Igor Stravinsky is one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. With his ballets for the Ballets Russes — *The Firebird*, *Petrushka*, and above all *The Rite of Spring* — he revolutionized musical language through bold rhythms and dissonances. Naturalized as a French then American citizen, he traversed all the major aesthetic movements of his time.
Igor Stravinsky(1882 — 1971)
Igor Stravinsky
États-Unis, Suisse, France, Empire russe
7 min read
Frequently asked questions
Key Facts
- Born in 1882 near Saint Petersburg, in the Russian Empire
- Composed *The Firebird* (1910) and *Petrushka* (1911) for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes
- Created *The Rite of Spring* in 1913 in Paris, provoking a famous scandal
- Adopted a neoclassical style in the interwar period, then explored serialism after 1950
- Settled in the United States in 1939 and died in New York in 1971
Works & Achievements
First major ballet commissioned by Diaghilev for the Ballets Russes, based on Russian folk tales. Its triumph in Paris revealed Stravinsky to the world and established his international fame.
Ballet telling the tragedy of a puppet endowed with a soul at a Russian fair. The work innovates with its bitonality and the interweaving of Russian folk music into a sophisticated orchestral language.
Foundational work of musical modernity, evoking a sacrificial rite in prehistoric Russia. Its revolutionary rhythms, dissonances, and sonic violence transformed the musical language of the 20th century.
Piece for seven instruments, actors, and dancer, composed in Switzerland under the material constraints of war. It blends folk music, jazz, and moral narrative in a stripped-down chamber format.
Choral and orchestral work on biblical texts, commissioned for the 50th anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. It marks the deepening of Orthodox spirituality in Stravinsky's creation.
Three-act opera with a libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, inspired by Hogarth's engravings. A pinnacle of the neoclassical period, it reconnects with the Mozartian tradition while remaining resolutely modern.
Stravinsky's first entirely twelve-tone work, on texts from the Lamentations of Jeremiah. It marks the surprising serial turn of his final creative period.
Anecdotes
On May 29, 1913, the premiere of *The Rite of Spring* at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées caused a resounding scandal: from the first bars, part of the audience whistled and shouted, while the other applauded. The hall quickly became the scene of brawls between spectators, so violent that police had to intervene. Stravinsky, furious and hurt, left the theater before the end.
Before the premiere of *The Rite*, Stravinsky and Debussy played the score four-hands at the latter's home. Debussy, impressed but unsettled by the rhythmic violence of the work, reportedly said he did not know if this music was beautiful, but that it was extraordinarily wild. This is one of the most famous encounters in the history of modern music.
Stravinsky composed in a tiny room, on an out-of-tune piano with mutes, so as not to disturb his neighbors. He worked very methodically every morning, considering composition as rigorous craftsmanship as much as inspiration. This Spartan discipline contrasts with the romantic image of the genius struck by inspiration.
In 1940, Walt Disney used *The Rite of Spring* in the film *Fantasia* without obtaining Stravinsky's artistic approval and by modifying the tempo of the work. Stravinsky, who attended a screening, was furious at the liberties taken with his score. The case revealed the shortcomings of American copyright law at the time for foreign composers.
In 1962, at the age of 80, Stravinsky returned to the USSR for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution. He was welcomed as a national hero despite decades of exile and Soviet condemnation of his music. Nikita Khrushchev himself attended one of his concerts, a significant event during the Cold War.
Primary Sources
I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all: a feeling, an attitude, a psychological state, a natural phenomenon. Expression has never been an immanent property of music.
Constraint is for me the path on which creative freedom willingly embarks. [...] The more art is controlled, limited, worked over, the freer it is.
I am working on a new piece for the ballet. The idea came to me from a vision: a great sacred pagan ceremony, with wise elders seated in a circle watching the dance to the death of a young girl.
Schoenberg's serial music had always repelled me, not for aesthetic reasons but because I perceived no necessity in it. It was the encounter with Webern that changed everything for me.
Key Places
Stravinsky's birthplace, where he grew up in a privileged musical environment as the son of a bass at the Imperial Opera. It was here that he received his first piano and music theory lessons.
Site of the foundational scandal of modern music: the premiere of *The Rite of Spring* on May 29, 1913. Paris was Stravinsky's artistic center of gravity for two decades.
Town on Lake Geneva where Stravinsky lived with his family during World War I. Here he composed *The Soldier's Tale* (1918), a chamber work born from the constraints of exile.
Stravinsky moved to this city in 1940, drawn by the California sun and the community of exiled European artists. He spent the last thirty years of his creative life here.
His favorite city, where *The Rake's Progress* premiered in 1951. Stravinsky is buried in San Michele Cemetery in Venice, not far from Diaghilev's tomb.
