A Recollection of Strawinsky

Extract

To the world of today, Strawinsky looms a figure shrouded in his own greatness, spiritualized. The incredible virtuosity, the utter precision of his methods of work are in themselves perturbing to the average mind. Scores without a single erasion, where each instrumental part is written in a different-coloured ink; the very array of the ink bottles so as to allow the composer to dip his pen in as unhesitatingly as if to touch the keys of his piano—all this suggests an alchemist in his laboratory rather than a composer in the throes of creative fever. But that it is pure gold produced in this laboratory the world contests not.