Spanning nearly three‐quarters of the twentieth century, Stravinsky’s works were hugely influential, and this Companion deals reasonably comprehensively, if not exhaustively, with many aspects of them. Beethoven’s compositional career can famously be divided into three periods, and so can Stravinsky’s, although in his case the changes are more strikingly abrupt. The contributors discuss his Russian period, the neo‐classicism, and finally serialism.
His teacher, Rimsky‐Korsakov, had a profound influence on his early works, but he soon developed his own style, while retaining the older composer’s frequent use of so‐called octatonic scale. That he caught the attention of Diaghilev with one of his most brilliant early works is, of course, well‐known, and their ballets have endured in the standard repertory. His modernism at this stage can bear comparison with artists in other genres such as Picasso and Nabokov. After the revolution of 1917 Stravinsky was severed from his Russian roots and found himself in straitened circumstances. Whether that obliged him to slim down the orchestral resources that he had earlier used is debatable, but from the early 1920s there was a distinct change to a neo‐classical style. The period lasted until his opera, The Rake’s Progress, after which he wondered whether he could continue composing but, hearing his friend and sometime amanuensis, Robert Craft performing works by Schoenberg and Webern, he realised that their techniques of serial composition could be fruitfully adapted to his own works.
The section on the reception of his works is extremely fascinating. There is an illuminating essay on how Stravinsky performed his own music, particularly since on several occasions, both in performance and on recordings, he disregarded his own scored instructions as to dynamics, tempos and balance. Adorno’s critiques are discussed, and there are other contributions relating to performers’, critics’ and composers’ attitudes to his music. Richard Taruskin, who is widely quoted in earlier sections of this Companion, contributes the last chapter, “Stravinsky and us”. Throughout the book there are copious musical examples and diagrams. The last few pages contain, as is usual in this series, a chronological list of works (but why are they not given the numbers that Eric Walter White has allocated?), copious notes, a select bibliography and an index of names and titles.
