Fondation Igor Stravinsky - The American period: 1939

In September 1939, Igor Stravinsky left Europe for the United States to ensure a cycle of lectures at Harvard University. These lectures were subsequently published in a book entitled "Poétique Musicale" (1942), translated into English as "Poetics of Music" (1947).

Stravinsky’s home - Hollywood *

America welcomed the composer as a prestigious guest. With demands on his time from all sides, Stravinsky decided to settle on the new continent. He wrote, directed, recorded and lectured incessantly and continued to create performances worldwide. At the beginning of 1940, he married his second wife, Vera de Bosset. Stravinsky and his new wife moved to Beverly Hills, then bought a house in Hollywood, a home where Stravinsky would remain for a long period of his life. In December 1945, he obtained U.S. citizenship.

Los Angeles, during the war, had a rich cultural life with many expatriate artists and intellectuals settled there. Stravinsky built a new circle of friends. He enjoyed, among others, the company of such English writers as Aldous Huxley and W.H. Auden, with whom he later collaborated, as well as the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. The post-war years were serene for Stravinsky who now enjoyed good health and was free of financial worries.

Arriving in the United States, Stravinsky had already begun his t (Symphonie en Ut), completed in 1940. Produced by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, it is his most important symphonic work. His first American composition was Tango (1940), inspired by his trips to Mexico. In 1941, his arrangement of the American national anthem, The Star Spangled Banner, for mixed choir and orchestra led to his arrest during its performance in Boston. Stravinsky had inadvertently violated a federal law that prohibits changing the national anthem.

Thanks to his satisfactory working conditions, Stravinsky was able to fulfill many requests. Among the most important works produced were Danses Concertantes for chamber orchestra (1942), choreographed by George Balanchine, and Scenes de Ballet for orchestra (1944), intended for a Broadway revue entitled "The Seven Lively Arts."

Igor Stravinsky in his study - Hollywood

Stravinsky was also invited by a Hollywood impresario to work on a collective project, Genesis, for which he composed the cantata Babel (1944). Stravinsky simultaneously wrote a charming work, his Sonata for Two Pianos and Ode, an elegy dedicated to the wife of the famous conductor Koussevitzsky, founder of the “Russian Music Editions” which published most of Stravinsky’s early works. Stravinsky had grown more interested in jazz, composing Scherzo à la Russe for Jazz Ensemble in 1944 and, the following year, Ebony Concerto, a unique piece for the Woody Herman jazz orchestra. The year 1945 also saw the birth of one of his masterpieces, the monumental Symphony in Three Movements, dubbed by some the "War Symphony" in that Stravinsky was deeply moved by the events of World War II.

The Swiss conductor Paul Sacher commissioned a piece for string orchestra to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Basel Chamber Orchestra. In 1946, Stravinsky delivered a rather "neo-classical" composition, Concerto in D (Concerto en Ré). Jerome Robbins would later use this very accessible work for his ballet "The Cage". In 1947, Stravinsky published a new version of Petrushka, after that of the Firebird. Taking advantage of his American citizenship to protect his copyright, he revised several of his earlier works : Symphony of Wind Instruments, Apollo, Oedipus Rex, Symphony of Psalms, Pulcinella Suite, Divertimento, Capriccio, Persephone, Piano Concerto, Fairy Kiss, Octet and the Nightingale.

Still inspired by Greece, Igor Stravinsky wrote Orpheus in 1947, a new ballet in three scenes inspired by Monteverdi’s Orfeo, commissioned for the Ballet Society. He then created Mass, conducted in 1948 by Ernest Ansermet at Milan’s La Scala. Mass, exceptionally, was not a command but an austere work composed spontaneously as an act of faith.

At the same time, Stravinsky discovered a series of 12 engravings by the English painter William Hogarth, entitled The Rake's Progress. The subject inspired his opera of the same name. Stravinsky then worked for three years with the poet W.H. Auden on the libretto. The Rake's Progress, a brilliant stylistic exercise, closed Stravinsky’s neo-classical period. On September 11, 1951, the opera was performed under Stravinsky’s own direction at the Fenice Theater in Venice. It became an international success. Stravinsky, who had not returned to Europe for 12 years, used this trip to travel around Europe.

In 1948, Stravinsky made the acquaintance of a young conductor, Robert Craft, who became his assistant. In the 1950s, facing the impact of the three Viennese - Schoenberg, Berg and Webern - and due to Craft’s influence, Stravinsky took a new direction, changing his musical language.

At the age of 70, the composer gradually and courageously turned to serial compositional techniques, referring especially to Anton Webern whom he admired. Stravinsky cautiously experimented with Cantata (1952) for the Los Angeles Chamber Symphony Society, Septet (1953) for the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, and Three Songs from William Shakespeare (1953) for Los Angeles "Evenings on the Roof" concerts.

Very attached to Italy, especially to Venice, Stravinsky dedicated his next work, Canticum Sacrum ad honorum Sancti Marci Nominis to this city and its patron saint. This partially serial composition was given in the Basilica San Marco in September 1956 at the International Festival of Contemporary Music, which had commissioned it
It was also in Venice that Stravinsky gave the first hearing of Threni two years later. Fully serial, this austere work is still a major, profound piece.

Igor Stravinsky – Venice – 1956

Between 1953 and 1957, Stravinsky worked with the Balanchine Ballet on an abstract ballet for 12 dancers, Agon, partly inspired by French dances of the Renaissance. Much of the music is 12-tone. Agon, commissioned by the New York City Ballet (founded by Lincoln Kirstein and Balanchine), was first heard on June 17, 1957 in Los Angeles under the baton of Robert Craft at a concert to celebrate the composer’s 75 anniversary. The New York City Ballet brought Agon to the stage on December 1. Then, Stravinsky began a massive world tour, traveling the five continents (1959/1961).

Stravinsky next fulfilled a commission by Paul Sacher of the Basel Chamber Orchestra for a cantata, A Sermon, A Narrative, A Prayer (1961). Then, he created an entertaining piece of music for the CBS television program, "The Flood", an account of the Noah and the Ark story (1962).

That same year, on January 18, the President and Mrs. Kennedy invited Stravinsky to the White House for a dinner in his honour. One year later, after the assassination of the President, he would compose Elegy for JFK, commissioned for a poem by his friend W.H. Auden.

In 1962, Stravinsky also accepted the USSR’s invitation to come and conduct his own music on the occasion of his 80th birthday. After 48 years of exile, on September 21, Stravinsky received a welcome worthy of a Head of State in Moscow. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev personally received the Stravinskys in the Kremlin during their stay. On October 4, the composer arrived in St. Petersburg (at that time, called Leningrad). For three weeks, Stravinsky gave concerts, attended performances, saw the sights, and participated in receptions, luncheons and dinners. From all sides, he received a warm and cordial welcome.

Igor Stravinsky – Hollywood, 1962

Returning to the United States, still inspired by sacred texts, Stravinsky began a new work, Abraham & Isaac, based on the Hebrew text of “Genesis”. In 1965, he attended its premier in Israel on the invitation of the Israel Festival Committee who had commissioned it. The Mayor of Jerusalem presented him on this occasion with the Golden Emblem of Jerusalem. In 1965, Pope John XXIII also decorated Stravinsky during a concert at the Vatican. Prestigious awards were nothing new to the composer. He had already received the Gold Medal of the Royal Philharmonic Society in London in 1954, been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1957, received the Sonnig Award, Denmark’s highest music honour, in 1959, the State Department Medal in 1962 and Jean Sibelius Gold Medal from Finland’s Cultural Foundation in 1963.

Stravinsky last major work was The Requiem Canticles (1965/1966), commissioned by the University of Princeton in New Jersey. This rigorous, abstract work created in 1966 under the direction of Robert Craft would be performed at Stravinsky’s funeral five years later, after the requiem of Alessandro Scarlatti. Stravinsky’s last composition, The Owl and the Pussycat (1966), based on a poem by Edward Lear, was dedicated to his wife Vera.

San Michele Cemetery – Venise

In 1967, Stravinsky, whose health had begun to decline, directed Pulcinella in Toronto, his last public concert. He also completed the last recordings of his music in New York. In 1968 and 1969, he continued to work on the arrangements of works by other composers, the Lieders of Hugo Wolf and the chorale variations of J.S. Bach.

In 1969 Stravinsky moved to New York. After several stays in hospital, he spent the summer of 1970 in Evian, where he visited with his European family. Stravinsky died on April 6, 1971 in his New York apartment at the age of 88. His funeral took place on April 15 in Italy, in the noble city of Venice. According to his will, he was buried in San Michele, near his friend and companion-in-exile Sergei Diaghilev who had first sensed Stravinsky’s genius and revealed it to the world.

* Photo Katya Chilingiri – katyachilingiri.com