Stravinsky's piano
Subtitle: genesis of a musical language
By: Graham Griffiths
Series: Music since 1900; Music since 1900
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 335
ISBN-13: 9780521191784
Subjects: Stravinsky, Igor,; Analysis, appreciation; Criticism and interpretation; Piano music
Description: "Stravinsky's re-invention in the early 1920s, as both neoclassical composer and concert-pianist, is here placed at the centre of a fundamental re-consideration of his whole output - viewed from the unprecedented perspective of his relationship with the piano. Graham Griffiths assesses Stravinsky's musical upbringing in St Petersburg with emphasis on his education at the hands of two extraordinary teachers whom he later either ignored or denounced: Leokadiya, for piano, and Rimsky-Korsakov, for instrumentation. Their message, Griffiths argues, enabled Stravinsky to formulate from that intensely Russian experience an internationalist brand of neoclassicism founded upon the premises of objectivity and craft. Drawing directly on the composer's manuscripts, Griffiths addresses Stravinsky's life-long fascination with counterpoint and with pianism's constructive processes. Stravinsky's Piano presents both of these as recurring features of the compositional attitudes that Stravinsky consistently applied to his works, whether Russian, neoclassical or serial, and regardless of idiom and genre."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [311]-323) and index.
Table of contents: title: Becoming a Russian musician; title: Becoming a neoclassicist; title: Stravinsky's piano workshop; title: Departures and homecomings.