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 Igor Stravinsky was a composer who initially startled but eventually won over the Western world with his unique blend of orientalism and modernism. Born into an artistic family, he did not intend to embark upon a career in the cultural realm. However, his talent and fortuitous encounters with luminaries of the musical world would lead him on to a long and prolific career spanning two wars and three continents.
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), near St. Petersburg, on June 17 (June 5, Old Style), 1882. The son of Fedor Stravinsky, a leading Russian opera singer, the younger Stravinsky gained an early membership into a community rich with literary and cultural figures. At the age of nine, Stravinsky began to study piano and showed a precocious interest in opera, often attending his father’s performances with the Kiev Opera. On one occasion, when he chanced to be backstage, the young Stravinsky caught a glimpse of the famous composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky, a mere two weeks before the legend died of cholera.
While Stravinsky was a dedicated student of music, he showed less enthusiasm for his other studies, and subsequently paid little attention in school. Nevertheless, he attended St. Petersburg University at the age of 18 to study law and philosophy. His performance as a university student continued to be unimpressive. However, during his course of study, he met Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov, a fellow student and son of the famous composer, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. As the friendship between Stravinsky and the younger Rimsky-Korsakov progressed, Stravinsky eventually met Vladimir’s father. By 1902, Rimsky-Korsakov agreed to make Stravinsky his private pupil, as Stravinsky was too old to begin formal conservatory training. Stravinsky studied with Rimsky-Korsakov until the composer’s death in 1908.
During the years under Rimsky-Korsakov, Stravinsky was quite prolific, both personally and professionally. In 1905, he finished his studies at St. Petersburg University and became engaged to a cousin, Catherine Nossenko, whom he married the next year. 1907 and 1908 brought the arrivals of the first two of his four children and the performances of several of his student works, including his Symphony in E-flat Major and a song cycle entitled The Faun and the Shepherdess. Two other works written in 1908, his Scherzo Fantastique and Fireworks, would launch Stravinsky’s career the following year when the artistic impresario Serge Diaghilev attended a St. Petersburg performance of the pieces. At that time, Diaghilev was staging a historic tour of the Ballets Russes, with the exceptional choreographer Michel Fokine and the well-reputed dancers Ida Rubinstein and Anna Pavlova. The inaugural tour was so well received that Diaghilev decided to include work by a contemporary Russian composer for the second season. When the company’s first choice could not commit to the project, Diaghilev contacted Stravinsky, whom he thought had exhibited promise in earlier works. At the age of 28, Stravinsky collaborated with Fokine to create The Firebird, an adaptation of a Russian folk tale and the composer’s first full-length work. The first of a series of compositions based on Russian folk pieces, The Firebird premiered in Paris on June 25, 1910. It was an immediate hit, infusing the tired realm of ballet composition with new life. Following the performance of The Firebird, Stravinsky moved his young family to Paris, where he spent the next three years with the Ballets Russes.
1911-1914 marked a period of intense production punctuated by illness for Stravinsky. For its third season, the Ballets Russes premiered Petrushka, danced by Vaslav Nijinsky, which the Parisian audience loved. While Stravinsky planned to take part in the ballet ensemble’s following season, a bout of nicotine poisoning in 1911 prevented him from finishing a full-length piece. His return to the ballet world in 1913 came in the form of the monumental Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring). The piece’s introduction caused an uproar in the musical world and firmly established Stravinsky’s reputation as a modernist composer. Not long after, Stravinsky contracted cholera. His infirmity and the beginning of World War I terminated his work with the Ballets Russes for the rest of the decade. While he spent the duration of the war in Switzerland, Stravinsky traveled intermittently around Europe to conduct performances of The Firebird for the Red Cross. In 1917, he met Pablo Picasso on one of his trips, beginning a lifelong friendship. After the war, the composer produced two more pieces for the Ballets Russes, Pulcinella (1920) and Apollo Musagetes (1928), before Diaghilev’s death in 1929 led to the company’s dissolution.
In 1920, Stravinsky moved back to France, where he acquired citizenship in 1936 and resided until 1939. He immediately began a tour of Europe with his new works, most notably his Symphonies of Wind Instruments, which he dedicated to the memory of Claude Debussy, who had died in 1918. Through the 1920s and 1930s, Stravinsky’s music moved away from Russian folk influence and toward neoclassicism, which characterized his style for the next three decades. His major works from the time include Oedipus Rex (1927), The Fairy’s Kiss (1928), Symphony of Psalms (1930), Persephone (1934), and Dumbarton Oaks (1938). In addition, he composed numerous instrumental pieces for his own performances as a pianist and conductor.
In 1939, following the deaths of his eldest daughter, wife, and mother, Stravinsky left France for the United States, where he became a citizen in 1945. He delivered lectures at Harvard University and sought comfort in a longtime acquaintance, Vera de Bosset. The couple married in 1940 and moved to Hollywood, California, where Stravinsky found calm respite in the warm climate and a strictly regimented schedule. He continued to produce neoclassical works through World War II but succumbed to a major creative depression when he realized that the music world was moving beyond neoclassicism to more avant-garde forms. With the help of Roger Craft, a young composer who joined Stravinsky’s household in 1948, Stravinsky reemerged as new force in modern composition, experimenting with Serialism in works such as Cantata (1952), Septet (1953), and In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954). His later works of the 1950s and 1960s melded both his earlier influences with the new style, and he created pieces of unrivaled density and complexity before his death in 1971.
Igor Stravinksy, the once-hopeful law student, emerged onto the Western music scene to recreate the experience of music for both the critic and the casual listener. Well-respected by members of the art community during his lifetime, he is often considered the musical equivalent to his friend Pablo Picasso for the experimentation and innovation in his work. Stravinsky’s compositions continue to be immensely popular today, as his pieces still find relevance in the repertoires of modern performers.
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