row-forms and different contrapuntal voices, it is intervallically severe, and the harmonic intersections remain, in tonal terms, grammatically arbitrary. Technically, Threni continues to redefine serialism in Stravinsky's own image. The row is still treated linearly, as if it were a folksong or a plainchant. Sometimes it is divided into cells, as in The Rite of Spring or The Wedding. Sometimes, by contrast, it is used in effect like a complete theme. Many passages are coterminous with (often canonic) statements of the row, and here and there Stravinsky rotates the row, moving its first few notes to the end, without any far-reaching implications. There is, undoubtedly, a certain pedantry in such procedures. But they also suggest some idea of litany as a highly ordered and repetitive phenomenon whose patterning is transparent by its nature. The result is a work of extreme and possibly self-defeating severity: a long work by the standards of late Stravinsky (about 35 minutes), and in colouring exceptionally dark, with clarinets and horns prominent in their lower registers, sarrusophone, trombones and tuba but no trumpets (except for the strangely heraldic flugelhorn solo in the Quomodo sedet), and piano and harp written exclusively in the bass clef until the final section. Not surprisingly, performances have mostly been unsatisfactory. It was at the Paris premiere, conducted by the composer in a Domaine Musical concert on 14 November 1958, that the work was so badly sung and played that the audience jeered, a failure Stravinsky attributed to poor preparation on the part of Pierre Boulez. Boulez and Stravinsky had for a time been close in the mid-1950s, and Boulez's influence or at least that of the tendency of which he was by that time the acknowledged leader is noticeable in the series of published conversations with Craft which began at the time of Threni. This is particularly true of the first volume (Conversations with Igor Stravinsky), with its discussions of technical and aesthetic questions, and its famous metro-map drawing of Stravinsky's latest style. The memoir-orientated later volumes retreat somewhat from the regrettably subservient positions of the first, but are still inclined to be apologetic about those earlier (especially neo-classical) works of his most despised by the ferocious avant-gardists of the day. Craft has admitted that the form and in many cases the language of these volumes, which include excerpts from his own diaries and, in the last book, interviews obviously written by him, are his work, but has always maintained that the substance, noted down from replies or remarks made by Stravinsky under all kinds of circumstances, is authentic. Some tendencies in the books obviously reflect Craft's influence, but then so did Stravinsky's own thinking at this time. Two facts are clear: first, that the books are historically very unreliable and inaccurate, especially (though not only) about Stravinsky's Russian life and friendships; secondly, that they are brilliantly vivid, entertaining, and compulsively readable perhaps the best books of their kind by or about a musician since Berlioz's Memoirs.10. Final years, 195971.If the hypermodernist influence on Stravinsky's opinions retreated somewhat after Conversations, the effect on