Igor Stravinsky

Prince Ivan wanders into an enchanted garden and, with the help of the magnificent Firebird, rescues a princess from an evil sorcerer.

This inspiring life-story by a towering figure of our era is an epic of genius in relation to the twentieth century. In these pages, Frank Lloyd Wright's personal revelations illumine an astonishing variety of experiences, opening with his life as a child with his Welsh forebears in the Midwest, his running away to plunge into the creative ferment of the Chicago of the Nineties, the beginning of one of the world's most productive careers, through his long dramatic life which culminated in his transforming influence on the modern world. His autobiography is a book of triumph over nearly incredible adversity. It is filled with memorable descriptions: of the young architect's apprentice with the pioneer Louis Sullivan; the fire which destroyed his renowned home, Taliesin, in the tragedy that took several lives, and his courageous re-building of his Imperial Hotel, in which he reveals why it rode out the disastrous 1923 earthquake in Tokyo, unharmed, while the city lay bout it in ruins; his romantic meeting with the woman whose devotion was to transform his life; the ordeals to which he and Olgivanna Lloyd Wright were early subjected and out of which they built a new life; the story of how they established the Taliesin Fellowship, the now renowned school of architecture to which students come from every part of the world; his friendships with Carl Sandburg, Alexander Woollcott, Lloyd Lewis, Ferdinand Schevill, among his others; his journeys to Japan and Russia; his creation of building after building-low cost houses, skyscrapers, churches, celebrated dwellings such as Hollyhock House, La Miniatura, Fallingwater, the Jacobs House (cost $5,500, including the architect's fee in 1936), etc.-which revolutionized the architecture of our century. During what he called "a very bad time in my life" Mrs. Wright urged him to begin work on his life-story and encouraged him through the years to complete it; and it is to her that he dedicated this final, definitive edition. Shortly after the preceding version of his autobiography appeared thirty-five years ago, Frank Lloyd Wright began to revise it, adding material over a period of sixteen years. This is the first edition of the corrected manuscript. Besides all his revisions of the earlier (and unillustrated) version, this new edition includes eighty-two illustrations, photographs of his family and of the people involved in his life, as well as his architectural masterpieces produced over a span of seventy years (including houses built as recently as 1976). This volume consists of six books, of which Book Six, titled BROADACRE CITY, comprises one of the most important additions to this comprehensive edition: the master's concepts of the future city and government-a major presentation of his ideas, prophecies being increasingly borne out in our time and destined to have an enduring influence in the future. Frank Lloyd Wright's autobiography is an incomparable book, a frankly revealing and uncompromising personal achievement to stand with his great buildings.

1 miniature score (viii, 151 p.) ; 22 cm

This is the final volume in the legendary series of Stravinsky's conversations with Robert Craft. In his foreword, dated March 1971 shortly before his death, Stravinsky wrote of his 'final work of words': 'They are hardly the last words about myself or my music that I would like to have written, and in fact they say almost nothing about the latter, except tangentially, in comments on Beethoven. It is almost five years now since I have completed an original composition, a time during which I have had to transform myself from a composer to a listener. The vacuum which this left has not been filled, but I have been able to live with it thanks, in the largest measure, to the music of Beethoven. It is certain, now that I will not be granted powers such as have recently enable Casals to publish a book at an age six years greater than mine. But I am thankful that I can listen to and love the music of other men in a way I could not do when I was composing my own.' Although Stravinsky may have written nothing new about his music in his last years, this book collects together a number of his programme notes about his own works, among them the "Symphonies of Wind Instruments "and" Jeu de Carte," and there are waspish letters to the press, wide-ranging interviews, prefaces and reviews, and a whole section entitled 'Squibs'. Readers who enjoyed the earlier volumes of recollections will find this final volume equally enlightening, diverting and enriching. This unique series of memories is essential reading for all students and lovers of Stravinsky.

For the last twenty-three years of Igor Stravinsky's incredibly full life, the noted musician, conductor, and writer Robert Craft was his closest colleague and friend, a trusted member of the Stravinsky household, and an important participant in virtually all of the composer's worldwide activities. Throughout these years, Craft kept a detailed diary, impressive in its powers of observation and characterization. This diary forms the basis for Stravinsky: Chronicle of a Friendship, now released in this substantially revised and enlarged edition. The original edition of this classic memoir has long been out of print. This new revised edition extends the material by more than a third. The text now includes several previously unpublished and historically important letters from prominent musicians, including Arnold Schoenberg, Luigi Dallapiccola, and Glenn Gould. More than fifty photographs and drawings (fourteen in color), most of them previously unpublished, illustrate the new edition. Each of the first twenty-three chapter-years now ends with a Postscript that provides supplementary information and a reflective connecting thread to the text. Craft has also added a Postlude in which he shares important moments of his friendship with Vera Stravinsky during the last years of her life. The whole Chronicle offers both a personal testament and an expansive embrace of the author's world.

Few would dispute that Igor Stravinsky was the greatest composer of the twentieth century. Conductor and writer Robert Craft was his closest colleague and friend. Together they published five acclaimed collections known as the Conversations series, which sprung from informal talks between the two men. In this newly edited and re-structured one-volume version, Craft brings Stravinsky's reflections on his childhood, his family life, professional associates, and personal relationships into sharper focus and places the major compositions in their cultural milieu.

One of the greatest of contemporary composers has here set down in delightfully personal fashion his general ideas about music and some accounts of his own experience as a composer. Every concert-goer and lover of music will take keen pleasure in his notes about the essential features of music, the process of musical composition, inspiration, musical types, and musical execution. Throughout the volume are to he found trenchant comments on such subjects as Wagnerism, the operas of Verdi, musical taste, musical snobbery, the influence of political ideas on Russian music under the Soviets, musical improvisation as opposed to musical construction, the nature of melody, and the function of the critic of music. Musical people of every sort will welcome this first presentation in English of an unusually interesting book [Publisher description]

"Igor Stravinsky's return to Russia in 1962 was only one of his recent trips to the major countries of the world, and the acclaim and attention he received there--he conducted his works in Moscow, Leningrad, and Kiev, met with Shostakovich, Khatchaturian, and Kondrashin, and had an interview with Khrushchev--are characteristic of his reception in all lands. One of the most distinguished composers of our time, he was repeatedly honored in his eightieth year; celebrations included a dinner at the White House with the Kennedys. In this volume Stravinsky's distinguished protégé, Robert Craft, describes their travels since 1951. These are pages filled with stories of exotic places, and anecdotes about some of this century's most celebrated artists--W.H. Auden, to whom the book is dedicated, St.-John Perse, T.S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, E.M. Forster, and Jean Genet, among the many. In the dialogues section Stravinsky continues a detailed analysis of his compositions; examining, for the first time in the series of conversations, the Greek Tribology: Oedipus Rex, Apollo, and Persephone. He discusses his thoughts as an octogenarian, his feelings about current music and recording, his opinions of contemporary and classical composers, and the nature and origins of many of his most popular compositions: Octuor, inspired by a dream; Symphony of Psalms, prompted by a publisher's suggestion that he write something popular; Scenes de Ballet, commissioned by Billy Rose for a Broadway extravaganza; Ebony Concerto, composed for Woody Herman; and Scherzo a la Russe, for Paul Whiteman. Obvious throughout is the enormous influence of literature, ballet, design, theater, and television on his art. Another important section of this volume contains the working notes of The Flood, or Noah and the Flood, as the CBS television presentation was entitled. This work is one of the most recent collaborations between Balanchine and Stravinsky, and demonstrates Stravinsky's remarkable facility with new forms and media. It is one of the latest indications that he will continue to amaze the world with musical innovations." --Dust jacket.