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The Radio 3 Boards > The Music Boards > Music Through The Ages > 20th Century > Stravinsky: Craft v Walsh
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Author Topic: Stravinsky: Craft v Walsh  (Read 338 times)
Ian Pace
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« Reply #15 on: 23:04:57, 26-03-2008 »
Quote from: time_is_now on 20:52:41, 26-03-2008
I couldn't agree more on the principle of getting critical distance from a composer, but Stephen Walsh's writings on Stravinsky are poorly researched and not at all impartial. They do indeed seem very scholarly, but there are major gaps in who he has chosen to interview and which sources he has reported on, and the more one looks into this in detail the more he appears to be motivated by a wilful ignorance of the agendas of some surviving members of the Stravinsky family and by a dislike of Craft (which is not remotely the same thing as an appropriately objective scepticism).
Can you elaborate, in terms of specifics (not saying you're wrong, but would like to know more)? No writing is 'impartial', but in terms of poor research, I'd like to know more. Might his dislike of Craft not be justified in some ways?
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time_is_now
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« Reply #16 on: 23:09:41, 26-03-2008 »
I can't really elaborate at the moment, but I'll try to dig up some sources and get back to you.

Sorry to be so unforthcoming - I was aware in making my previous post that I hadn't offered any evidence ... !
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George Garnett
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« Reply #17 on: 23:23:11, 26-03-2008 »
Quote from: Bryn on 11:40:28, 26-03-2008
... the first two volumes of the Walsh project.

There's going to be more? Not of the biography presumably?


And yes please, t-i-n. I'd be interested to hear more. I have to say that 'poorly researched' wasn't a phrase that came naturally to mind when I read the books but am therefore all the more intrigued to hear more.

« Last Edit: 23:32:43, 26-03-2008 by George Garnett » Logged
time_is_now
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« Reply #18 on: 23:43:51, 26-03-2008 »
Quote from: George Garnett on 23:23:11, 26-03-2008
Quote from: Bryn on 11:40:28, 26-03-2008
... the first two volumes of the Walsh project.

There's going to be more?
Yes, I noticed that too! I think Bryn was being unduly optimistic ...

Incidentally, Reiner also mentions, in his first post, 'Craft's book about the interrelationship between Stravinsky and Robert Craft', but as far as I can work out from Rupert Christiansen's article (which is itself slightly misleading in its presentation of Craft's role, incidentally) this is all just a belated fall-out from Vol 2 of the biography.

I'm going to get the new volume of Areté - a friend had a poem in it recently, which I missed, so I need to contact them about back issues anyway - so I'll try and post anything excerptable on here in due course. I'm sorry that I don't really have the time or the information to hand to go further into the issue of Walsh's accuracy and biases at the moment, but the virtues of his work are by no means uncontested, and not only by those close to Craft. If anything, the reception of his books reminds me of nothing more than the knee-jerk refusal to criticise Alex Ross that we've seen so much evidence of recently.
« Last Edit: 23:46:29, 26-03-2008 by time_is_now » Logged
The city is a process which always veers away from the form envisaged and desired, ... whose revenge upon its architects and planners undoes every dream of mastery. It is [also] one of the sites where Dasein is assigned the impossible task of putting right what can never be put right. - Rob Lapsley
Ian Pace
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« Reply #19 on: 23:57:15, 26-03-2008 »
Quote from: time_is_now on 23:43:51, 26-03-2008
If anything, the reception of his books reminds me of nothing more than the knee-jerk refusal to criticise Alex Ross that we've seen so much evidence of recently.
On of the purveyors of such a reception was one Stephen Walsh.
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'These acts of keeping politics out of music, however, do not prevent musicology from being a political act . . .they assure that every apolitical act assumes a greater political immediacy' - Philip Bohlman, 'Musicology as a Political Act'
ahinton
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« Reply #20 on: 03:12:12, 27-03-2008 »
Quote from: Ian Pace on 23:57:15, 26-03-2008
Quote from: time_is_now on 23:43:51, 26-03-2008
If anything, the reception of his books reminds me of nothing more than the knee-jerk refusal to criticise Alex Ross that we've seen so much evidence of recently.
On of the purveyors of such a reception was one Stephen Walsh.
Thanks for that, Ian. I have to say that I'm rather surprised. I'm not seeking to put down TRIN lock, stock and barrel myself but I have to admit to surprise that a scholar of Walsh's calibre appears to have been taken in by the bulk of its contents to the extent suggested by his review which, while momentarily looking askance at Ross's occasional undue Americanocentricity, finds him otherwise to be almost the ultimate arbiter on the subject of 20th century music; Walsh's own detailed, conscientious and painstaking research seems, after all, to be well at odds with the prevalence of broad-brush coffee-table generalisations that characterise TRIN as quoted and discussed here rcently - and yes, I, too, will be interested in due course to read evidence of Walsh's shortcomings but, in the meantime, would find it more or less impossible to envisge his work on the same shelf as TRIN.
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