Stravinsky Inside Out

by Charles M. Joseph

Book Overview

Popularly known during his lifetime as the world's greatest living composer, Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) not only wrote some of the twentieth century's most influential music, he also assumed the role... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0300075375
• ISBN13: 9780300075373
• Release Date: September 2001
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Length: 352 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Thoughtful, fresh, and controversial

I found this book to be an extremely new and interesting look into the mind and personal life of Igor Stravinsky. Understanding the artist as a person helps us to understand and appreciate the art he creates. In response to Craig Matteson... everyone is entitled to their opinon (and of course, no better place to put one's opinon but in a review). However, Mr. Matteson was off on one point (well, in my opinon, he was off on MANY points, but I'll only discuss one). Joseph has written a very thorough book entitled Stravinsky and the Piano in which he studies Stavinsky's "actual piano music performance scores" in detail - fingerings and markings included. Maybe Mr. Matteson is unaware of this book because it is only available to music scholars, which quite obviously, he is not. So it makes perfect sense to me why Joseph did not include such information in this book. A) he already wrote a book about this, and B) this book is about Stravinsky's split lives (the person vs. the public composer) - therefore the scores and fingerings are obtuse.

He was his own greatest composition

Stravinsky, whether you like him or not, was one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. Alternately deified by his collaborators (like Ballanchine, W.H. Auden, and Robert Craft), or villified as a worthless hack by Schoenberg and his accolytes, the truth lies somewhere in between those extremes. While the composer has not lacked for documentation of his life (notably his own Autobiography, and the "conversation books" edited by Robert Craft), there's still a need to balance facts with Stravinsky's own carefully constructed fictions. Few artists in any discipline have been more self-conscious of their public image than Stravinsky, and there is a real need to sort out how much of the composer's lifestory was his own invention. Joseph's well-written, meticulously researched book stops short of being a hatchet-job, but isn't afraid to display the idol's clay feet. (If fact, there's a nude photo of the composer in the book, so you'll see more than just his feet!) Joseph leaves the musicological analysis to others, and provides an engaging, provocative look at the man behind the hype. Turns out, like most human beings, he had his share of flaws as well as moments of genius.