ABSTRACT
Stravinsky seems to have been justified in his view that the London critics of the day were open-minded in the sense that they did not automatically write off new work which challenged their received ideas, however disagreeably. Anyone whose experience of music criticism is mainly based on a perusal of the comparatively genteel arts pages of the public prints of our own day might be amazed at the vicious. Even hysterical abuse that some Russian critics saw fit to hurl at the early masterpieces of their young compatriot. Stravinsky's letters of the time give out resonances of the criticism at home. 'Everyone here,' he wrote to Andrey Rimsky-Korsakov from Paris in November 1910, 'is amazed and furious at how, judging from the papers. Stravinsky seems to have been justified in his view that the London critics of the day were open-minded in the sense that they did not automatically write off new work which challenged their received ideas.
