Book description
In 1934, Igor Stravinsky was fifty-two, a Russian expatriate living
in Paris and already regarded by many as the most important composer
of his generation. Stravinsky: The Second Exile follows him
through the remainder of his long life, which he would spend largely
in the United States. These are the years during which he would
compose such masterworks as The Rake's Progress and Symphony
in C, and achieve a new level of fame as a conductor and concert
pianist in his own right.
In this second and final volume of Stephen Walsh's acclaimed
biography, the author traces and illuminates Stravinsky's increasingly
complex and often agonised family life and his crucially important
relationship with his associate Robert Craft.
As a musicologist and critic, Walsh is able to speak with authority
and wit not only about Stravinsky's life, but also about his work,
expertly following the composer's musical journey from the
neoclassicism of his late French and early American periods, through
his early essays in serial technique, and on finally to the
astonishing complexities of this protean genius's final works.
Based on exhaustive research, Stephen Walsh uncovers new and
controversial material, making this the second volume of the most
definitive biography of the most significant and influential composer
of the twentieth century.
Stephen Walsh is a critic and musicologist who has written and
broadcast extensively on Stravinsky and many other aspects of
twentieth-century music. He was for some years a music critic with the
Observer
and
The Times
, and now writes for the
Independent
. The widely praised first volume of the present biography,
Stravinsky: A Creative Spring
, won the Royal Philharmonic Society prize for best music book of the
year 2000. Stephen Walsh currently holds a personal chair in the music
department of Cardiff University.
