Stravinsky

The illustrated lives of the great composers.

Perhaps the most influencial figure in the musical life of the Twentieth Century, Igor Stravinsky was also one of its most controversial.
Catapulted to international fame by his ballet "The Firebird" at the age of twenty-eight, he went on to produce a series of theatre, choral, orchestral and instrumental works which changed the direction of contemporary music. From the riots which greeted the first performance of "The Rite of Spring" in Paris in 1913 to the chorus of bewilderment and anger with which his last great serial works were received in the 1950s and 1960s, Stravinsky continued to confound and astonish by his capacity for self-renewal, remaining constantly one step ahead of critics and supporters alike. An exile from Russia of his birth, first in Europe and later in Hollywood, he counted among his friends a glittering cross-section of the century's social and cultural elite, from Diaghilev and Cocteau to Auden and Picasso, from Chaplin and Hitchcock to the old aristocracy of Europe.

CONTENIDO:

Preface
1. Early life (1882-1902)
2. The years of apprenticeship (1903-1909)
3. Celebrity (1910-1914)
4. The loss of Russia (1914-1920)
5. Art and profession (1920-1927)
6. Towards America (1927-1939)
7. A double emigré (1939-1945)
8. The American citizen (1946-1951)
9. The second crisis (1952-1957)
10. The final flowering (1957-1966)
11. The last years (1967-1971)
Further Reading
Stravinsky's recordings of Stravinsky