Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971)

Critics love eras and periods. As students we learn to characterize art and artists as Classical, Romantic, Modern and Postmodern. Dramatic events help to define eras: They are like certain battles in history, after which-as they say-the world will never be the same again. Twentieth-century Modernism is still problematic. It has been characterized as revolutionary, reactionary, iconoclastic, and deeply conservative. In fact it is all of these-the period is as varied as the artists, composers, and writers who belong to it. It also does not help that those artists, composers and writers had an unnerving tendency to redefine themselves many times in the course of their careers.

However, we have the history-defining dates. In June, 1907, Pablo Picasso's (1881-1973) Les Demoiselles d'Avignon caused outrage when it was exhibited in Paris as part of the first Cubist exhibition: Art was never the same again. T. S. Eliot's (1888-1965) The Waste Land caused outrage when it was published in October, 1922: Poetry was never the same again. On February 2nd of that same year, James Joyce's (1882-1941) Ulysses caused such outrage when it appeared in Paris that the author could not find an English publisher: The novel was never the same again. It is difficult to imagine a ballet causing this kind of scandal. However, when Igor Stravinsky's music for Sergei Diaghilev's (1872-1929) The Rite of Spring first reached the ears of the public on May 29, 1913, there were riots on the streets of Paris: Music was never the same again.

Igor Stravinsky was born in Lomonosov, Russia, in 1882. His father was a leading bass at St. Petersburg's Mariinsky Theater, and Stravinsky studied under Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908). He was deeply influenced by Tchaikovsky (1840-1893), Borodin (1833-1887) and Glazunov (1865-1936), before absorbing himself in the contemporary French music of Debussy (1862-1918) and Dukas (1865-1935). These influences are all apparent in the music he wrote for Diaghilev's ballets, The Firebird (1910), and Petrushka (1911). Both are Russian in theme. The first uses folklore and traditional melodies to create an aural patchwork of myth and magic, and the second is a burlesque setting in a fairground. These pieces were very successful and established Stravinsky as a rising star.

The Rite of Spring (1913) was something else entirely. Russian folk elements are still apparent, but they are integrated into a fiercely "barbaric" musical landscape appropriate to the subject matter: pagan ritual sacrifice. The rhythms that pulsate through The Firebird and Petrushka now emerge as a primal rush of energy that is both exhilarating and deeply disturbing. Almost 100 years later the music still has the power to shock. It was a crucial moment in the development of western music. The violence of Prokofiev's 2nd and 3rd Symphonies, the exotic splendors of Bartók's (1881-1945) Allegro Barbaro, the dark drama of Milhaud's (1892-1974) Les Choephores, and the driving mechanical rhythms of Honegger's (1892-1955) Mouvements Symphoniques all show the profound impact of Stravinsky's masterpiece.

While other composers explored this new terrain, Stravinsky moved on into a leaner, but equally ambitious aesthetic. The spare experimental and surreal postwar theater piece, L'Histoire du Soldat (1918), the piano suite Piano Rag-Music (1919), and the Symphonies for Wind Instruments (1920) demonstrate a mind restless to explore new forms. Parody and pastiche play a large part in these works, and Stravinsky's urgent and often ironic examination of other forms led him to look to the past for models. The 1919 ballet Pulcinella (1920) looks to Pergolesi for inspiration, and the opera Oedipus Rex (1927) uses Handel's oratorio techniques. Stravinsky's neoclassicism was as influential as his earlier iconoclasm: Prokofiev's Classical Symphony (1918), which-in certain respects-could almost have been written by Haydn, shows the same spirit of reinvention. (Picasso also went through a neoclassical phase.) Like his follow modernist T. S. Eliot, Stravinsky adopted orthodox Christian religion in 1926: The Symphony of Psalms (1930) was the first major celebration of Stravinsky's faith.

Stravinsky relocated to the United States in 1939 and settled in Hollywood. He dabbled without success in the movie industry, though Walt Disney (1901-1965) used The Rite of Spring in Fantasia (1940). He became a U.S. citizen in 1945. His neoclassicism ended with his collaboration with W. H. Auden (1907-1973) on the operatic masterpiece The Rake's Progress (1951). Thereafter he explored the revolutionary work initiated by Anton Webern (1883-1945) in serial composition, also referred to as the 12-tone technique. Stravinsky's last major works in this form include In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954), Movements (1959) for piano and orchestra, The Dove Descending Breaks the Air (1962) for chorus, and Requiem Canticles (1966).