Description
Book SynopsisStravinsky in the Americas explores the pre-Craft period of Igor Stravinsky's life, from when he first landed on American shores in 1925 to the end of World War II in 1945. Through a rich archival trove of ephemera, correspondence, photographs, and other documents, eminent musicologist H. Colin Slim examines the twenty-year period that began with Stravinsky as a radical European art-music composer and ended with him as a popular figure in American culture. This collection traces Stravinsky's rise to famecatapulted in large part by his collaborations with Hollywood and Disney and marked by his extra-marital affairs, his grappling with feelings of anti-Semitism, and his encounters with contemporary musicians as the music industry was emerging and taking shape in midcentury America. Slim's lively narrative records the composer's larger-than-life persona through a close look at his transatlantic tours and domestic excursions, where Stravinsky's personal and professional life collided in often-dramatic ways.
Trade Review"This meticulously documented book sheds new light on the first two decades of Stravinsky's association with America, from the time of his first concert tour in 1925 to the premiere of the Symphony in Three Movements at Carnegie Hall in Janunary 1946. . . . This is not only a book to delight lovers of Stravinskian minutiae but also one that provides a richly documented study of a period in Stravinsky's life that has received relatively little attention." * Gramophone *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Foreword by Richard Taruskin
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I: FIVE TRANSATLANTIC TOURS (1925–1940)
1. Tour I (1925)
2. Tour II (1935)
3. Tour III (1936)
4. Tour IV (1937)
5. Tour V (October 1939–Late May 1940)
PART II: DOMESTIC EXCURSIONS FROM WARTIME
LOS ANGELES (1940–1946)
6. Excursions (1940–1941)
7. Excursions (1942)
8. Excursions (1943)
9. Excursions (1944)
10. Excursions (1945–Early 1946)
Appendix: Stravinsky and “Neoclassicism”
Notes
Bibliography
Index
