When Igor Met JFK

Stravinsky Visits the White House

In October of 1962, Igor Stravinsky was sitting in his New York apartment when he was handed a letter with a return address the read “The White House; Washington, D.C.” First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy wished to celebrate the composer’s 80th birthday with a formal dinner at the Executive Mansion. Stravinsky was annoyed. He’d lived in America for almost 25 years without any of the Capital’s political luminaries acknowledging his existence. Why now?

John F. Kennedy had won the Presidency as an implacable Cold-Warrior, convincing the electorate that he was more implacably anti-Communist than his opponent Richard Nixon, a notorious Red-Baiter. Stravinsky was well aware that as a Russian exile, he was little more than fodder for an administration that was touting the