Stravinsky in the Americas explores the “pre-Craft” period of Igor Stravinsky’s life, from when he first landed on American shores in 1925 to the end of World War II in 1945. Through a rich archival trove of ephemera, correspondence, photographs, and other documents, eminent musicologist H. Colin Slim examines the twenty-year period that began with Stravinsky as a radical European art-music composer and ended with him as a popular figure in American culture. This collection traces Stravinsky’s rise to fame—catapulted in large part by his collaborations with Hollywood and Disney and marked by his extra-marital affairs, his grappling with feelings of anti-Semitism, and his encounters with contemporary musicians as the music industry was emerging and taking shape in midcentury America. Slim’s lively narrative records the composer’s larger-than-life persona through a close look at his transatlantic tours and domestic excursions, where Stravinsky’s personal and professional life collided in often-dramatic ways.

About the Author

H. Colin Slim is Professor Emeritus of Music at the University of California, Irvine, where he served as the first Chair of the music program. He is past president of the American Musicological Society (1989–1990) and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His two-volume A Gift of Madrigals and Motets was awarded the Otto Kinkeldey Award. He met Igor Stravinsky in 1952 and again in 1966, events that inspired a lifelong interest in the composer’s personal and professional life. His collection of Stravinsky ephemera, manuscripts, and documents was donated to the University of British Columbia, which published an annotated catalog of the collection in 2002.

List of Illustrations
Foreword by Richard Taruskin
Preface
Acknowledgments

Introduction

PART I: FIVE TRANSATLANTIC TOURS (1925–1940)
1. Tour I (1925)
2. Tour II (1935)
3. Tour III (1936)
4. Tour IV (1937)
5. Tour V (October 1939–Late May 1940)

PART II: DOMESTIC EXCURSIONS FROM WARTIME
LOS ANGELES (1940–1946)
6. Excursions (1940–1941)
7. Excursions (1942)
8. Excursions (1943)
9. Excursions (1944)
10. Excursions (1945–Early 1946)

Appendix: Stravinsky and “Neoclassicism”
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Reviews

"This meticulously documented book sheds new light on the first two decades of Stravinsky's association with America, from the time of his first concert tour in 1925 to the premiere of the Symphony in Three Movements at Carnegie Hall in Janunary 1946. . . . This is not only a book to delight lovers of Stravinskian minutiae but also one that provides a richly documented study of a period in Stravinsky's life that has received relatively little attention."
— Gramophone

“This book is the culmination of years of meticulous and enthusiastic research. It provides a marvelously detailed picture of Stravinsky’s developing association with America and his life there. A masterpiece of obsessive investigation.”— Stephen Walsh, Professor of Music, Cardiff University

“Wonderfully researched, Colin Slim’s book uncovers fresh detail about the celebrated modernist composer and the many concert tours he undertook as a conductor and performer of his music. At the forefront of this study is the critical reception of these concerts and the renowned musicians with whom Stravinsky dealt over a twenty-year period. The composer emerges as a more colorful and even eccentric figure than in earlier biographical sketches, including Robert Craft’s account of the later years. The book should prove irresistible to anyone with an interest in twentieth-century music.”—Pieter van den Toorn, Professor Emeritus, Department of Music, University of California, Santa Barbara

Awards

2020 ARSC Awards for Excellence Best Historical Research in Classical Music Best History 2021 2020, Association for Recorded Sound Collections

About the Book

About the Author

Table of Contents

Reviews

Awards