Stravinsky Anniversary: Two Sketches for a Sonata published
In honour of the Stravinsky 50th anniversary of death on 6 April Boosey & Hawkes publishes his Two Sketches for a Sonata. The manuscript of these short piano fragments, composed towards the end of Stravinsky’s life, is housed in the Paul Sacher Foundation’s archive in Basel.
Boosey & Hawkes is pleased to publish for the first time Stravinsky’s Two Sketches for a Sonata dating from 1966. This digital publication contains a facsimile of the manuscript housed in the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, a modern note-set version of the two piano fragments and a preface by Jonathan Cross, and is released in honour of the composer’s 50th anniversary of death on 6 April.
These miniature sketches, composed after the completion of the Requiem Canticles, share with that score a sparse ritualistic style and use of the serial method common to many of his late works. They are signed with his monogram ‘IStr.’ and dated 1966. As Jonathan Cross notes: “There appears to be no evidence of what Stravinsky intended to do with these sketches. He simply copied them out neatly and left them as a tantalising glimpse of what might have been.”
> Buy the digital publication from our Online Shop
> Listen to a recording of the Two Sketches on Spotify
About the Paul Sacher Foundation
The Paul Sacher Foundation was founded in 1973. At first its purpose was to preserve Paul Sacher's musical library. A short while later the holdings began to be systematically expanded, and its purpose started to change. Today, the Foundation is an international research center for the music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, with some hundred estates and collections from leading composers and performers.
The main purpose of the Paul Sacher Foundation resides in the optimum care and study of its source materials. The Foundation also facilitates and supports scholarly research into its archival holdings by granting access to the documents available on its premises. The Foundation has also built up a large library specializing in twentieth- and twenty-first-century music.
Paul Sacher, the conductor of the Basel Chamber Orchestra for 60 years, regarded Stravinsky as his favourite composer and the most important of the 20th century. In the late 1970s Sacher acquired a number of Stravinsky manuscripts including The Rite of Spring, the Concerto for Piano and Winds and A Sermon, A Narrative and a Prayer, leading to discussions with the Stravinsky heirs about the wider collection. The full Stravinsky archive was acquired in 1983 and provided the bedrock for the Foundation’s holding, which now runs to over 100 composers.
> Visit the Paul Sacher Foundation website
Also in honour of the 50th anniversary, Boosey & Hawkes has produced a series of audio podcasts entitled Stravinsky Connections. The five episodes, released in January and February, are hosted by Jonathan Cross, Professor of Musicology at the University of Oxford and a respected authority on Stravinsky, who invites listeners to explore this colossus of modern creativity.
> Listen to the Stravinsky Connections podcasts
> Further information on Work: Two Sketches for a Sonata
Manuscript: © Paul Sacher Foundation
