IgorStravinsky

Stravinsky was born in 1882 at Oranienbaum. His father, Fyodor, sang bass at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg; Igor heard him on stage and began piano lessons at nine. He entered St Petersburg University to study law. There he befriended Vladimir Rimsky-⁠Korsakov, whose father heard his first pieces in 1902. Rimsky-⁠Korsakov took him on privately, giving regular lessons from 1905 until his death in 1908. The pupil orchestrated pages of Pan Voyevoda, then had to explain why his teacher had scored them differently.

He married his cousin Catherine Nossenko in 1906; by 1914 they had four children. His E♭ Symphony owed much to Glazunov and Tchaikovsky; Scherzo fantastique and Fireworks are short orchestral works. Sergei Diaghilev heard his music in 1909 and gave him some Chopin to orchestrate for Les Sylphides. A full ballet, The Firebird, followed. Stravinsky handed over the score in sections while Michel Fokine worked out the dances. In his 1936 autobiography he recalled that the rehearsals ended with dinner beside Diaghilev and Nijinsky, and good claret.

Paris, 1910–⁠13The Firebird, Petrushka, The Rite of Spring

The Firebird opened at the Paris Opéra on 25 June 1910, with Tamara Karsavina dancing the bird, and made him famous. The princesses have folk-like tunes; the music for Kashchei’s enchanted kingdom moves through chromatic notes; the bird’s music is in the high woodwind. He had learnt the fairy-tale orchestra from Rimsky. For the next ballet he imagined a puppet tormenting the orchestra with what his autobiography calls “diabolical cascades of arpeggios”. This was Petrushka, which he first conceived as a concert piece with a troublesome piano soloist. Diaghilev saw that it could be a ballet.

Alexandre Benois helped devise the story and designed the St Petersburg fair where it takes place. In the 1911 ballet, street musicians compete for attention, the piano part is prominent throughout, and the puppet loves a ballerina who prefers somebody else. His curses are set as a clash of C major and F♯ major, two ordinary chords sounded together. Nijinsky danced Petrushka. The puppet is killed, the showman displays its stuffing, and then its ghost appears above the booth, still mocking him.

In Stravinsky’s later account he stood in the wings holding Nijinsky’s clothes while the choreographer stood on a chair shouting counts to dancers who could not hear the orchestra. In April 1914 Monteux played the score in concert in Paris, and admirers carried the composer out on their shoulders. In the final “Sacrificial Dance”, short bars keep changing length beneath the chosen girl’s jumps.

Switzerland, 1914–⁠20Swiss exile and Histoire du soldat

The war left the family stranded in Switzerland, and the Revolution cut off their Russian income. Stravinsky kept asking for Russian books. On 23 February 1916 he told his mother to send folk songs of the Caucasus “that have been phonographically transcribed”, that is, songs taken down from phonograph recordings. She could leave the other collections, he told her. Renard sets an animal fable for singers, dancers and a small band that includes a cimbalom. With the Swiss writer C. F. Ramuz he wrote Histoire du soldat for a theatre that could tour cheaply. In it a soldier sells his violin to the Devil, and seven players accompany the action.

It opened in Lausanne in 1918, and the influenza epidemic stopped the tour. Stravinsky’s band had violin and double bass, clarinet and bassoon, cornet and trombone, and a percussionist, so each family has a high and a low instrument with a wide gap between them. The march is set in a rhythm that does not line up with the tune; a tango, a waltz and a ragtime follow. Les Noces, begun in 1914, did not reach the stage until 1923. After trying several scorings, Stravinsky settled on four pianos and percussion beneath soloists and chorus. Bronislava Nijinska choreographed the wedding.

France, 1920–⁠39Pulcinella and the neoclassical works

The Octet of 1923 and the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments of 1924 applied this spare scoring to concert works. Stravinsky played the concerto on tour himself. In Oedipus rex (1927), Jean Cocteau’s text was sung in Latin in Jean Daniélou’s translation, while a narrator explained the events in the audience’s own language. Apollo (1928) is scored for strings alone. George Balanchine choreographed the Paris production, beginning a partnership that continued through Jeu de cartes, Orpheus and Agon.

He returned to Orthodox communion in 1926. Four years later, commissioned for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, he wrote the Symphony of Psalms, which sets Latin psalms in three connected movements. The orchestra includes two pianos and a harp and has no violins, violas or clarinets. The second movement combines two fugues, one instrumental and one sung. At the end the choir repeats its praise slowly over a circling accompaniment. He became a French citizen in 1934 and continued to earn his living from commissions and concert performances.

America, 1939–⁠51Los Angeles and The Rake’s Progress

Within eight months, from November 1938 to June 1939, his daughter Lyudmila, Catherine and his mother died. He left for America in September to give the Harvard lectures later published as Poetics of Music. Vera de Bosset followed him; they married in 1940 and settled in Los Angeles. He finished the Symphony in C that year and became an American citizen in 1945. The Symphony in Three Movements, completed in 1945, gives the piano a hard-driving part and the harp a quieter one. He later linked its outer movements to wartime newsreels.

Hogarth’s pictures of a young man squandering his inheritance suggested an English opera. In 1947 Stravinsky began working with W. H. Auden; Chester Kallman joined Auden on the libretto. The Rake’s Progress, first conducted by the composer in Venice in 1951, has arias, ensembles and harpsichord recitative, and draws on the operas of Mozart. Auden and Kallman added the character of Nick Shadow, a servant whose wages are his master’s soul. Tom Rakewell ends in Bedlam, where Anne Trulove sings him to sleep. The singers then step out of their roles to deliver the epilogue.

The last scoresRobert Craft and the serial works

He went on conducting and recording, and left performances of nearly all his music. Requiem Canticles (1966) sets only fragments of the Latin mass for the dead and ends with a postlude of chords, silences and tolling bells. He moved to New York in 1969 and died there on 6 April 1971. The Canticles were performed at his funeral in Venice. His grave is on San Michele, near Diaghilev’s.