Stravinsky

A composer of reinvention

Born on 17 June 1882 at Oranienbaum near St Petersburg, Stravinsky grew up in a musical household: his father Fyodor was a leading bass at the Mariinsky Theatre. He studied law but gradually turned toward composition under the mentorship of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.

His international breakthrough came through Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring transformed his reputation within three years and established rhythm, orchestral colour and primitivist modernism as central aspects of his early public image.

Exile during the First World War and the Russian Revolution forced practical and stylistic change. From the 1920s his music entered a long neoclassical phase; after 1950 he engaged increasingly with twelve-tone and serial procedures while retaining his characteristic clarity and rhythmic precision.

Why Stravinsky is essential

Russia and Rimsky-Korsakov: 1882–1909

Stravinsky was born at Oranienbaum and raised largely in St Petersburg. His father Fyodor’s profession gave him access to opera and musicians, but his parents expected a conventional university education.

He studied law at St Petersburg University while increasingly pursuing music. Through Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who became his principal mentor and supervised his early compositional training.

Early works such as the Symphony in E-flat, Scherzo fantastique and Fireworks show both Russian inheritance and a rapidly sharpening ear for orchestral colour.

Ballets Russes and international fame: 1909–1914

Sergei Diaghilev heard Stravinsky’s music and commissioned arrangements before entrusting him with The Firebird, premiered in Paris in 1910. Its success immediately placed the young composer on the international stage.

Petrushka followed in 1911, with a more radical harmonic and rhythmic language and a piano-centred conception of the puppet protagonist.

The Rite of Spring, premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on 29 May 1913, became one of the emblematic events of musical modernism. Its famous first-night disturbance reflected choreography, audience factions and theatrical circumstances as well as the music itself.

Switzerland and wartime economy: 1914–1920

The outbreak of war and the Russian Revolution severed Stravinsky from his homeland and much of his income. He lived mainly in Switzerland with his family and worked with smaller instrumental forces.

Renard, Les Noces in its evolving versions, The Soldier’s Tale and numerous short pieces reveal an aesthetic of economy, dry sonority, montage and rhythmic precision.

The Soldier’s Tale of 1918, written with C. F. Ramuz, was designed for a small touring ensemble and mixed spoken theatre, dance and music.

France and neoclassicism: 1920–1939

Pulcinella, premiered in 1920, became a landmark in Stravinsky’s turn toward eighteenth-century materials and neoclassical transformation. He settled in France and became a French citizen in 1934.

Major works included the Octet, Piano Concerto, Oedipus rex, Apollo, Symphony of Psalms, Violin Concerto, Perséphone, Jeu de cartes and many piano and chamber works.

His personal life was complex. His wife Catherine Nossenko suffered long illness and died in 1939; his mother and daughter Ludmila also died around this period. Vera de Bosset, with whom he had had a long relationship, later became his second wife.

United States and The Rake’s Progress: 1939–1951

Stravinsky left Europe for the United States in 1939, initially to deliver the Harvard Norton Lectures. He settled in Hollywood and married Vera de Bosset in 1940.

American commissions led to Symphony in C, Circus Polka, Ebony Concerto, Symphony in Three Movements and other works. He became a US citizen in 1945.

The Rake’s Progress, with libretto by W. H. Auden and Chester Kallman, premiered in Venice in 1951 and is often regarded as the culmination and turning point of his neoclassical period.

Serial turn, Robert Craft and late years: 1951–1971

Robert Craft became an increasingly important collaborator, conductor and intellectual companion. Through Craft, Stravinsky engaged closely with the music of Schoenberg, Webern and the Second Viennese School.

Works from Cantata and Septet through Agon, Canticum Sacrum, Threni, Movements, The Flood and Requiem Canticles show a gradual and personal adoption of serial procedures.

Stravinsky travelled and conducted extensively, returned to the Soviet Union in 1962 after a long absence, and continued revising and recording his music. He died in New York on 6 April 1971 and was buried on San Michele in Venice, near Diaghilev.

Rhythm and metre

Irregular accent and additive rhythm are central to the early ballets, but rhythmic displacement remains important across his career.

He often treats metre as a framework for changing accents rather than as a fixed pattern of strong and weak beats.

Harmony and sonority

Early works use modal collections, octatonic relationships and sharply juxtaposed harmonies; later works cultivate diatonic clarity, polytonal implication and eventually serial pitch organisation.

Instrumentation often separates timbres into sharply etched layers rather than blending them continuously.

Borrowing and neoclassicism

Pulcinella famously recomposes eighteenth-century materials associated with Pergolesi and others, changing harmony, rhythm and phrase structure.

His neoclassicism is best understood as active transformation of historical models rather than restoration of an old style.

Serial method and revision

From the 1950s Stravinsky increasingly used rows, rotation, hexachordal arrays and serial ordering in highly individual ways.

Sketches at the Paul Sacher Foundation reveal compositional process in exceptional detail, while repeated revisions complicate the idea of a single final version.

Major studies

Primary and archival references