Stravinsky's Piano
Genesis of a Musical Language

An unprecedented exploration of Stravinsky's use of the piano as the genesis of all his music - Russian, neoclassical and serial.

Graham Griffiths (Author)

9780521191784, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 February 2013

354 pages, 10 b/w illus. 59 music examples
24.4 x 17 x 2.1 cm, 0.87 kg

'With this extremely readable book, Griffiths has made a significant contribution to Stravinsky research. His focus on the concept of 'pal'tserazvitiye' is particularly fascinating. His next research project is eagerly awaited.' Mai Ikehara, Ongakugaku: Journal of the Musicological Society of Japan

Stravinsky's reinvention in the early 1920s, as both neoclassical composer and concert-pianist, is here placed at the centre of a fundamental reconsideration 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 Kashperova, 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 lifelong 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.

Introduction
1. Becoming a Russian musician
2. Becoming a neoclassicist
3. Stravinsky's piano workshop
4. Departures and homecomings
Conclusions.

Subject Areas: Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups [AVH], 20th century & contemporary classical music [AVGC6], Music [AV]