Igor Stravinsky
Russian Modern chameleon who reinvented himself from primitivism to serialism
1882
1971
Russian
Modern
The Rite of Spring, The Firebird, Petrushka
Early life
Igor Stravinsky was born on 17 June 1882 in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), near Saint Petersburg. His father was a leading bass singer at the Mariinsky Theatre, and the young Stravinsky grew up immersed in the world of Russian opera. He studied law at the University of Saint Petersburg but took private composition lessons with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who became his most important mentor. His earliest orchestral works, the Symphony in E-flat (1907) and the Scherzo fantastique (1908), caught the attention of the impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who commissioned him to compose for the Ballets Russes.
Career and major works
The three ballets Stravinsky wrote for Diaghilev in quick succession transformed the course of twentieth-century music. The Firebird (1910) displayed brilliant Rimsky-Korsakov-influenced orchestration; Petrushka (1911) introduced polytonality and rhythmic displacement with exhilarating effect; and The Rite of Spring (1913), whose premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées provoked one of the most famous disturbances in concert history, shattered conventional ideas of rhythm, metre, and orchestral texture with its savage pounding ostinatos and asymmetric accents. After the First World War, Stravinsky settled in France and turned sharply towards neoclassicism, reinterpreting Baroque and Classical models through a modern lens in works such as Pulcinella (1920), the Octet for Winds (1923), the Symphony of Psalms (1930), and the opera The Rake's Progress (1951). In the 1950s, following the death of Schoenberg, he adopted serial techniques in works including Agon (1957), Threni (1958), and the Requiem Canticles (1966).
Musical style and legacy
Stravinsky's stylistic versatility is unparalleled: no other major composer reinvented himself so radically and so successfully. His music across all periods is characterised by rhythmic vitality, clarity of texture, formal precision, and an objectivity of expression that avoids Romantic self-indulgence. He became a French citizen in 1934 and an American citizen in 1945, spending his later years in Hollywood. He died in New York on 6 April 1971 and was buried, at his request, in Venice.