Igor Stravinsky

This is a biography of Igor Stravinsky, who is seen as a great inventor and discoverer of modern music, a figure comparable to his close friend and contemporary Pablo Picasso. The book traces the influences that formed Stravinsky's style, setting all his major works in context. It devotes particular attention to his childhood in pre-Revolutionary Russia, whose formative influence Stravinsky acknowledged later in life. His discovery by the impresario Diaghilev, his fruitful collaborations with such choreographers as Mikhail Fokine and George Balanchine, and with many of the great dancers (Nijinsky, Karavina), painters and designers (Bakst, Picasso) of his time are fully described, as well as his many productive relationships with such writers as Cocteau, Gide and W.H. Auden. Above all, the book concentrates on Stravinsky's creativity, describing how his musical mind worked and relating this to his complex personality.