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Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons

By Igor Stravinsky
Series: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
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Brief Description
Timeless lessons on the pleasures of listening, the dilemmas of composition, and the meaning of artistic freedom from a founder of musical modernism. In October 1939, Igor Stravinsky took the stage at Harvard not as a conductor but as a speaker. Invited to deliver the prestigious... Read More
Format: Hardback
$4799
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Poetics of Music collects Igor Stravinsky’s 1939–1940 Norton Lectures, delivered at the height of his neoclassical period. Ranging from the phenomenology of rhythm to the fate of high culture in the Soviet Union, he explores both the creative potential and the limitations arising from fidelity to tradition and submission to formal constraints.

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Timeless lessons on the pleasures of listening, the dilemmas of composition, and the meaning of artistic freedom from a founder of musical modernism.

In October 1939, Igor Stravinsky took the stage at Harvard not as a conductor but as a speaker. Invited to deliver the prestigious Norton Lectures, he had departed Europe just days after the outbreak of war, leaving behind not only a growing political maelstrom but also his life in France, where his wife, eldest daughter, and mother all had died in the previous year.

Poetics of Music offers a snapshot of this pivotal moment in the composer's biography and career. Delivered at the height of his neoclassical period, which blended the sculptural precision of classicism with distinctively twentieth-century cadences, Stravinsky's lectures explore both the creative potential and the constraints of tradition. Though he achieved artistic immortality as a genre-defying experimentalist who scandalised audiences in Belle Γ‰poque Paris, the Stravinsky we find here is more circumspect, defending the dignity of formal conventions against the more anarchic currents of modernist experimentation.

Tradition, he argues, is not a relic of a bygone past but a living force that animates the present. And true artistic freedom emerges not only in moments of revolutionary inspiration but also through strict deference to the formal requirements of the work.

Like his compositions, Stravinsky's lectures are ambitious and at times bombastic, punctuated by wit and polemic. Ranging widely from the phenomenology of rhythm to the fate of high culture in the Soviet Union, he invites us to reflect on what it is in music that compels us, whether we are hearing one of his polytonal works or a simple birdsong.

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Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780674302433

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 16 September 2025

Country: United States

Imprint: Harvard University Press

Illustration: 1 photo

Contributors:

  • Preface by George A. Seferis
  • Translated by Arthur Knodel
  • Translated by Ingolf Dahl
  • Preface by George A. Seferis
  • Translated by Arthur Knodel
  • Translated by Ingolf Dahl
  • Preface by George A. Seferis
  • Translated by Arthur Knodel
  • Translated by Ingolf Dahl
  • Foreword by Vijay Iyer

Audience: Tertiary education, Professional and scholarly

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 10.0mm

Width: 140.0mm

Height: 210.0mm

Weight: 306g

Pages: 144

Collections

Arts & Culture Igor Stravinsky Music & Musicians Non-Fiction Philosophy & Psychology Philosophy & Stoicism Series: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures

About the Author

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) was one of the twentieth century’s most admired and influential composers, conductors, and music theorists. His ballets and symphonies, including The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring, cemented his central place in the evolution of musical modernism. Vijay Iyer is an award-winning composer, pianist, and music scholar. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, he has been named Jazz Artist of the Year four times by the DownBeat International Critics’ Poll. He is Franklin D. and Florence Rosenblatt Professor of the Arts at Harvard University, where he directs a doctoral program in Creative Practice and Critical Inquiry. George Seferis (1900–1971) was a Nobel Prize–winning Greek poet, essayist, and diplomat. One of the most influential Greek authors of his generation, he received honorary doctorates from Cambridge, Oxford, and Princeton, and was made an honorary foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. From 1957 to 1962, he served as Greek Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

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