Overview

Igor Stravinsky was a celebrated composer in an age increasingly obsessed with celebrity. He was a true modern; a man of his time: in Paris he dined with James Joyce, Pablo Picasso and Marcel Proust; and by the end of his life was being fêted by both the White House and the Kremlin as a prime piece of Cold War capital. But his colourful life would mean little to us were it not for the brilliant and original music he produced, music that reflected and shaped his own times, and which continues to sing today.

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A composer of extraordinary works and a man of extraordinary talents (and contradictions), the famously guarded Igor Stravinsky is brilliantly unpicked in a new biography. . . . Cross's musical readings are vivid and jargon-free, and even when we leave the colourful familiarity of the early ballets for the complexity of The Rake's Progress and Stravinsky's serial experiments, we lose none of the narrative clarity. . . . Whatever his personal weaknesses, Stravinsky stood on the cusp of worlds in both art and life, straddling not only the East-West divide but also pre- and post-war eras, modernism, and the neo-classical. The result is a unique vantage point, a 'creative life full of extraordinary encounters.' With Cross as our guide, these are encounters that we too share--drawn in, intimately close, to a composer who kept the world at arm's length. --Sinfini Music Elegant, often resonant study. --Gramophone As a compelling survey of the life and compositional career in relation to the changing cultural contexts, Cross's brilliantly written book is now an essential acquisition. The debates will continue and new perspectives emerge, for we long to know where this extraordinary art sprang from. This book, especially in its reflections on dislocation and the emotional distancing of certain stylistic elements, will play a valuable part in that debate. The music itself endures, indestructible and indispensable. --Music Web International Here is an up-to-date introduction, which addresses more recent discoveries and 'revelations'--genuine or otherwise--within a beautifully written and thought-provoking narrative. . . . Drawing on recent scholarship, Cross depicts Stravinsky's character and private life in vivid detail and persuasively demonstrates how the composer was very much a man of his time--not simply a lone genius who impacted the musical world. --BBC Music Magazine Cross's work on an artist often regarded as the greatest (or at least the most influential) composer of the twentieth century tells his story fluently and authoritatively. . . . Cross's approach intersperses biography with a discussion of the works themselves, including some technical description. There's a sprinkling of appropriate photographs throughout, and the text is consistently easy to read. --Opera This is a concise and stimulating account of Stravinsky's life and works. All the major compositions are discussed in some detail, and very few of the smaller gems are neglected. . . . This life-and-works is absolutely essential, a model of its kind. --Classical Music Magazine A fitting examination of the man Cross refers to as the twentieth century's most celebrated composer. Cross compares his subject to the famous nesting matryoshka dolls of Russia. What one first perceives as a whole is a series of wholes that only deepen the mystery once the doll owner has begun unwinding the layers. So, too, with Stravinsky. . . . Cross's eye and ear for detail and ability to add something quiet but significant to the larger conversation about his subject make Igor Stravinsky well worth reading. --Spectrum Culture True to form for Critical Lives, Jonathan Cross packs a rich life into a lean yet bountiful biography in Igor Stravinsky. --John Garratt PopMatters Cross is a well-known Stravinsky scholar, having written The Stravinsky Legacy and edited The Cambridge Companion to Stravinsky. True to form, his contribution to the 'Critical Lives' series is deeply insightful, highly engaging, but not technical, and he gives the reader a multifaceted understanding of Stravinsky's life and music. Cross effectively interweaves and connects biographical details, pivotal life events, approachable musical analysis, and broad cultural trends. Particularly cogent is his use of complementary personal anecdotes and large-scale influences in Stravinsky's works. Musicians and non-musicians alike will enjoy this excellent contribution to studies of Stravinsky's life and times. --Choice In my view, Jonathan Cross's brief Stravinsky in the Reaktion series of Critical Lives could not be bettered. Indeed, it is a model of elegant lucid writing and clear organization, providing an overview of the composer's life and work with a useful light-handed aper u of current scholarship and enlivened by the author's own distinctive literary persona and critical perceptions. Much additional color, too, is provided by his evident visual sensibility--not, I'm afraid, a conspicuous feature of most musicological publications. . . . Cross also vividly emphasizes the importance of the wider cosmopolitan cultural context of interwar Paris with which Stravinsky totally identified himself in the genesis of his neoclassical works. --Musical Times

Cross creates a literary masterpiece in his quest for the real Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky. Through his eloquent and authoritative narrative of Stravinsky s extraordinary life, Cross traces Stravinsky s compositional process while acknowledging the composer s need for objectivity and his tendency to hide behind masks and myths musically and personally. --Maureen Carr, author of After the Rite True to formfor Critical Lives, Jonathan Cross packs a rich life into a lean yet bountiful biography inIgor Stravinsky. --John Garratt PopMatters

Cross creates a literary masterpiece in his quest for the real Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky. Through his eloquent and authoritative narrative of Stravinsky s extraordinary life, Cross traces Stravinsky s compositional process while acknowledging the composer s need for objectivity and his tendency to hide behind masks and myths musically and personally. --Maureen Carr, author of After the Rite

Author Information

Jonathan Cross joined the Oxford Faculty of Music in 2003, where he is Professor of Musicology, and Student and Tutor in Music at Christ Church. He was previously Lecturer at the University of Sussex (1986-95) and Lecturer, later Reader, at the University of Bristol (1996-2003).

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