enlightenment would overcome this dualistic perspective, by bringing about a deep reconsideration of our moral duties to animals and future generations, and transforming how we inhabit the Earth. Instead of thinking of ourselves as separate from nature, we must recognize that we are embedded in it, and that even our most mundane actions have far-reaching consequences."
Feb 28th 2023
EXTRACT: " It has now been a year since Russia, my birthplace, invaded Ukraine. For 365 days, we have been waking up to news of Russian missile strikes, bombings, murders, torture, and rape. It has been 365 days of shame and confusion, of wanting to turn away but needing to know what is happening, of watching Russians become “ruscists,” “Orks,” or “putinoids.” For 365 days, the designation “Russian-American,” previously straightforward, has felt like a contradiction in terms. For those in my situation, some methods of adapting to the new circumstances have come easier than others. Russian books still crowd my bookcase, but I no longer have any wish to re-read them. Chekhov and Nabokov cannot be blamed for the aggression against Ukraine, but it nonetheless has stolen their magic and their capacity to teach. These authors were my friends, as were the old-country rituals like Russian Easter vigils and New Year’s screenings of the Soviet classic Irony of Fate. I feel the loss acutely, but perhaps it is for the better. It helps me concentrate on the present."
Feb 18th 2023
EXTRACTS: "Like the United States, France has gained strength through immigration, a fact often overlooked by opponents of open borders. Science, industry and the arts have clearly benefitted. And I found the local color in the population to be a rich source for artwork."
Feb 17th 2023
EXTRACT: "Insects are by far the most numerous of all animals on Earth. The estimated global total of new insect material that grows each year is an astonishing 1,500 million tonnes. Most of this is immediately consumed by an upward food chain of predators and parasites, so that the towering superstructure of all the Earth’s animal diversity is built on a foundation of insects and their arthropod relatives. ---- If insects decline, then other wild animals must inevitably decline too."
Feb 14th 2023
EXTRACT: "When Bob Dylan and the Beatles were creating a conceptual revolution in popular music, producing works that were highly personal, obscure, and often incomprehensible to listeners, Bacharach was the greatest composer who continued the experimental tradition of Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, and the other giants of the Golden Age."
Feb 7th 2023
EXTRACT: "Many of Hopper’s most famous works – Nighthawks (1942), for example (not in the exhibition) – have become so ubiquitous that we are in danger of no longer being able to see them. The corrective for this over-exposure is to engage with the artist’s less familiar work; that is, to come to the artist through another portal – obliquely, if you will – and thereby trace a new path into the world that his oeuvre represents. Hopper observed, “I think I’m not very human, I didn’t want to paint people posturing and grimacing. What I wanted to do was to paint sunlight on the side of a house.” It is as telling a description as any of Hopper’s painterly fascination with New York City."
Feb 3rd 2023
EXTRACT: "The built environment we inhabit is just the residue of a much greater imaginative world that never saw the light of day, evoking what might have been or still could be..."
Jan 18th 2023
EXTRACT: "In 2018, former US president Bill Clinton coauthored a novel with James Patterson, the world’s bestselling author. The President is Missing is a typical “Patterson”: a page-turner of a thriller, easy to read, with short chapters and large font. Patterson is accustomed to collaborative writing ..... He is as much a producer as he is a writer, using a string of junior collaborators to run his factory of novels. Patterson outlines the plot, the coauthors write the story, Patterson offers feedback. While he doesn’t seem to do much writing himself, it is a system that has made Patterson a rich man."
Jan 14th 2023
EXTRACT: "With hindsight, 2022 will be seen as the year when artificial intelligence gained street credibility. The release of ChatGPT by the San Francisco-based research laboratory OpenAI garnered great attention and raised even greater questions.  In just its first week, ChatGPT attracted more than a million users and was used to write computer programs, compose music, play games, and take the bar exam. Students discovered that it could write serviceable essays worthy of a B grade – as did teachers, albeit more slowly and to their considerable dismay."
Jan 14th 2023
EXTRACT: "The thought of her, as always, gave me a jolt of hope, and a burst of energy. And a stab of sorrow."
Jan 14th 2023
EXTRACT: ".....if academic discourse and campus debate are shut down every time a person feels offended, how can universities possibly examine controversial topics? Without intellectual freedom – one of the great achievements of American civilization – they can’t."
Jan 5th 2023
EXTRACTS: "London's Tate Britain and Paris' Petit Palais have collaborated to produce a wonderful retrospective exhibition of the art of Walter Sickert (1860-1942).  The show is both beautiful and fascinating. ----- Virginia Woolf loved Sickert's art, and it is not difficult to see why, because his painting, like her writing, was always about intimate views of incidents, or casual portraits in which individual sitters momentarily revealed their personalities.  ------ Sickert's art never gained the status of that of Whistler or Degas, perhaps because it was too derivative of those masters.  But he was an important link between those great experimental painters and the art of Lucian Freud, Francis Bacon, Frank Auerbach, ...."
Dec 5th 2022
EXTRACT: "One of the great paradoxes of human endeavour is why so much time and effort is spent on creating things and indulging in behaviour with no obvious survival value – behaviour otherwise known as art. Attempting to shed light on this issue is problematic because first we must define precisely what art is. We can start by looking at how art, or the arts, were practised by early humans during the Upper Palaeolithic period, 40,000 to 12,000 years ago, and immediately thereafter."
Dec 3rd 2022
EXTRACTS: "As a portrait artist, I am an amateur at this compared to the technology gurus and psychologists who study facial recognition seriously. Their aplications range from law enforcement to immigration control to ethnic groupings to the search through a crowd to find someone we know. ---- In my amateur artistic way, I prefer to count on intuition to find facial clues to a subject’s personality before sitting down at the drawing board. I never use the latest software to grapple with this dizzying variety.
Dec 1st 2022
EXTRACT: "In the exhibition catalog Lisane Basquiat writes: 'What is important for everyone to understand… is that he was a son, and a brother, and a grandson, and a nephew, and a cousin, and a friend. He was all of that in addition to being a groundbreaking artist.' "
Nov 24th 2022
"The art of kintsugi is inextricably linked to the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi: a worldview centred on the acceptance of transience, imperfection and the beauty found in simplicity.....nothing stays the same forever." --- "The philosophy of kintsugi, as an approach to life, can help encourage us when we face failure. We can try to pick up the pieces, and if we manage to do that we can put them back together. The result might not seem beautiful straight away but as wabi-sabi teaches, as time passes, we may be able to appreciate the beauty of those imperfections."
Oct 25th 2022
EXTRACT: "The prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, was quick to congratulate Sunak, referring to him as “the ‘living bridge’ of UK Indians”. In the difficult waters of British and indeed international politics, all eyes will be watching to see how well the bridge stands."
Oct 5th 2022
EXTRACTS: "In the Guardian, Peter Bradshaw eulogized Jean-Luc Godard as 'a genius who tore up the rule book without troubling to read it.' This is a fundamental misunderstanding." ----- " As had been true for Picasso - and Eliot, Joyce, Dylan, and Lennon - it was Godard's mastery of the rules of his discipline that made his violation of those rules so exciting to young artists, and his work so influential.  But perhaps these innovators' mastery of the rules can only be seen by those who themselves understand the rules."