Stravinsky, Igor

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STRAVINSKY, IGOR

STRAVINSKY, IGOR (1882–1971), Russian composer.

The highly influential composer Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (1882–1971) was born in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov) Russia, near St. Petersburg. He was raised in the latter city (then the capital of Russia), where his father, Fyodor, was a prominent operatic bass-baritone. Thus Igor grew up in an environment steeped in music and the theater. In 1902, while studying law, he approached composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) and at some point afterward studied privately with him. In the ensuing decades, Stravinsky—who adopted citizenship in France (1934) and the United States (1945)—was associated with many of the important tendencies in twentieth-century music, from forms of nationalism and primitivism, to neoclassicism, to serialism. The pastiche element of his neoclassic music has even been interpreted as a harbinger of postmodernism.

Stravinsky's creative output is often divided into three periods, which the composer later described as having been demarcated by two "crises." His first or "Russian" phase was an outgrowth of his formative influences. In relatively early works such as Scherzo fantastique and Fireworks (both completed 1908), he emulated the techniques of Rimsky-Korsakov and other composers admired in his milieu. Even The Firebird (1910)—the first of his ballets written for impresario Sergei Diaghilev (1872–1929) and the Ballets Russes—owed a debt to established fashions (including French impressionism). Changes are more evident with the next ballet, Petrushka (1911), which is infused with nascent modernism as evidenced by its formal, textural, and thematic juxtapositions. The following ballet, The Rite of Spring (1913), took these characteristics to new levels. Indeed, its Paris premiere was the scene of a famous audience riot that guaranteed the growing reputation of the composer.

Especially after The Rite, some listeners began to discuss Stravinsky's music in terms of primitivism, which composer Marc Blitzstein (1905–1964) described as "violent, rhythmic, blunt," and characterized by "short successive electric moments" (p. 334). Many contemporaries were particularly intrigued by Stravinsky's rhythmic innovations. In the Russian-era works and afterward, one finds sections of metric irregularity—that is, with a shifting sense of where the "downbeats" fall—as well as sections of superimposed patterns, each internally consistent but combined to form cycles of polyrhythmic activity.

The first of the composer's period-delimiting "crises" was precipitated by the outbreak of World War I in 1914 and exacerbated by the Russian Revolution of 1917. The result was what he described as his "loss of Russia and its language of words as well as of music" (Stravinsky and Craft, p. 23). During the years that followed, as he lived first in Switzerland (1914–1920) and then in France (1920–1939), his so-called second musical style developed: the neoclassic. Generally speaking, neoclassic music imitates that of the past—especially that of the baroque and high classical periods of the eighteenth century—but more by translating the older idioms into those of the present day than by exactly replicating the older styles. If the music was steeped in counterpoint and textures reminiscent of the baroque, the motto "Back to Bach" was often attached. Stravinsky's foray into neoclassicism has been associated with the composition of various works, including the ballet Pulcinella (1920), which Stravinsky himself later suggested as a turning point. The new style was confirmed with the Octet for Wind Instruments (1923); its zenith came in 1951, with the completion of The Rake's Progress, an opera that harkened back to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791).

By the mid-1920s Stravinsky was publicly condemning musical modernism, and so emerged one of the great polemics of the era, which pitted him against Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951). Arthur Lourié (1892–1966) promoted the polarization when he described Schoenberg and Stravinsky as thesis and antithesis in his article "Neogothic and Neoclassic." The former's style was characterized as one of extreme expressiveness, emotionalism, and egocentric individualism. The latter's neoclassic style, in contrast, was described as objective and "purely musical," born of intellectualism and a triumph over the "personal utterance." Although Lourié's allegiances were with Stravinsky and his style, similar characterizations were later inverted in meaning by Theodor Adorno (1903–1969), a philosopher and writer on musical modernism. In Philosophie der neuen Musik (1949; Philosophy of modern music), he too argued that Schoenberg and Stravinsky were at the polarized extremes of contemporary music. For Adorno, however, Stravinsky's suppression of expression and subjectivity was to be condemned.

Given the dichotomy described above, it came as a surprise to many that in Stravinsky's third compositional phase he adopted a method closely associated with Schoenberg: serialism. It must be stressed that serialism is neither a "style" nor a monolithic system. It is a pliable method whereby a composer establishes an ordering of musical elements—most commonly notes, or more precisely the intervals between the notes—that will become referential for a work. Those who appropriated the method adapted it to their idiomatic inclinations, as did Stravinsky, who fashioned many distinctive procedures. As for the "crisis" that brought about this new orientation, Stravinsky remarked later that it was a product of the intense period of over three years in which he was immersed in The Rake's Progress. That is, having exhausted himself in the consummation of three decades of work in neoclassicism, he needed a creative change. Other factors also played a role. After World War II serialism had been adopted by many of the composers deemed most "progressive," especially in parts of Europe. In 1951, when Stravinsky visited Europe for the first time in a dozen years, he became aware that he was no longer relevant to many younger composers. Thus, some have argued that his new phase was largely a matter of wanting to remain au courant.

Another important influence came in the form of Robert Craft (b. 1923), a conductor and advocate of Stravinsky's music as well as that of Schoenberg and his pupil Anton Webern (1883–1945). Craft had joined the Stravinsky household in 1949, where he first served as an assistant to the composer and eventually became something of a surrogate son. Craft later affirmed that he had been a catalyst for the work the composer undertook in this period. As for the serial music itself, although some of it sounds quite different from music of Stravinsky's earlier periods, there are similarities. For example, the Septet (1953) once more harkens "back to Bach," with its passacaglia and gigue movements. On the other hand, Requiem Canticles (1966)—his last major work—has affinities with the Russian-era works.

At the time of his death in 1971, two months before his eighty-ninth birthday, Stravinsky was routinely described as the (Western) world's greatest—or at least most celebrated—twentieth-century composer. Decades later, his reputation and influence still loom large, as attested to by the growing number of books and articles devoted to him. It should be noted that Stravinsky's own writings are not always reliable guides to his life and views, partly due to the extent to which ghostwriters or credited collaborators shaped the results, and partly because the composer occasionally seemed to change biographical details to suit the times. However, the accuracy of recent research has been greatly abetted by the ability to consult materials from his estate, many of which are now housed at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland.