Not surprisingly, the present centennial of Igor Stravinsky’s birth has brought forth a variety of historical documentation on the composer’s life and work. Some of this documentation has extended as far as gala performances of the Russian master’s music: the Metropolitan Opera performed a Stravinsky triple bill, beginning with the Rite of Spring (1911-13), continuing with an opera, The Nightingale (1908-14), and concluding with the semi-staged oratorio, Oedipus Rex (1926-27). And commemorating its long association with the composer, George Balanchine’s New York City Ballet put on a Stravinsky Festival in June including some of the later and less appreciated compositions.

Major celebratory attention, however, was focused on Stravinsky’s career and life, the story of which comes to us again, as it has over the past generation, through the mind and pen of the master’s faithful amanuensis and factotum, Robert Craft. Following on the heels of Craft’s enormous—and handsome—1978 collection of letters and memorabilia, Stravinsky in Pictures and Documents (assembled in collaboration with Stravinsky’s widow, Vera), three volumes of the composer’s Craft-assembled recollections have been re-issued in paperback: Conversations with Igor Stravinsky (1958), Memories and Commentaries (1959), and Expositions and Developments (1962).¹ While these books will remain of great interest to connoisseurs of artists’ lives, the extent of Stravinsky’s participation in them—and therefore their exact authenticity—seems in as much doubt as ever.

Whatever their historical validity, the picture of Stravinsky these autobiographical productions conjure up is of a grandly charming man whose genius is only highlighted by