‘Subjugation’ in Stravinsky's works on religious texts is conventionally taken to mean such things as the refusal to attempt ‘expression’ of the ‘Et resurrexit’ in the Credo of the Mass, or the awesome denial of depiction of or comfort from Stephen's vision of ‘the heavens opened’ in A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer. Nevertheless even in this ostensibly most impersonal branch of all his impersonal output, a pattern can be discerned by which self-expression is pursued and achieved. Stravinsky said ‘“In the beginning was the word” is, for me, a literal, localized truth.’ I take him at his word, and examine his florilegia of religious texts in six major works, with just such a literal and localized intention.

Musical dynasties, so common a phenomenon of the past, are relatively rare in our own times; but the Tcherepnin family boast four generations of composers, encompassing a wide variety of styles and diversity of language. The 18th-century ‘dynast’ flourished in a community strongly bound to tradition, in a climate where styles were slow to change. Musical horizons were circumscribed by narrower geographical limits and a shorter historical perspective. The young composer knew less music of the past, and his relationship with what he knew was therefore closer. In the 20th century, however, the advent of mass media has altered all that. The successful young composer can hear music of his own and other cultures in a profusion undreamed of by his fathers, and he can explore a far more remote past, for musicology has developed into an industry, pushing back the frontiers ever further.

I first met Luigi Dallapiccola in 1946. The annual Festival of the ISCM—lapsed during the war—took place in London that year, giving an opportunity of renewing old acquaintances and meeting new colleagues.

My first sight of Dallapiccola—no one, not even his wife, Laura, ever calls him Luigi—was of a tiny figure of great vitality and dignity on which was poised a large, noble head (then black-haired) tilted at a strange angle when looking up into the faces of those he was speaking with. The speech was always accompanied by many gestures from his large, expressive hands.