"This initial selection from the extraordinary lifetime of letters to and from Igor Stravinsky, annotated by his friend and associate Robert Craft, includes correspondence with W. H. Auden, Jean Cocteau, Lincoln Kirstein and other friends, as well as Stravinsky's letters to Nadia Boulanger, Ernest Ansermet, and Craft himself. The book presents a wealth of previously unpublished information about Stravinsky's relationships with other musicians, and about his methods of composition. The opening section, based on letters to Stravinsky from his first wife Catherine, is among the most important material yet made available for an understanding of the composer's personal and family life. If the exchanges with Auden (The Rake's Progress) and Cocteau (Oedipus Rex) take first place for general interest, the letters to Ansermet - who conducted more performances of Stravinsky's music than anyone but the composer himself - give a remarkable view of the musical and ballet worlds, especially of the Diaghilev period, and of the great impresario himself. This book, accompanied by two further volumes, is a major contribution to the Stravinsky canon and to the cultural history of the twentieth century."--whsmith.co.uk.

Published for the first time: a rich epistolary dialogue revealing one master teacher's power to shape the cultural canon and one great composer's desire to embed himself within historical narratives.

Through letters to and from Stravinsky--in all periods of his life--the book reveals the complexity, brilliance, and sharp edge of his mind, as well as the idiosyncrasies of his character. Like Stravinsky's life, the volume is divided into three sections: the Russian and Swiss years, the two decades in France between the World Wars, and the final thirty-two years in America. A fourth part, the Appendixes, contains supplementary essays concerning various aspects of Le Sacre Printemps as well as of the composer's life and work that were too detailed to be included in the main text, and finally a critical bibliography of studies of Stravinsky published since his death. Part One includes a large number of Stravinsky's letters (previously unpublished) to his parents; his teacher, Rimsky-Korsakov; his composer colleagues in Russia and France; and the Ballets Russes impresario, Serge Diaghilev.