Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French (from 1934) and American 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.
Born into a musical family in Saint Petersburg, 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 music under him until the latter's death in 1908. Soon after, Stravinsky met impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who commissioned him to write three ballets for the Ballets Russes's Paris seasons: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913), the last of which caused a near-riot at the premiere due to its avant-garde nature and later changed the way composers understood rhythmic structure.
Stravinsky's compositional career is often divided into three main periods: his Russian period (1913–1920), his neoclassical period (1920–1951), and his serial period (1954–1968). During his Russian period, Stravinsky was heavily influenced by Russian styles and folklore. Works such as Renard (1916) and Les noces (1923) drew upon Russian folk poetry, while compositions like L'Histoire du soldat (1918) integrated these folk elements with popular musical forms, including the tango, waltz, ragtime, 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 including 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 many supporters were confused by Stravinsky's constant stylistic changes, later writers recognized his versatile language as important in the development of modernist music. Stravinsky's revolutionary ideas influenced composers as diverse as Aaron Copland, Philip Glass, Béla Bartók, and Pierre Boulez, who were all challenged to innovate music in areas beyond tonality, especially rhythm and musical form. In 1998, Time magazine listed Stravinsky as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. Stravinsky died of pulmonary edema on 6 April 1971 in New York City, having left six memoirs written with his friend and assistant, Robert Craft, as well as an earlier autobiography and a series of lectures.
Early life in Russia, 1882–1901
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was born on 17 June [O.S. 5 June] 1882 in Oranienbaum, Russia—a town now known as Lomonosov, about 50 kilometers (31 mi) west of Saint Petersburg. His mother, Anna Kirillovna Stravinskaya (née Kholodovskaya), was an amateur singer and pianist from an established family of landowners. His father, Fyodor Ignatyevich Stravinsky, was a bass at the Mariinsky Theater, descended from a line of Polish landowners. The name "Stravinsky" is of Polish origin, deriving from the Strava river in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The family was originally called "Soulima-Stravinsky", bearing the Soulima arms, but "Soulima" was dropped after the partitions of Poland.
The Stravinsky family vacationed in Oranienbaum during summers, and their primary residence was an apartment along the Kryukov Canal, near the Mariinsky Theater. Stravinsky was baptized hours after birth and joined to the Russian Orthodox Church in St. Nicholas Cathedral. Constantly in fear of the short-tempered Fyodor and indifferent towards Anna, Stravinsky lived there for the first 27 years of his life with three siblings: Roman and Yury, his older siblings who irritated him immensely, and Gury, his close younger brother with whom he said he found "the love and understanding denied us by our parents". Stravinsky was educated by the family's governess until the age of 11, when he began attending the Second Saint Petersburg Gymnasium, a school which he recalled hating because he had few friends.
From the age of nine, Stravinsky studied privately with a piano teacher. He later wrote that his parents saw no musical talent in him due to his lack of technical skills; Stravinsky frequently improvised instead of practicing assigned pieces. His excellent sight-reading skill prompted him to frequently read vocal scores from Fyodor's vast personal library. At around the age of 10, Stravinsky began regularly attending performances at the Mariinsky Theater, where he was introduced to Russian repertoire as well as Italian and French opera; by the age of 16, he attended rehearsals at the theater five or six days a week. By the age of 14, Stravinsky had mastered the solo part of Mendelssohn's Piano Concerto No. 1, and at the age of 15, he transcribed for solo piano a string quartet by Alexander Glazunov.
Despite his musical passion and ability, Stravinsky's parents expected him to study law at the University of Saint Petersburg, and he enrolled there in 1901. However, according to his own account, he was a bad student and attended few of the optional lectures. In exchange for agreeing to attend law school, Stravinsky's parents allowed for lessons in harmony and counterpoint. At university, he befriended Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov, a son of leading Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. During summer vacation of 1902, Stravinsky traveled with Vladimir to Heidelberg – where the latter's family was staying – bringing a portfolio of pieces to demonstrate to Rimsky-Korsakov. While Rimsky-Korsakov was not stunned, he was impressed enough to insist that Stravinsky continue lessons but advised against him entering the Saint Petersburg Conservatory due to its rigorous environment. Importantly, Rimsky-Korsakov agreed personally to advise him on his compositions.
After Fyodor died in 1902, Stravinsky became more independent and increasingly involved in Rimsky-Korsakov's circle of artists. Stravinsky's first major task from Rimsky-Korsakov was the four-movement Piano Sonata in F-sharp minor in the style of Glazunov and Tchaikovsky – Stravinsky paused temporarily to write a cantata for Rimsky-Korsakov's 60th birthday celebration, which the latter described as "not bad". Soon after finishing the sonata, Stravinsky began his large-scale Symphony in E-flat, the first draft of which he finished in 1905. That year, the dedicatee of the Piano Sonata, Nikolay Richter, performed it at a recital hosted by the Rimsky-Korsakovs, marking the first public premiere of a Stravinsky piece.
After the events of Bloody Sunday in January 1905 caused the university to close, Stravinsky was not able to take his final exams, resulting in his graduation with a half-diploma. As he began spending more time in Rimsky-Korsakov's circle of artists, Stravinsky became increasingly cramped in the stylistically conservative atmosphere: modern music was questioned, and concerts of contemporary music were looked down upon. The group occasionally attended chamber concerts oriented to modern music, and while Rimsky-Korsakov and his colleague Anatoly Lyadov hated attending, Stravinsky remembered the concerts as intriguing and intellectually stimulating, being the first place he was exposed to French composers like Franck, Dukas, Fauré, and Debussy. Nevertheless, Stravinsky remained loyal to Rimsky-Korsakov – musicologist Eric Walter White suspected that the former believed that compliance with the latter was necessary to succeed in the Russian music world. Stravinsky later wrote that Rimsky-Korsakov's musical conservatism was justified and helped him build the foundation that would become the base of his style. In 1908, he sent Rimsky-Korsakov the score to Feu d'artifice. It was returned with the note: "Not delivered on account of death of addressee."