Igor Stravinsky

In the late summer of 1909, Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971) received a telegram which was to change not only his own life, but the course of musical history. It was sent by the Russian impresario Sergei Diaghilev, asking Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov’s pupil – hitherto practically unknown – if he would be interested in writing the music for a ballet based on a theme taken from Russian fairytales. The premiere of the work entitled “The Firebird” was scheduled for the next spring in Paris. After a moment of hesitation in view of the short time available, the young composer threw himself into work. “The Firebird” was a brilliant success. Passages of thrilling rhythmic power and aggressive wildness, short melodies inspired by Russian folk music and a highly developed feeling for tonal colour are the most important characteristics of the “Firebird” music and are features that are to remain significant in Stravinsky’s future work. However, the essential innovative quality of the score is not visible on first sight. Even in this early work, long passages suspend traditional harmony and allow the combination of harmonies to succumb to their own logic. The harmonies themselves are still not revolutionary in any respect.

This was to change in the next two scores for the ballets “Petruschka” and “The Rite of Spring”. In “The Rite of Spring”, which was first performed on 29 May 1913 and accompanied by one of the greatest scandals of recent musical history, Stravinsky unleashes a rhythmic and tonal storm of previously inconceivable intensity, layering constantly repeating musical phrases one over another to create extreme dissonances and abolish any sense of metrics by setting irregular accents. In this work, collage emerges as a fundamental principle of Stravinsky’s composition, taking up fixed elements that are juxtaposed and layered in clear contrasts defined by sharp edges.

Stravinsky could not and did not ever wish to surpass his “Rite of Spring”. Even before a background of war, he deliberately created sparse, minimised works such as “The Soldiers Tale”. In 1920, Stravinsky settled in Paris after spending a period of exile in Switzerland. Just as he had previously derived his inspiration from Russian folk music, he now adopted the musical styles of past eras, which he assimilated in a very individual, unconventional manner, thus becoming a central exponent of Neoclassicism. During the 1920s, he began a successful career as a performer, initially as a pianist, but later chiefly as a conductor of his own works.

Stravinsky experienced the rise of Fascism as a general crisis of culture in Europe. This was intensified by personal strokes of fate. When he received an invitation to hold lectures on the poetics of music at Harvard University in 1939, he saw an opportunity to change his life circumstances. He first planned only a temporary stay in the USA, but the decision to settle there permanently quickly matured. The composer now returned to Europe only for concert engagements and Stravinsky, who had previously held French citizenship, became an American citizen in 1945.

His time in America brought with it a significant new stylistic orientation. Inspired by the music of the post-war generation, Stravinsky devoted himself during the 1950s to the compositions of Anton Webern and adapted serial techniques, again in a highly individual manner. In his 70s, Stravinsky was therefore regarded both as a “modern classicist” whose earlier works were played by major orchestras in representative concerts, and as an avant-gardist whose music was performed at special festivals for contemporary music. He seemed almost to belong to the youngest generation of composers. His last major work, the “Requiem Canticles”, was composed in 1965/66. Stravinsky died on 6 April 1971 in New York.