Igor Stravinsky - Biography
Igor Stravinsky the supreme modernist of the 20th century was born on June 17th 1882 just outside of St. Petersburg Russia and died April 6th 1971 in New York. Stravinsky’s father Feodor was the star bass of the Mariiansky Opera in St. Petersburg Stravinsky as a young boy met many of the musical celebrities of Imperial Russia including a fleeting sight of Tchaikovsky when he was ten. Stravinsky as a member of the Russian upper classes had a musical education on the piano but no professional academic training. At nineteen and at his father’s urging he entered law school, though he had a superbly disciplined mind he didn’t do well as law student and left after a few years. Stravinsky in 1902 travelled to Germany where he befriended the son of the famed Russian composer Rimsky-Korsakov who introduced him to his father and he soon became part of Rimsky’s eminent musical circle. Stravinsky soon became a student of Rimsky and since Rimsky was one of the great masters of orchestration he learned unique insights into scoring for orchestra. Stravinsky’s first pieces under his Rimsky’s tutelage were a Piano Sonata in 1905 and a Symphony in 1907, neither characteristic of Stravinsky but promising. In celebration of the marriage of Rimsky’s daughter in 1908 he wrote his first well known piece Fireworks. His teacher was to die the same year; whilst part of the Rimsky circle he married his first cousin Catherine Nossenko in 1906 with whom he was to have four children two sons and two daughters. Besides the relatively minor Scherzo Fantastique his first great work was created when the great Russian dance impresario Serge Diaghilev commissioned him to write The Firebird in 1910 for the Ballet Russe in Paris. The work which was best known from the suites drawn from the ballet has tremendous color and rhythmic power immediately made him a major composer.
His next work an even greater one Petrouchka was written in 1911 for Diaghilev and his brilliant young lead dancer Vassily Nijinsky. This ballets central character a clown puppet that comes to life and loses his heart and life to a puppet ballerina is unbearably poignant. Stravinsky’s third masterwork for the Ballet Russe is in all probability the most important piece of music of the Twentieth Century Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring). This work whose rhythmic power and overwhelming sonority created a riot at its first performance in 1913 conducted by young soon to be famous Pierre Monteux. Part of the controversy was the bizarre and suggestive choreography of Nijinsky but the main cause of the uproar was the dissonance and barbarism of Stravinsky’s score. Stravinsky next year was to work on a short opera for Diaghilev The Nightingale that is heard most often through the symphonic piece extracted from the opera.
As we come to the years of the First World War Stravinsky makes a decision to leave Russia for Switzerland and he has an aesthetic change in his compositional style, he moves from the colossal orchestras and brilliant color of the ballets to a spare chamber style. This is typified by his next major works Les Noces (The Wedding) for voice ,chorus percussion and four pianos, the sardonic L’ Historie du Soldat (Story of a Soldier) for seven instruments wind and percussion and narrator and Ragtime for eleven instruments. Stravinsky becomes friends with a young Swiss conductor Ernest Ansermet who was to become one of his major interpreters for the next half century. In the 1920’s he was to develop a new style neo classicism that deliberately invoked the modest scale and craftsmanship of the eighteenth century baroque composers. His first major example of this style was another ballet written for Diaghilev Pulcinela based on themes form the Baroque composer Pergolesi. He was also to write during this period two short operas Mrava and Renard. Other neo classic works from this era are The Symphony for Wind Instruments in memory of Debussy, Octet for Winds, the Concerto for Piano and Winds and above all the monumental one act opera Oedipus Rex of 1927 sung in Latin to emphasize its classicism. Stravinsky was to write a more emotion laden work the Symphony of Psalms for a large orchestra minus violins and violas and chorus written for the fiftieth anniversary of the Boston Symphony and the Glory of God (Stravinsky though a bon vivant and ladies man was deeply religious). The stream of works were to continue through the thirties; The Capriccio or piano and orchestra, the ballets Apollo Musagette (1929) a ballet Persephone with narrated text by Andre Gide,Le Baiser de la Fee based on little known Tchaikovsky, a Violin Concerto and a virtuoso orchestral work written for his conducting tours Jeux de Cartes (Card Games). Stravinsky wrote a treatise on music during the late1930’s The Poetics of Music wherein he spoke out against blatant emotion in music. The neo classical works and the stern writings on aesthetics created a back lash in segments of the musical establishment who said that Stravinsky was once a genius but that his new works were barren.
Paradoxically though Stravinsky at the time was so anti-communist that he seemed supportive of the authoritarian right in France and Italy he was became controversial and eventually banned in the Third Reich primarily for his modernism. Stravinsky personal affairs in the late 1930’s were in turmoil, his wife and elder daughter were to die of tuberculosis (even though he had been living with his mistress the beautiful and sophisticated Russian actress Vera de Bosset for many years, he still felt deeply about his wife Catherine). He also contracted the disease and needed to be isolated in a sanatorium for a number of months. Stravinsky fearing turmoil in Europe would eventually make his position untenable applied for American citizenship in 1939 settling in New York and teaching at Harvard. Stravinsky at this point had toured in America extensively in prior years and had written the Dumbarton Oaks in 1938 for chamber orchestra for a Washington musical society. Stravinsky didn’t care for the east coast and moved to Los Angeles with Vera who he had married in 1940. Los Angeles during this period was a hot bed for modern music Stravinsky’s only rival for chief modernist the great Arnold Schoenberg had moved to LA seven years earlier (they were wary of each other and never met), other figures like Kreneck, Toch, Alma Mahler Werfel and even the last of the great romantics Rachmaninoff all lived within a few miles of each other. Stravinsky had to support his family and himself and felt that it was not beneath him to write a Circus Polka for the elephants of Ringling Brothers, Scherzo Russe for Paul Whiteman or the Ebony Concerto for big bandleader Woody Herman. Two amusing anecdotes surround these occasional pieces. He was nearly arrested in Boston for composing and performing a Stravinkyesque version of The Star Spangled Banner with the Boston Symphony that was considered disrespectful; the brash producer Billy Rose put on a review The Seven Lively Arts that had a ballet scene written for the occasion by Stravinsky, Rose telegraphed Stravinsky that the music was a great success but impudently told him that it would be a sensation if it was re orchestrated by a Broadway arranger. Stravinsky telegraphed back that he was satisfied with a “great success”. There were though two major works from the war period the Symphony in C written for the Chicago Symphony in 1940 and the Symphony in Three Movements from 1945.
Stravinsky life was to change after the war when he met a brilliant young conductor and writer Robert Craft then in mid twenties who would eventually become Stravinsky’s assistant and eventually a surrogate son to the Stravinsky’s. After the war he composed two austere choral pieces Mass and Cantata. Stravinsky as he approached seventy was to write a full scale opera The Rakes Progress inspired by Hogarth’s paintings with a brilliant libretto by the great W.H. Auden and his partner Chester Kallman. Initially a moderate success at its world premiere in Venice and a commercial failure at the Met in New York it is now a half century one of the most popular of modern operas (probably due to the deeper understanding of the Handelian model that it emulates). Craft was a student of Schoenberg and great admirer of Webern founders of the twelve tone and serial technique, he eventually convinced Stravinsky to attempt to compose works using the serial technique. This change brought another controversy and put a strain on longtime friendships including his relationship with Ernest Ansermet who was ardently outspoken against serial music. The works from this period like the orchestral Agon the choral Cantum Sacrum and Therni are very intellectually challenging but are masterworks on their own terms and amazing from a man in his mid seventies. Stravinsky suffered a near fatal thrombosis while on tour in Germany in 1957but eventually recovered. Stravinsky became an ardent American patriot and was thrilled when Jacqueline Kennedy threw a party for him at the White House attended by President Kennedy celebrating the arts and his upcoming eightieth birthday. He returned to Russia that fall of 1962 and though for years he was a pariah because of his musical modernism and White Russian politics, there was mutual forgiveness and Stravinsky was greatly moved to be in Russia particularly to see Rimsky’s son Andrei who he had not seen for a half a century. Stravinsky was to start a series of conversation book with Robert Craft that gives us great insight into his life and arts. There has been some controversy in regards to how much Craft had to with the final text and weather he was refining and distorting Stravinsky’s comments, but in my view we are greatly indebted to Craft for these books. His last musical works were the short and charming song the Owl and the Pussycat written to Edmund Lear’s poem and the imposing choral piece Requiem Canticles.
Stravinsky as he reached his mid eighties was in poor health suffering from an acute blood disease and generally weakened to the point where his mobility was affected. His wife and Craft felt that they should move from Los Angeles to a large apartment in New York where he would receive the most advanced medical care. Stravinsky died on April 6th 1971 and received a large and public Eastern Orthodox funeral and burial in Venice the coffin was carried through the canals on a large gondola and laid to rest in the island cemetery San Michelle near the grave of his old friend Diaghilev who preceded him forty two years earlier.
Stravinsky was an internationally celebrated figure before he was forty. His public popularity was based on three works written between the ages of twenty eight and thirty one. As noted the half century of masterful work that came after took a very long time before they came to be appreciated in Anglo American musical circles (he always an unreservedly revered in Western Europe).His polemic brilliance as a writer and withering wit made the five foot three man all the more an intellectual giant. Stravinsky made many recordings he recorded his works once in mono for Columbia and then remade a much more complete edition also on Columbia (now Sony) in stereo. Over the years there have been brilliant but different interpretations from Ansermet, Monteux, Boulez and Bernstein. As we conclude the first decade of twenty first century it seems more and more that Stravinsky was the greatest composer of the Twentieth Century.