ABSTRACT
The new piety of Igor Stravinsky, whose name has for so many years been associated with paganism and barbarity, is not surprising. Stravinsky is above all a man of intellect, a dialectician for whom the realities of abstract thought are more apparent than the realities of man-made art. A shrewd observer of artists and men has remarked once that there is not a page of sensuous music in the whole of Stravinsky’s output; the “Fire-Bird” is but a fairy tale, and its sensuousness is fictional. Watching Stravinsky’s transformations, we suddenly become aware that we know nothing about the man behind the art. Chaikovsky, Wagner, Strauss leave us with the impression of an intimate acquaintance after we have listened to their music; not so Stravinsky-he is shielded from us by a mask-be it the mask of Russian ballet-music, that of scholastic renaissance or scholastic religion.
