This initial selection from the extraordinary lifetime of letters to and from Igor Stravinsky, annotated by his friend and associate Robert Craft, includes correspondence with W. H. Auden, Jean Cocteau, Lincoln Kirstein and other friends, as well as Stravinsky's letters to Nadia Boulanger, Ernest Ansermet, and Craft himself. The book presents a wealth of previously unpublished information about Stravinsky's relationships with other musicians, and about his methods of composition.
The opening section, based on letters to Stravinsky from his first wife Catherine, is among the most important material yet made available for an understanding of the composer's personal and family life. If the exchanges with Auden (The Rake's Progress) and Cocteau (Oedipus Rex) take first place for general interest, the letters to Ansermet - who conducted more performances of Stravinsky's music than anyone but the composer himself - give a remarkable view of the musical and ballet worlds, especially of the Diaghilev period, and of the great impresario himself.
This book, accompanied by two further volumes, is a major contribution to the Stravinsky canon and to the cultural history of the twentieth century.