Stravinsky: A Family Chronicle 1906-1940

As perhaps the most influential composer of the twentieth century, Igor Stravinsky lived much of his long life on the public stage. But behind that public face was a very private man, at once father and husband, and patriarch of an extended but tightly knit Russian family. In all the voluminous literature devoted to Stravinsky since his death in New York in 1971, the composer's home and family life have all too often been hidden behind the blaze of his artistic career. This two-part chronicle redresses the balance. Written by the composer's eldest son, Théodore, and Théodore's wife Denise, these intimate memoirs take us to the very heart of the Stravinsky family home in the years up to the Second World War. This new volume also contains a wealth of family photographs, revealing the composer not as the often forbidding figure of the official photographic record, but as a husband and father at play and at work in the midst of a large and vibrant family. In this loving but clear-sighted picture of a family who counted among their friends a glittering cross-section of the twentieth century's social and cultural elite, this fascinating chronicle provides a privileged insight into the home behind the public triumphs of one of the undisputed geniuses of modern music.