| Abstract |
This book takes us chronologically through the whole of Stravinsky's life, analyzing the less familiar works as well as the famous masterpieces, challenging many widely held beliefs about Stravinsky's music. The author covers Stravinsky's entire career: his early life in Russia, his years in France, the coming war and his escape to America, his marriages, his passions and his prejudices. Many first-person accounts throughout the book provide rare glimpses of Stravinsky--in his friendships with T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley and Nabokov, for example, and in his collaborations with Picasso, Auden, Cocteau and others. We also learn how this musician, whose career was so much the product of the upheavals of our century, found encouragement for his art in America, where he influenced the work of many creative artists, where he was honored by leading figures, including President Kennedy, and where the public took him to its heart. |
