Memories and Commentaries.(Book Review)

Memories and Commentaries by Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft Faber and Faber, 286 pp. $30

An Improbable Life: Memoirs by Robert Craft Vanderbilt University Press, 560pp. $39.95

The lives of Igor Stravinsky and his personal ombudsman, Robert Craft, are inextricably intertwined. For the last twenty-one years of Igor Stravinsky's life, Craft lived with, or in close proximity to, the composer and his second wife, Vera de Bosset Sudeikin. He studied and conducted Stravinsky's music, becoming the older man's spokesman in person and in print, as well as his general factotum and close friend. With the simultaneous publication of a revised version of Craft's Conversations with Stravinsky and his own memoirs, it is now more obvious than ever that Craft's identification with the composer blurred the lines between them.

Craft's Conversations books--first published in the U.S. between 1958 and 1969--claim to be "the only published writings attributed to Stravinsky that are actually `by him,' in the sense of fidelity to the substance of his thoughts." The Conversations quickly became a classic. Now, thirty-one years after Stravinsky's death, Craft has edited, reordered and condensed the original volumes into a single book, organized chronologically, like an autobiography in the form of dialogues. The new book is tighter, faster reading, though some intriguing tidbits--notably Stravinsky's take on the music business and his criticisms of the critics--are gone. Small quibbles aside, however, Memories and Commentaries is a delight from cover to cover.

Craft's questions fall mostly into three categories: biography, Stravinsky's compositions and people Stravinsky knew. At the end are Stravinsky's thoughts on Beethoven, whose music occupied much of the composer's late-life listening--including criticism of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony ("one hardly dares to tell the truth ... which is that some of the music is banal") and adoration for the last string quartets. ("Nearly everything in the C-sharp-minor Quartet is perfect, inevitable, unalterable.")

In the biographical category, Stravinsky bares the scars of his love-starved childhood and shows some of his adult prejudices and cupidity. One story involves the time his son had a burst appendix: "As the operation fascinated me, I decided to have my own appendix removed.... I forced the operation on my other children, on Vera de Bosset, and some of my friends." In his compositions, he takes us through his Russian, neo-classical and serial phases and explains--with great musical literacy--how he came to each one. The personalities range from Rimsky-Korsakov to Christopher Isherwood.

Although ...