Stravinsky: An Autobiography

I HAVE now brought my chronicle up to the year 1929, a year overshadowed by a great and grievous event--the passing of Diaghileff. He died on August 19, but his loss moved me so profoundly that it dwarfs in my memory all the other events of that year. I shall, therefore, somewhat anticipate the chronology of my narrative in order to speak here of my late friend.

At the beginning of my career he was the first to single me out for encouragement, and he gave me real and valuable assistance. Not only did he like my music and believe in my development, but he did his utmost to make the public appreciate me. He was genuinely attracted by what I was then writing, and it gave him real pleasure to produce my work, and, indeed, to force it on the more rebellious of my listeners, as, for example, in the case of the Sacre du Printemps. These feelings of his, and the

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