Russian composer and conductor Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky[a] was born in 17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 and died on 6 April 1971. He held dual citizenship in the United States (from 1945) and France (from 1934). He is regarded by many as one of the 20th century’s most significant and influential composers as well as a key player in modernist music.
Growing up, Stravinsky studied music theory and piano under his father, a well-known bass opera singer. He met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov while a law student at the University of Saint Petersburg, where they both studied under him until Rimsky-Korsakov’s death in 1908. Soon after, Stravinsky met the renowned Sergei Diaghilev, who gave him three ballet commissions to create: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913), the latter of which won him fame.
Three phases can be distinguished in Stravinsky’s composing career: the Russian (1913–1920) period, the Neoclassical (1920–1951) period, and the Serial (1954–1968) period.
Russian fashion and folklore had a big influence on Stravinsky throughout his Russian time. Based on Russian traditional poetry, Renard (1916) and Les noces (1923) combined folktales with popular musical forms such as the tango, waltz, ragtime, and chorale in pieces like L’Histoire du soldat. Using the sonata form in his Octet (1923) and Greek mythical themes in pieces like Apollon musagète (1927), Oedipus rex (1927), and Persephone (1935), he showcased themes and techniques from the classical period in his neoclassical period.
During his serial period, Stravinsky became interested in Second Viennese School compositional methods, such as the twelve-tone method used by Arnold Schoenberg. Canticum Sacrum (1956) was his first composition based on a tone row, while In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954) was his first composition entirely based on the technique. Requiem Canticles (1966), Stravinsky’s final major composition, was played at his burial.
Even though Stravinsky’s avant-garde music, especially The Rite of Spring, turned off several academics and composers of the era, later commentators acknowledged Stravinsky’s significance to the growth of modernist music.
Biography of Igor Stravinsky
Early life, 1882–1901
On June 17, 1882, Stravinsky was born in the town of Oranienbaum, which is located 25 miles (40 km) west of Saint Petersburg on the Gulf of Finland’s southern coast.[/2][3] His mother, Anna Kirillovna Stravinskaya (née Kholodovskaya; 1854–1939), a native of Kiev, was one of four daughters of a high-ranking official in the Kiev Ministry of Estates. His father, Fyodor Ignatievich Stravinsky, was a well-known bass opera singer in the Kiev Opera and the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg.
Of their four sons, Igor was the third; his brothers were Gury, Yury, and Roman.*[4] The Stravinsky family sprang “from a long line of Polish grandees, senators, and landowners” and had both Polish and Russian ancestry.(6)
Sulima-Strawiński was the original family surname; “Stravinsky” comes from the word “Strava,” which is a variation of the Streva river in Lithuania.(7)(8)
Stravinsky was baptized at Saint Petersburg’s Nikolsky Cathedral on August 10, 1882.[4] Up until his mid-teens, Stravinsky attended the Second Saint Petersburg Gymnasium as his first school. After that, he transferred to the private Gourevitch Gymnasium, where he studied languages (Russian, Latin, Greek, French, German, and Slavonic), history, and mathematics.In [9] In general, Stravinsky said he disliked education and remembered being a lonely student: “I never came across anyone who had any real attraction for me.”10]
He developed a lifelong fascination in ballets and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Sleeping Beauty when he was about eight years old, after seeing a performance of the work at the Mariinsky Theatre.11] Stravinsky had a natural affinity for music and started taking piano lessons at the age of nine. He later received instruction in composition and music theory.In [12] At the age of fifteen, Stravinsky completed a piano reduction of Alexander Glazunov’s string quartet. Glazunov, who supposedly thought nothing of Stravinsky’s abilities, saw him as unmusical. By the age of fourteen, Stravinsky had mastered Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No. 1.11]
Education and first compositions, 1901–1909
Stravinsky’s parents expected him to pursue a legal career, despite his passion and musical talent. He studied criminal law and legal philosophy at the University of Saint Petersburg, where he enrolled in 1901. However, he estimated that he attended fewer than fifty classes during his four years of study because attendance at lectures was optional.13]
Painting of Rimsky-Korsakov with his spectacles on and his left eye turned
Valentin Serov painted Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov in 1898.
Vladimir, the youngest son of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and a fellow student at the University of Saint Petersburg, was introduced to Stravinsky in 1902. At the time, Nikolai was a professor at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory and was undoubtedly the most prominent composer in Russia. He wanted to meet Stravinsky so they could talk about his goals in music.
Stravinsky was advised by Rimsky-Korsakov to continue receiving private theory instruction rather than enrolling in the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.In [14]
When his father passed away in 1902, Stravinsky was devoting more of his time to his studies of music than law.[13] Bloody Sunday in 1905 forced the university to close for two months, delaying his final legal exams and supporting his choice to devote himself full-time to music.In [15]
After earning a diploma for a partial term in April 1906, Stravinsky focused on music.[16] He started studying with Rimsky-Korsakov twice a week in 1905 and eventually started to think of him as a second parent.13] These teachings persisted until 1908, the year of Rimsky-Korsakov’s death.(17) During this period, Stravinsky finished his first composition, the Symphony in E-flat, which is now listed.
Funeral Song, Op. 5, by Stravinsky, was written shortly after Rimsky-Korsakov died in 1908; it was only played once before being deemed lost until its re-discovery in 2015.18]
Stravinsky got engaged to Yekaterina Gavrilovna Nosenko, his first cousin, in August of 1905. The couple got married on January 23, 1906, despite the Orthodox Church’s disapproval of first-cousin marriages.19]20] Before relocating to a new home in Ustilug that Stravinsky planned and built, they resided in the family’s home at 66 Krukov Canal in Saint Petersburg.
Stravinsky chose the location because he had spent many summers there as a child with his father-in-law.21]19]21] There, Stravinsky wrote a great deal of his early works, such as Funeral Song, The Nightingale, Feu d’artifice (revision), and sections of The Rite of Spring.23]24]
Ballets for Diaghilev and international fame, 1909–1920
Stravinsky wrote two further pieces by 1909: Feu d’artifice (Fireworks), Op. 4, and Scherzo fantastique, Op. 3. Both pieces were played in Saint Petersburg in February of that year during a concert that was a turning point in Stravinsky’s career. The Ballets Russes’ owner and prominent Russian, Sergei Diaghilev, was in the audience and was enthralled with Stravinsky’s pieces.
For the 1909 ballet season, he hired Stravinsky to compose some orchestrations, which were completed by April of that year. Diaghilev wanted to present a brand-new ballet based on up-and-coming talent for the 1910 ballet season, which was inspired by the Russian fairytale of the Firebird.
Anatoly Lyadov told Diaghilev that he would require around a year to finish the score when he was assigned to write it. The 28-year-old Stravinsky, who had started working on the score ahead of the commission, was then questioned by Diaghilev.In [27] Stravinsky expanded The Firebird to a fifty-minute work in 1919 and transformed it into concert suites in 1945.(28)
With the widely acclaimed debut of The Firebird at the Opera de Paris on June 25, 1910, Stravinsky became an overnight phenomenon in the eyes of the critics.29][/30] The Stravinskys spent the summer in La Baule, in western France, as his wife was expecting. They relocated to Clarens, Switzerland, in September, and Soulima, their second son, was born there.(31 ) The family used to spend the winters in Switzerland and the summers in Russia.
Despite not receiving the same initial response as The Firebird when it debuted at Théâtre du Châtelet in June 1911, the production maintained Stravinsky’s popularity.34]
picture of dancers dressed in tattered clothing
Pina Bausch’s 2008 rendition of The Rite of Spring
music measures that alternate between 3/16 and 2/16, then back again, with narrowly spaced polytonal chords
The “Sacrificial Dance”‘s first measures display the strange chords and meters.(b)
The Rite of Spring, Stravinsky’s third ballet for Diaghilev, was a hit with reviewers, other composers, and audience members. The show, which is based on a concept that Stravinsky had while writing Firebird, includes a number of archaic paganism rites honoring the arrival of spring.(35)
After eating tainted oysters shortly after the premiere, Stravinsky became confined to a nursing home in Paris and developed typhoid. He departed and came back to Ustilug in July 1913.[38] He spent the remainder of the summer working on The Nightingale, his debut opera, which was inspired by a Hans Christian Andersen tale and which Stravinsky had begun work on in 1908.39]. Marie Milène (also known as Maria Milena) was the fourth child born to Stravinsky and Nosenko on January 15, 1914.
Nosenko was admitted to a sanatorium in Leysin, in the Alps, after it was found that she had tuberculosis following her delivery. After settling close, Stravinsky finished The Nightingale.(40)(41) The Moscow Free Theatre had commissioned the piece for 10,000 roubles, but soon after, it made its Paris debut in May 1914.
Stravinsky and his family went back to Clarens in April of 1914.[45] Because of his history of typhoid, Stravinsky was not eligible to serve in the military during World War II.Just before borders were closed, Stravinsky was able to make a quick trip to Ustilug to gather personal belongings [32].[46] He and his family relocated from Clarens to Morges, a town on the shores of Lake Geneva six miles from Lausanne, in June 1915. Up to 1920, the family resided there (at three separate addresses).(47)
With two performances of The Firebird in December 1915, Stravinsky made his conducting debut for the Red Cross.48] It was difficult for Stravinsky to return to his native country during the war and the Russian Revolution that followed in 1917.49]
In the late 1910s, Stravinsky started to have financial difficulties. Royalties for performances of Stravinsky’s pieces ceased to come in when Russia (and its successor, the USSR) disregarded the Berne Convention and the aftermath of World War I left nations in ruins.50][51] In need of money, Stravinsky turned to Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart, who consented to support him and provide most of the funding for the premiere of L’Histoire du soldat in September 1918.52] Stravinsky sent Reinhart the original manuscript and dedicated the work to him as a gesture of thanks.51]
In 1919, Reinhart provided more assistance for Stravinsky by sponsoring a run of chamber music concerts.53]54] Reinhart was an amateur clarinettist, and Stravinsky dedicated his Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet to her as a token of appreciation for his donor.In [55] Stravinsky visited Paris.