Igor Stravinsky: Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons (1942–) [English, Spanish]

Cover of 1956 edition

This book collects Stravinsky’s lectures written together with Alexis Roland-Manuel and Pierre Souvtchinsky and presented at Harvard University in 1939-40. Providing a wide-ranging account of Stravinsky’s music theory it discusses such subjects as Wagnerism, the operas of Verdi, musical taste, musical snobbery, the influence of political ideas on Russian music under the Soviets, musical improvisation as opposed to musical construction, the nature of melody, and the function of the critic of music.

First published in French as Poétique musicale, 1942

English edition
Translated by Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl
With a Preface by Darius Milhaud
Publisher Harvard University Press, Cambridge/MA, 1947
OCLC 155726113
142 pages

Poetics of Music (English, trans. Arthur Knodel and Ingolf Dahl, 1947, 6 MB)
Poética musical (Spanish, trans. Eduardo Grau, 1952)