For me, Stravinsky is sort of like Lachenmann in that the surface material of his music is "sexy" and oft-imitated, but his formal decisions are what make the experience worthwhile.  I remember hearing somewhere that Prokofiev said he would've cut the very end off the Symphony of Psalms–a passage without which the piece is completely different (and, in my opinion, flatter).

By the way, that written octave D# in the Canticum Sacrum makes my skin crawl, and the first time I heard the piece it completely ruined my concentration.  I'm allergic to octaves in atonal counterpoint, I guess.

Although I wonder if for probably a reasonable proportion of us the eighteenth century does...

(For me it doesn't, I hasten to add.)

I was late conming to appreciate Stravinsky,for no good reason.

My favourite works of his are Threni,the 'Huxley' variations, the Violin Concerto and the Symphony in three Movements. They are the ones I find myself returning to .

One thing that always strikes me about Stravinsky is that for years now,since the late '60s, I think the field  has been wide open for a new Stravinsky to emerge.I don't of coyrse mean a composer whose music SOUNDS like Stravinsky's music, but a composer who,like him, is a master of a fresh -sounding and comprehensively-satisfying idiom,whose music has the same impact as 'Firebird' and 'Petrushka' had when they were first played. For some reason,such a figure has not. arrived, and I feel that in a way msuc has not moved forward since 'Gruppen 'and 'Pli Selon Pli'.

I've no doubt I'll be told I am an ignoramus for not having heard that Kropanski's 89 fugues for string quintet have torn the musical word apart,but then,has anyone else?

Only heard one piece by RSB, its title escapes me but it was broadcast on Music In Our Time approx early 1991. Not bad at all, I remember thinking. "Idiot" - a bit harsh; although there is much in that book that I recall thinking half-baked and illogical. But it's more than ten years since I read it so can't give chapter and verse, I'm afraid.

The neoclassical 'problem'.

I can see that the idea of neoclassicism, and perhaps even more the word, is problematic. It ought not to work. And everyone other than Stravinsky ought perhaps to be sat on if they threaten to try it. And yet, somehow, the old alchemist himself seems, to me anyway, to have pulled off the impossible.

If you look at the list of works which come under this general heading they would presumably include:

Pulcinella (the prime culprit, I suppose)
Symphonies of Wind Instruments
Symphony in Three Movements
Symphony of Psalms
Violin Concerto
Apollon musagete
Oedipus Rex
The Rake's Progress (another great divider between otherwise peace-loving peoples).

That list, to my ears anyway, brings with it it's own "Yes, but apart from that, what has Stravinsky's neoclassicism ever done for us?" question.

In one or two cases (Pulcinella? Dumbarton Oaks?) I suppose I might admit that it's a matter of being seduced and beguiled against my sterner judgement, but seduced, beguiled and not bothered I am nonetheless. Love 'em both. But the others? These are all superb works by any standard aren't they?  Mr I.S. does, in my book anyway, do the impossible, and produces works which are both backward-looking in general form, and even in 'style', but also unprecedently and substantively new. Much as I may try to see his neoclassical period as an unfortunate aberration before he came back to his senses again, the works he actually produced, rather than the idea behind them, provide their own refutation. No?

I'm no big Stravinsky fan by any means, and continue to think that his famous ballets, for all they have a certain instantaneous power (as can the crudest of music at times) are somewhat cheap (Stravinsky himself said that they were composed 'with an axe'), even exploitative, though Le Sacre in particular does seem an authentic aesthetic representation of the most reactionary, primitivist and violence-loving ideologies of their time. But I'm with martle on the two works he mentions, some of Stravinsky's finest. And some of the works GG mentions have their merits as well. Once again for those with academic servers, they might be interested, on the neo-classical question, to read Richard Taruskin - 'Neoclassicism as Ideology’, in Nineteenth-Century Music, 16 (1993), pp. 286–302. Again, not an article I'm necessarily endorsing, just one that it's worth reading in the context of such a discussion.

George - I can't help feeling 'neoclassicism' is a bit of a red herring, really ... will try to come back and post something at more length on this later. Of the works you list, incidentally, I'm not sure Symphonies of Winds would really fall in but the others do, I suppose, at least to 'neoclassicism' as most people would instinctively understand the term.

On a more general point, I think the Symphony in C is my current favourite Stravinsky work, although The Soldier's Tale is something quite special, and quite strange, and I wouldn't like to forget it exists (though nor would I listen to it often, I think). I'm afraid that after many years of thinking I didn't like The Rite of Spring I've now decided that it's fine when I'm listening to it, but I tend not to able connect in memory with what's impressive about it (same goes for Petrushka, somehow).

martle - Les Noces - completely with you on that.
GG - I have the same experience listening to some of those works (ie shouldn't work but does) but have never been able to swallow The Rake at all. I see Symphonies of WI (!) as more Russian than neo-classical (much in common with Les Noces), and Symphony of Psalms as a continuation of the idea of ritual contained in the shorter piece. S in 3 mts is to my mind an uneven work (continuity?) and the language of S in C is in that unnerving mismatch of 'sweet on the surface, sour underneath' vein that I find really difficult to take. (Those one-legged um-pah -and-a-half accompaniments irritate me quickly). But what was referred to as S's sonic originality continues to excite and intrigue me in almost everything he wrote.
Ian - can't really hear the cheap and exploitative in Petrushka or Le Sacre, only in the many works that have ripped off those two great scores in the last almost 100 years. When did S make that remark about composed with an axe? Maybe he was fed up with hearing pale imitations too! I have gone through phases of having heard both ballets too many times but they both come up fantastically after I take a break from them. And there is a tendency with some conductors (cough, Gergiev) to treat them as showpieces rather than music. (Following on from the Rimsky/ Borodin tradition perhaps?)