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1. Mid-life Crisis
I have had to survive two crises as a composer, though as I continued to move from work to work I was not aware of either of them as such, or, indeed, of any momentous change. The first-the loss of Russia and its language not only of music but of words-affected every circumstance of my personal no less than my artistic life... Crisis number two was brought on by the natural outgrowing of the special incubator in which I wrote The Rake's Progress (which is why I did not use Auden's beautiful Delia libretto; I could not continue in the same strain, could not compose a sequel to The Rake, as I would have had to do.) (Stravinsky/Craft 1966: 23)
Why did The Rake's Progress inspire such a crisis in Igor Stravinsky's life and work? The opera is by far his longest work, as well as the most classical of his entirely original scores. Did the sheer size and classicism of this score finally satisfy Stravinsky's appetite for the "lifeless" conventions of the past? Or, as Mikail Drushkin asks, had Stravinsky "in fact wished to study dodecaphonic methods earlier and had been embarrassed by the existence of a rival whose death [in 1951] alone could liberate him from this inhibition (1983: 141)?" Stravinsky's amanuensis Robert Craft de-emphasizes the influence of Schoenberg's death on Stravinsky's change of style-focusing instead on the latter's growing awareness of the indifference paid to him by the younger generation of European composers (occasioned by his trip to Europe for the premiere of The Rake)-and takes considerable credit for introducing Stravinsky to the music of Schoenberg and Webern (1992: 33-48). Scholars and critics have attempted to downplay the incongruity of Stravinsky's foray into twelve-tone composition by identifying striking connections between works from all three of his periods- Russian, neo-classical and serial (Messing 1988; Austin 1987). But these connections do not offset the glaring fact that after 1951, Stravinsky largely abandoned his overt play with tonal conventions, and took up a method of pitch organization that he had previously regarded as anathema. This issue continues to foster debate, and I will keep it in mind as I examine the opera that apparently drove Stravinsky in a new artistic direction.
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