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Stravinsky: The Second Exile: France and America, 1934-1971 Hardcover – Deckle Edge, April 25, 2006

by Stephen Walsh (Author)

7 customer reviews

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This, the second and final volume of Stephen Walsh’s magisterial biography of Igor Stravinsky, begins in 1934, when Stravinsky is fifty-two and living in France. Already regarded by many as the most important composer of his generation, Stravinsky is nevertheless at this point a fairly unhappy expatriate, all too aware of the war clouds beginning to gather. Though he still maintains a family life with his wife and children, much of his time is spent with his mistress, Vera Sudeykina, while traveling around Europe giving concerts in order to earn the money to support his dependents–which include a number of relatives. Composing, of course, remains the center of his existence. But changes are imminent: within only a few years his wife, Katya, will be dead, his family scattered, and Stravinsky himself, together with Vera, starting over again in America.

Stravinsky: The Second Exile follows the composer through the remainder of his long life, years during which he produces such masterworks as The Rake’s Progress and Symphony in C, and achieves a new level of fame as a conductor and raconteur in his own right. With a dazzling command of sources in several languages and a keen feeling for accuracy in situations where truth and falsehood have become blurred, Walsh traces and illuminates Stravinsky’s increasingly complex and often agonized family relationships along with his crucially important connection with his associate Robert Craft. Walsh is also, as a musicologist and critic, able to speak with knowledge and wit about Stravinsky’s work, expertly describing and assessing the composer’s musical journey from the neoclassicism of his late French and early American periods, through his early essays in serial technique, and on finally to the astonishing intricacies of his final compositions.

The first volume of this biography, Stravinsky: A Creative Spring, was received with glowing praise for its insight, narrative skills, and readability. The period covered here, beset as it is with myths and misconceptions, is handled with even greater authority.
Carefully weighed, eloquent, packed with rich and fascinating detail, it casts a brilliant new light on one of the greatest artists of our time.

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In following Igor Stravinsky's journeys from Paris to America and from neoclassicism to serialism, critic and musicologist Walsh concludes his definitive two-volume account of the life of the most acclaimed composer of the 20th century. Details of the composition, performance, recording and reception of the works of this prolific period-neoclassical ones like Oedipus Rex, Orpheus and The Rake's Progress; serialist ones like The Flood, Agon and the Requiem Canticles-absorb the attention of both subject and author. Readers would benefit from some familiarity with Stravinsky's considerable oeuvre, as Walsh comments colorfully on the pieces, but he is mostly concerned with setting the record straight on dates, itineraries, motivations and who said what to whom. In doing so, he often takes issue with Robert Craft, Stravinsky's indispensable assistant, co-conductor and ghostwriter, whose published reminiscences have long stood as the most complete record of the composer's life. Walsh convincingly argues that Craft's intense personal involvement in Stravinsky's life-he describes their relationship as "a miniature ecosystem"-makes him a biased witness or imprecise observer, and Walsh's meticulous consideration makes for a valuable corrective. Amidst all the data, Walsh also demonstrates a gift for lively metaphor that brings his subject to life in flashes-a doer rather than a thinker, a composer devoted to the purity of his art and a perpetually surprising creative genius. Highly recommended. 16pp of halftones, not seen by PW.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The New Yorker

The second volume of Walsh's remarkably thorough two-part biography begins with Stravinsky arriving in Americahis European roots severed by the Second World War and the deaths of his mother, his wife, and his elder daughterbringing with him a longtime mistress and a neoclassical style that soon goes out of fashion. The story gathers strength with the entry, in the late nineteen-forties, of Robert Craft, a young conductor of overpowering ambition. Craft made Stravinsky's later works possible, patiently introducing him to twelve-tone music, and eventually became such an intimate that a breach with Stravinsky's children was inevitable. Negotiating the ensuing web of lawsuits, wounded egos, and tax-avoidance schemes, Walsh, an academic musicologist who writes with the verve of a first-rate critic, never loses sight of the incandescent figure at its center, a man whose supposedly inexpressive music became "the best response to those terrifying years that brought it into being."
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker

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Product details

Hardcover: 720 pages
Publisher: Knopf; First edition (April 25, 2006)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0375407529
ISBN-13: 978-0375407529
Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 1.8 x 9.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 7 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #206,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #54 in Books > Arts & Photography > Music > Biographies > Classical
- #592 in Books > Arts & Photography > Music > Musical Genres > Classical
- #1844 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Arts & Literature > Actors & Entertainers

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cruisewhiz

A fascinating life from another point of view

August 28, 2015

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I just started the book but I am already very involved. I have read the Robert Craft books as well and this add another point of view to the life of Stravinsky. I started with this book which chronicles the second half to the Maestro's life as I seem to be more interest in that. I saw Stravinsky conduct at the Hollywood Bowl when I was young and was so interested in him that I drove up the Sunset Strip to see where he lived on Weatherly Drive. I have loved his music (and not just the well known works) all my life and have no intention of ever stopping studying his works.

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Eric Cooper

Five Stars

April 19, 2015

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An amazing vision of Igor Stravinsky's like and work.

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La BugZ

The apex of the biographer's art

July 5, 2006

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unless Mr. Walsh prefers 'musicologist' to 'biographer'. When I finished volume II, I immediately went and bought volume I. I rated the book 5 stars but wish I could give it 6. As a retired music librarian, I am cautious in following the hype about any new book on music/musicians/musicology that is making the rounds and more often than not, while the reviews may be accurate, regrettably, there are times they're not accurate enough. I think Mr. Walsh's two volumes are stunning. I think they are so good that once started, one wants to do nothing but sit and read them.

The period and the musical life out of which Stravinsky emerged is not unknown to me and I think the deepest connection I developed with Stravinsky's music was when I played in a performance of Symphony of Psalms. Whether or not I walked away humming portions of it (which is unlikely since I cannot sing), the music has left, to use a trite phrase, an indelible mark on both my musical and cultural psyche, but so has the personality of Stravinsky himself. And Mr. Walsh does an incredibly job of making him breathe. It isn't just Stravinsky who breathes in the course of reading this book (I haven't finished Volume I) but the words and the events and the people take on a life that is far more than facts as accurate as they might be.

I cannot recommend these two volumes highly enough and I only wish it was possible for Mr. Walsh to write a third.

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Detailed, but, thankfully, not exhaustive.

April 20, 2009

I normally HATE this type of bio. Most composers lead pretty dull lives. If you were to make a truthful movie of one, you'd have long stretches of Our Hero scratching on a piece of paper. In other words, it's not the life itself that's interesting, but the work that life produced. Of course Stravinsky's life lacks the excitement of Rite of Spring or Oedipus Rex or Agon. I can't think of any life that measures up. But Stravinsky was a more interesting personality than most, especially in light of the music he produced and the contradictory things he said about it. Without quite uncovering the mystery of genius, Walsh nevertheless manages to keep our attention and build suspense, mostly through explicating the course of the composer's life and offering shrewd guesses into the composer's character. I happen to love almost everything Stravinsky wrote, so naturally I'm interested in the man. However, Stravinsky's family and personal relations are so tangled that I'm confident this book would appeal to those who can leave the work alone. Even so, Walsh provides valuable "bird's-eye" insights into several major scores.

A fine historian, Walsh scrupulously separates fact from the notoriously wishful thinking of Craft's accounts. Of course, Craft becomes the second major player in the narrative. Walsh isn't interested in bashing Craft and in several places vigorously defends him against the charges of careerism and Svengali-ism. On the other hand, he doesn't overlook Craft's flaws. Walsh tends to see neither gods nor demons, but people. He also has the gift of tying often-mundane facts into a compelling story and of bright, elegant prose. I can't praise this book (and its predecessor) highly enough.

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Exhaustive Biography of Stravinsky from 1934 to His Death

May 11, 2006

Following up the wonderful first volume of his biography of Stravinsky, Cardiff University musicologist Stephen Walsh gives us a second and final volume that begins in 1934 and ends with Stravinsky's death in 1971. This takes us through the unsettled 1930s, his emigration to America and then the final years with his conversion to ultra-modern techniques. It would appear that Walsh has read and digested everything written about the composer during the times in question, and he has interviewed many people who knew and worked with him. At times the narrative is weighted down by 'and then he conducted X in Y' but his always graceful, indeed beautiful, prose makes even those laundry list sections interesting reading. There is some attention paid to the ins and outs of the works themselves but this does not pretend to be an analysis of Stravinsky's oeuvre; Walsh has already written such a book, the exceedingly valuable 'The Music of Stravinsky.'

There is, of course, a good deal of mention of that most important of late Stravinsky associates, Robert Craft, who has himself written extensively about the composer. There are some disagreements with Craft's published statements, but less than one might imagine and it is done with evenhandedness and tact. Nonetheless, he indicates that Craft's personal involvement with Stravinsky led to some imprecision in his observations and assessments.

For those who have read the earlier volume this is a must-have. For those who are tempted to get this volume without having read the earlier one, I'd suggest some caution. In the present volume there are many references to incidents and people whose importance is unexplained and which can only be gleaned from having first read the earlier volume, 'A Creative Spring.' But taken together these two volumes are indispensable for anyone wanting to understand Stravinsky the man.

Scott Morrison

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