Revisiting Stravinsky’s Poetics of Music: The Souvtchinsky connection

Abstract

The complex authorship of Stravinsky’s Poetics of Music, as a result of the collaboration between the Russian composer himself, the composer and critic Alexis Roland-Manuel and the Russian émigré thinker Pierre Souvtchinsky, has been well established by now. This article traces the latter’s contribution to Stravinsky’s book moving beyond the obvious places to look, namely the fifth chapter (written by Souvtchinsky) and the well-known reference to Souvtchinsky’s ideas on music and time. The Poetics will thus intriguingly emerge as a most unexpected platform for the presentation and dissemination of positions associated with a certain strand of Eurasianism, the Russian émigré intellectual and political movement, with which Souvtchinsky was closely associated.

Keywords

• igor stravinsky
• pierre souvtchinsky
• poetics of music
• eurasianism
• neoclassicism