Stravinsky and the Divine

The late music of Igor Stravinsky remains one of the most intriguing and least explored phases of his artistic development. This volume proposes a renewed approach to his late works, examining them within the broader intellectual, philosophical and spiritual horizon that shaped them.

This book grew out of a long-standing fascination with Igor Stravinsky’s late works, music that has often been regarded as austere, enigmatic and even inaccessible. Yet for those willing to enter its world, compositions such as Threni and Requiem Canticles reveal an extraordinary artistic landscape in which order, faith, memory, and eternity are woven together. For many years these works were discussed mainly in terms of their serial technique and modernist language. Stravinsky himself, however, insisted that his music should be understood as a whole. The essays gathered in this volume explore the wider intellectual and spiritual horizon behind his late style. Philosophy, theology, Russian religious thought, architecture and questions of time and eternity all emerge as vital elements in the composer’s creative universe. The authors approach Stravinsky’s late works from different perspectives. Some trace the influence of Platonic and Neoplatonic traditions on his ideas of beauty and order; others examine his unique engagement with twelve-tone technique, or the role of memorial music and sacred texts in works written at the end of his life. The volume also reflects on the historical context of these compositions and the aesthetic debates that surrounded them. Taken together, these essays offer a richer understanding of Stravinsky’s final creative period. They suggest that behind the apparent austerity of this music lies a deeply human search: a search for structure, meaning and even the divine.