Not an area I'm familiar with, thanks to long-distant experiences with Threni and Canticum Sacrum which were similar to Richard's. The one piece which did excite me was A sermon, a narrative and a prayer but I'm afraid I can't remember why.

I might have to investigate a timeline before I make a fool of myself (note I say 'before I make a fool of myself' not 'to prevent me from making a fool of myself').
Right. I remember being quite disappointed by The Flood, but quite enjoying the Monumentum Gesualdo piece.
I love the Huxley Variations but haven't dived into a lot of the really late stuff with any real dedication. Hearing Canticum Sacrum sung by the Sixteen in Durham cathedral was quite special and I'd love to hear that in Venice... [drool]

Currently I am unable to take any recordings out of our library but when I do, there's plenty with which to grapple here.

I think you've already mentioned the difficulty - his conversion to writing "serial" music.  I find the late works impenetrable, and sad to say I think he went off the boil?  We had a thread here a little while ago about how composers in their mature period suddenly feel they ought to write "for posterity" or to write more academically acceptable music so they will be thought well of in the history books... but in fact end up cheating themselves?  Perhaps this happens when musicologists like Robert Craft come knocking on your door?  Suddenly you realise you've become eminent, and have to behave eminently.  It was allegedly Craft's persistent persuasion that caused Stravinsky to want to join the "serial set".   Oddly enough this goes back to what I'd said in response to Simon-Sagt! and Baz about wheeling-out craftsmanship in lieu of creativity...

Personally I blame Craft...

PS I saw AGON danced at the Bol'shoi last year, in a season of Balanchine works.  They had "restored" Balanchine's choreography from the labanotation.  It's not at all a work I'd ever much like previously,  but in the context of a dance performance it came alive, and it was clearly the same composer as OEDIPUS REX.   I realise that mixed-medium performances give the more Reithian amongst us the heebie-jeebies even thinking about the idea (and I used to think likewise), but I'm firmly convinced that treating ballet scores as concert-hall music is a wretched mistake in which the audience are cheated of the full shilling...  it's as "wrong" as those appalling "Wagner without all that awful bloody singing" recordings which came out a few years ago.

Lovely piece. I first heard it live at the Proms but can't for the life of me remember who sang it (it was in 1996).

Yes (which is probably why it appealed to me at the age of 17!) but I seem to remember that it does accentuate some of the dissonant (linearly speaking) harmonies by orchestration in a slightly interesting way. It's certainly more interesting than the Tres Sacrae Cantiones, and the Bach Chorale Variations (performed in the same concert by the Sixteen btw).

In answer to your question about what he was trying to 'say', and in answer to Reiner's point about Craft over substance, I've always suspected that Stravinsky's obsessions at the end of his life were more to do with intellectual curiosity. I think that something about all of those serial matrices really floated his boat, and that he got more and more into them the older that he got (I can't agree that he was 'chasing posterity' though or wanted to join the 'serial set' - it doesn't accord with anything that I've read about his attitudes towards composition even that late). The non-creative aspect of his late transcriptions are possibly down to filthy lucre I might suggest, but also reflect the possibility that he was doing it because he could, and rather enjoyed doing it (like Shostakovitch re-orchestrating his students' work).

In reaction to the late works, I suppose we can attempt follow him into the rabbit-hole of serial matrices, through which he saw wondrous things(?).
(I suppose that Webern is the white rabbit in this context, but is Boulez the Red Queen?)
I don't think that he went off the boil - as Richard has said, Movements and Variations are wonderful - but when a composer becomes that obsessed with a technical idea, it's probably always going to be tricky to find a way in.

Yes, no (especially Schoenberg), no (and the last one isn't a question!).
Given the relationship between Schoenberg and Stravinsky, I think it would have rankled strongly for Stravinsky to take up serialism while Schoenberg lived. I don't think that Webern's vital status is particularly relevant except in a footnote to recognise that Stravinsky got on better with the music of the dead than with that of the living. I think, though, that the timing was largely down to Craft's intervention.

But Stravinsky had been out of Russia for such a long time, and had felt utterly betrayed by the Revolution. I would have thought that he would have felt solidarity with the USA in their stance against the USSR (rather like Cuban exiles against Castro??) rather than anything else (don't have anything to back this up though).
I think that the 'crowd-pleasing' sounds of his late neo-classical period weren't pleasing the crowds as much as they did initially, and they certainly weren't pleasing Stravinsky. Perhaps there's something in what you say - maybe this retreat into personal technical obsession had something to do with a retreat into his own mind to escape the conflicting loyalties of Motherland and adopted home, and the pressures of being a Russian-American immigrant.
(there's a story about Stravinsky and Rachmaninov sitting next to each other at a dinner party - everyone's expecting fireworks but instead they have a nice conversation - after dinner someone asks Stravinsky what they talked about - 'stocks and shares' - 'not music?' - 'oh no!')

I'll try and have a good listen to that later. Actually, this afternoon, after SN&P I let the CD run on into Threni and found it slightly more involving than I had done before. Maybe it really is just a matter of those recorded performances (both musically and technically) - which must be how most people have acquainted themselves with these pieces. I've just been peeking around and can't find any real alternatives though.

Thanks, Ron, for mentioning Requiem Canticles, which I am gradually coming to love. I only have the Craft recording so far and I wonder if the occasional sense of it being short of breath is down to the tempo relationships (and rests being cut short) in that performance, aside from the shocking production values. I don't have a problem with the soundworld per se in the recording, although I can easily imagine clearer textures and a more varied range of dynamics. But, concentrating on the piece, what I love about it is the way those wide spread chords "separate out" into two or three chords with identities of their own as well as a simultaneous existence as single entities; the choral writing of "Exaudi" is I think beautifully voiced and balanced (I love the harp notes introducing that section too), and the ending of the work seems to me to have perfect poise: the emotional distancing and ritualistic sense heightening rather than cooling the expressive effect. (Not a million miles from the end of Les noces, one of my VERY favourite of Stravinsky's scores.)

I have heard Canticum Sacrum a few times recently and certainly not found it grey or dour, but need to listen again to make a more intelligent comment. Agon I have not heard for years (to my shame, since my memories of it are fond). Threni - my one experience of that work has not yet led me to a repeat performance, although much has passed through the space between my ears since I last heard it... Movements - a LONG time since I heard that... (I'm working thro' the Eric Walter White worklist here). Epitaphium/ Double Canon/ Sermon, Narrative, Prayer/ The Dove Descending/ The Flood/ Abraham and Isaac/ Elegy for JFK/ Fanfare/ Introitus - all virgin territory for me; Aldous Huxley Variations - short, but a positive response on one or two hearings; Owl and the Pussycat - not much to it.

Hmmm - lots of homework to do! But DO persevere with CS and RC - I'm quite sure that if I can get a handle on them more experienced listeners certainly can!