Igor Stravinsky (1962)

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and United States citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music.

Stravinsky's father was an established bass opera singer, and Stravinsky grew up taking piano and music theory lessons. While studying law at the University of Saint Petersburg, he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and studied under him until Rimsky-Korsakov's death in 1908. Stravinsky met the impresario Sergei Diaghilev soon after, who commissioned Stravinsky to write three ballets: ''The Firebird'' (1910), ''Petrushka'' (1911), and ''The Rite of Spring'' (1913), the last of which brought him international fame after the near-riot at the premiere, and changed the way composers understood rhythmic structure.

Stravinsky's compositional career is divided into three periods: his Russian period (1913–1920), his neoclassical period (1920–1951), and his serial period (1954–1968). Stravinsky's Russian period was characterised by influence from Russian styles and folklore. '' Renard'' (1916) and ''Les noces'' (1923) were based on Russian folk poetry, and works like ''L'Histoire du soldat'' blended these folktales with popular musical structures, like the tango, waltz, rag, and chorale. His neoclassical period exhibited themes and techniques from the classical period, like the use of the sonata form in his Octet (1923) and use of Greek mythological themes in works like ''Apollon musagète'' (1927), ''Oedipus rex'' (1927), and ''Persephone'' (1935). In his serial period, Stravinsky turned towards compositional techniques from the Second Viennese School like Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. ''In Memoriam Dylan Thomas'' (1954) was the first of his compositions to be fully based on the technique, and ''Canticum Sacrum'' (1956) was his first to be based on a tone row. Stravinsky's last major work was the ''Requiem Canticles'' (1966), which was performed at his funeral.

While some composers and academics of the time disliked the avant-garde nature of Stravinsky's music, particularly ''The Rite of Spring'', later writers recognized his importance to the development of modernist music. Stravinsky's revolutions of rhythm and modernism influenced composers like Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Béla Bartók, and Pierre Boulez, all of whom "felt impelled to face the challenges set by 'The Rite of Spring''" as George Benjamin wrote in ''The Guardian''. In 1998, ''Time'' magazine named Stravinsky one of the 100 most influential people of the century. Stravinsky died of pulmonary edema on 6 April 1971 in New York City.

Biography

Early life, 1882–1901

Stravinsky was born on 17 June 1882 in the town of Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland, west of Saint Petersburg. His father, Fyodor Ignatievich Stravinsky, was an established bass opera singer in the Kiev Opera and the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg and 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. Igor was the third of their four sons; his brothers were Roman, Yury, and Gury. The Stravinsky family was of Polish and Russian heritage, descended "from a long line of Polish grandees, senators and landowners". It is traceable to the 17th and 18th centuries to the bearers of the Sulima and Strawiński coat of arms. The original family surname was Sulima-Strawiński; the name "Stravinsky" originated from the word "Strava", one of the variants of the Streva river in Lithuania.

On 10 August 1882, Stravinsky was baptised at Nikolsky Cathedral in Saint Petersburg. Stravinsky's first school was the Second Saint Petersburg Gymnasium, where he stayed until his mid-teens. Then, he moved to Gourevitch Gymnasium, a private school, where he studied history, mathematics, and languages (Latin, Greek, French, German, Slavonic, and his native Russian). Stravinsky expressed his general distaste for schooling and recalled being a lonely pupil: "I never came across anyone who had any real attraction for me."

At around eight years old, he attended a performance of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's ballet '' The Sleeping Beauty'' at the Mariinsky Theatre, which began a lifelong interest in ballets and Tchaikovsky. Stravinsky took to music at an early age and began regular piano lessons at age nine, followed by tuition in music theory and composition. By age fourteen, Stravinsky mastered Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1, and at age fifteen finished a piano reduction of a string quartet by Alexander Glazunov, who reportedly considered Stravinsky unmusical and thought little of his skills.

Education and first compositions, 1901–1909

Despite Stravinsky's enthusiasm and ability in music, his parents expected him to study law. In 1901, he enrolled at the University of Saint Petersburg, studying criminal law and legal philosophy, but attendance at lectures was optional and he estimated that he turned up to fewer than fifty classes in his four years of study.

In 1902, Stravinsky met Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov, a fellow student at the University of Saint Petersburg and the youngest son of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Nikolai at that time was arguably the leading Russian composer, and he was a professor at Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Stravinsky wished to meet him to discuss his musical aspirations. He spent the summer of 1902 with Rimsky-Korsakov and his family in Heidelberg, Germany. Rimsky-Korsakov suggested to Stravinsky that he should not enter the Saint Petersburg Conservatory but continue private lessons in theory.

By the time of his father's death in 1902, Stravinsky was spending more time studying music than law. His decision to pursue music full time was helped when the university was closed for two months in 1905 in the aftermath of Bloody Sunday, which prevented him from taking his final law exams. In April 1906, Stravinsky received a half-course diploma and concentrated on music thereafter. In 1905, he had begun studying with Rimsky-Korsakov twice a week and came to regard him as a second father. These lessons continued until Rimsky-Korsakov's death in 1908. Stravinsky completed his first composition during this time, the Symphony in E-flat, catalogued as Opus 1. In 1908, soon after Rimsky-Korsakov's death, Stravinsky composed '' Funeral Song'', Op. 5, which was performed once and then considered lost until its re-discovery in 2015.

In August 1905, Stravinsky became engaged to his first cousin, Yekaterina Gavrilovna Nosenko. In spite of the Orthodox Church's opposition to marriage between first cousins, the couple married on 23 January 1906. They lived in the family's residence at 66 Krukov Canal in Saint Petersburg before they moved into a new home in Ustilug, which Stravinsky designed and built, chosen because Stravinsky had spent many summers there as a child with his father-in-law. Stravinsky worked on many of his early compositions there, including ''Funeral Song'', the revision of ''Feu d'artifice'', ''The Nightingale'', and some parts of ''The Rite of Spring''. It is now a museum with documents, letters, and photographs on display, and an annual Stravinsky Festival takes place in the nearby town of Lutsk. The couple had two children, Fyodor and Ludmila, who were born in 1907 and 1908, respectively.

Ballets for Diaghilev and international fame, 1909–1920

By 1909, Stravinsky had composed two more pieces, ''Scherzo fantastique'', Op. 3, and ''Feu d'artifice'' (''Fireworks''), Op. 4. In February of that year, both were performed in Saint Petersburg at a concert that marked a turning point in Stravinsky's career. In the audience was Sergei Diaghilev, a Russian impresario and owner of the Ballets Russes who was struck with Stravinsky's compositions. He commissioned Stravinsky to write some orchestrations for the 1909 ballet season, which were finished by April of that year. While planning for the 1910 ballet season, Diaghilev wished to stage a new ballet from fresh talent that was based on the Russian fairytale of the Firebird. After Anatoly Lyadov was given the task of composing the score, he informed Diaghilev that he needed about one year to complete it. Diaghilev then asked the 28-year-old Stravinsky, who had already begun work on the score in anticipation of the commission. At about 50 minutes in length, ''The Firebird'' was revised by Stravinsky into concert suites in 1919 and 1945.

''The Firebird'' premiered at the Opera de Paris on 25 June 1910 to widespread critical acclaim and Stravinsky became an overnight sensation. As his wife was pregnant, the Stravinskys spent the summer in La Baule in western France. In September, they moved to Clarens, Switzerland, where their second son, Soulima, was born. The family would spend their summers in Russia and winters in Switzerland until 1914. Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to score a second ballet for the 1911 Paris season. The result was ''Petrushka'', based on the Russian folk tale featuring the titular character, a puppet, who falls in love with another, a ballerina. Though it failed to capture the immediate reception that ''The Firebird'' had following its premiere at Théâtre du Châtelet in June 1911, the production continued Stravinsky's success.

It was Stravinsky's third ballet for Diaghilev, ''The Rite of Spring'', that caused a sensation among critics, fellow composers, and concertgoers. Based on an idea thought up by Stravinsky while composing ''Firebird'', the production features a series of primitive pagan rituals celebrating the advent of spring. Stravinsky's score contained many novel features for its time, including experiments in tonality, metre, rhythm, stress and dissonance. The radical nature of the music and choreography caused a near-riot at its premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913.

Shortly after the premiere, Stravinsky contracted typhoid from eating bad oysters and he was confined to a Paris nursing home. He left in July 1913 and returned to Ustilug. For the rest of the summer he focused on his first opera, ''The Nightingale'', based on a story by Hans Christian Andersen, which Stravinsky had started in 1908. On 15 January 1914, Stravinsky and Nosenko had their fourth child, Marie Milène (or Maria Milena). After her delivery, Nosenko was discovered to have tuberculosis and was committed to a sanatorium in Leysin in the Alps. Stravinsky took up residence nearby, where he completed ''The Nightingale''. The work premiered in Paris in May 1914, after the Moscow Free Theatre had commissioned the piece for 10,000 roubles but soon became bankrupt. Diaghilev agreed that the Ballets Russes to stage it. The opera had only lukewarm success with the public and the critics, apparently because its delicacy did not meet their expectations following the tumultuous ''Rite of Spring''. However, composers including Maurice Ravel, Béla Bartók, and Reynaldo Hahn found much to admire in the score's craftsmanship, even claiming to detect the influence of Arnold Schoenberg.

In April 1914, Stravinsky and his family returned to Clarens. Stravinsky was ineligible for military service in the World War due to his history of typhoid. Stravinsky managed a short visit to Ustilug to retrieve personal items just before borders were closed. In June 1915, he and his family moved from Clarens to Morges, a town six miles from Lausanne on the shore of Lake Geneva. The family lived there (at three different addresses), until 1920. In December 1915, Stravinsky made his conducting debut at two concerts in aid of the Red Cross with ''The Firebird''. The war and subsequent Russian Revolution in 1917 made it impossible for Stravinsky to return to his homeland.

Stravinsky began to struggle financially in the late 1910s. When Russia (and its successor, the USSR) did not adhere to the Berne Convention and the aftermath of World War I left countries in ruin, royalties for performances of Stravinsky's pieces stopped coming. Stravinsky, seeking financial assistance, approached the Swiss philanthropist Werner Reinhart, who agreed to sponsor him and largely underwrite the first performance of ''L'Histoire du soldat'' in September 1918. In gratitude, Stravinsky dedicated the work to Reinhart and gave him the original manuscript. Reinhart supported Stravinsky further when he funded a series of concerts of his chamber music in 1919. In gratitude to his benefactor, Stravinsky dedicated his ''Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet'' to Reinhart, who was an amateur clarinettist. Stravinsky travelled to Paris to attend the premiere of ''Pulcinella'' by the Ballets Russes on 15 May 1920, returning to Switzerland afterwards.

Life in France, 1920–1939

In June 1920, Stravinsky and his family left Switzerland for France, first settling in Carantec for the summer while they sought a permanent home in Paris.

They soon heard from the couturière Coco Chanel, who invited the family to live in her Paris mansion until they had found their own residence. The Stravinskys accepted and arrived in September. Stravinsky and Chanel quickly became lovers, but the affair was short and ended in May 1921. She helped secure a guarantee for a revival production of ''The Rite of Spring'' by the Ballets Russes from December 1920 with an anonymous gift to Diaghilev that was claimed to be worth 300,000 francs.

In 1920, Stravinsky signed a contract with the French piano manufacturing company Pleyel. As part of the deal, Stravinsky transcribed most of his compositions for their player piano, the Pleyela. The company helped collect Stravinsky's mechanical royalties for his works and provided him with a monthly income. In 1921, he was given studio space at their Paris headquarters where he worked and entertained friends and acquaintances. The piano rolls were not recorded, but were instead marked up from a combination of manuscript fragments and handwritten notes by Jacques Larmanjat, musical director of Pleyel's roll department. During the 1920s, Stravinsky recorded Duo-Art piano rolls for the Aeolian Company in London and New York City.

Stravinsky met Vera Sudeikin in Paris in February 1921, while she was married to the painter and stage designer Serge Sudeikin, and they began an affair that led to Vera Sudeikin leaving her husband in the spring of 1922.

In May 1921, Stravinsky and his family moved to Anglet

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