In the Autumn of 1952, both Stravinsky and Boulez were invited to dine at Virgil Thompson’s New York apartment. Boulez had already written ‘Stravinsky Remains’ which analysed the rhythmic invention in The Rite. However, Boulez did not hide his disdain for Stravinsky’s neoclassicism in this chapter. Similarly, although Stravinsky praised Le Marteau, Boulez’s music remained foreign to him. For some years, the two friends entered into an unspoken pact that Boulez would stop speaking disrespectfully regarding Stravinsky’s neoclassicism and Stravinsky would speak eloquently about Boulez, as well as pointing to Webern as the way forward in serialism and not to Schoenberg. In spite of Stravinsky’s turn to serialism, he could seemingly do nothing to be accepted by the European avant-garde. His friendship with Boulez ultimately ended due primarily to problems over the 1957 performance of Threni and Souvtchinsky’s machinations, even though Stravinsky liked Boulez the man and respected the musician.

Focusing solely on the musical output of composer Igor Stravinsky, this chapter explores the evolution of what would become a characteristic compositional process – so-called ‘block form’ – in later works including Concertino, Symphony in Three Movements and Introitus T. S. Eliot in Memoriam. Close analysis of scores for these works, as well as a 1943 revision of the ‘Sacrificial Dance’ from The Rite, shows how Stravinsky crafted an idiomatic compositional technique that could produce both textural variation and structure coherence, while, in some cases, supporting a musical narrative.