The Firebird (1910)
His breakthrough ballet for Diaghilev, based on Russian folk tales
Recording: Unknown · Public domain, Wikimedia Commons
Music
Igor Stravinsky
1882–1971 · Russian (later French and American)
Modernism / Neoclassicism
Igor Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer and one of the most influential figures in 20th-century music. His early ballets for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, above all The Rite of Spring, revolutionised rhythm and harmony. He later reinvented himself as a neoclassicist and, in old age, a serialist.
How to spot them
- ▸The Rite of Spring opens with a strained, very high bassoon solo, then erupts into stamping, off-beat accented chords with irregular, shifting metres
- ▸Glittering Russian fairy-tale orchestration in The Firebird, including the savage "Infernal Dance" with brass and percussion jolts
- ▸Clashing bitonality — the "Petrushka chord" superimposes C major and F-sharp major
- ▸Neoclassical period: dry, crisp 18th-century forms with wrong-note harmonies and spiky wind writing (Pulcinella, The Rake's Progress)
Key works — listen
Petrushka (1911)
Ballet about a puppet who comes to life, set at a Shrovetide fair
The Rite of Spring (1913)
Ballet of pagan sacrifice whose Paris premiere provoked a near-riot
Pulcinella (1920)
Ballet reworking 18th-century music then attributed to Pergolesi; launched his neoclassical period
Symphony of Psalms (1930)
Choral symphony for the Boston Symphony Orchestra's 50th anniversary, without violins or violas
The Rake's Progress (1951)
Opera after Hogarth's paintings, libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman
Quick-fire facts
- •The Rite of Spring premiered on 29 May 1913 at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris, choreographed by Nijinsky and conducted by Pierre Monteux
- •He studied privately with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
- •His three great early ballets — The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring — were written for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes
- •Pablo Picasso designed the sets and costumes for Pulcinella
- •He became a French citizen in 1934 and an American citizen in 1945
- •He is buried on the cemetery island of San Michele in Venice, near Diaghilev
- •L'Histoire du soldat (The Soldier's Tale, 1918) is a small-scale theatre piece to a text by C. F. Ramuz
- •The Rite of Spring features in Disney's Fantasia (1940), accompanying the history of life on Earth
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- Alex Ross — The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — Igor Stravinsky
- Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press) — Stravinsky, Igor