Composer
Igor Stravinsky
The composer whose ballet score reportedly caused a riot.
Igor Stravinsky made his name writing ballet scores for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris, and it's his third score for that company, The Rite of Spring, that defines his reputation: its violent, irregular rhythms and dissonant harmony reportedly provoked a riot at its 1913 Paris premiere, in what's become one of the most famous scandals in classical music history - regardless of how exaggerated the riot stories have grown over the decades, the shock was real, and the piece remains one of the most disruptive, influential works of the 20th century.
Life in brief
Stravinsky was born in 1882 near St Petersburg, the son of a leading bass singer at the city's opera house. He studied law, but his real education came from private lessons with the composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
In 1909 the impresario Diaghilev heard his music and commissioned a ballet for his Paris company. The Firebird (1910) made Stravinsky famous overnight; Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913) followed in quick succession. The First World War and the Russian Revolution cut him off from his homeland: he spent the war years in Switzerland, settled in France, and in 1939 moved to the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1945 and living in Hollywood for decades. He returned to Russia only once, for a celebrated visit in 1962. He died in New York in 1971 and was buried in Venice, close to the grave of Diaghilev.
A career in phases
His earlier ballet, The Firebird, is more conventionally lush and melodic, drawing on Russian folk tale and late Romantic orchestral color - a useful reminder that Stravinsky's style shifted dramatically across his long career, moving through several distinct phases rather than settling into one signature sound:
- The Russian period - the three great ballets, built on Russian folk tunes, pounding rhythms, and brilliant orchestral color.
- Neoclassicism - from around 1920, he turned to older styles and forms, filtered through his own sharp, modern sensibility. Pulcinella (1920) reworks 18th-century Italian music; the Symphony of Psalms (1930) is austere and luminous; the opera The Rake's Progress (1951) looks back to Mozart.
- Serialism - in his seventies, to general surprise, he adopted the twelve-tone technique pioneered by Schoenberg, his old rival, in works such as the ballet Agon (1957).
Across all three, the constants are rhythm - irregular, propulsive, and endlessly inventive - and a clear, precise sound.
Key works
- The Firebird (1910) - a shimmering fairy-tale ballet.
- Petrushka (1911) - the story of a puppet who comes to life, set in a bustling Russian fairground.
- The Rite of Spring (1913) - "scenes of pagan Russia," culminating in a sacrificial dance.
- L'Histoire du soldat (1918) - a pocket-sized theater piece for narrator and seven players.
- Pulcinella (1920) and the Symphony of Psalms (1930).
- The Rake's Progress (1951) - an opera on a libretto co-written by W. H. Auden.
Legacy
Stravinsky's willingness to break sharply from inherited convention, in both rhythm and harmony, made him one of the most important and widely imitated figures in 20th-century Modernism. The Rite of Spring reached a mass audience in Disney's Fantasia (1940), and its rhythmic shock echoes through film music - John Williams's scores included - and even rock.
Where to start listening: The Firebird suite is a gentler entry point; in The Rite of Spring, the "Augurs of Spring" section - right after the eerie solo bassoon opening - shows the rhythmic shock that made it famous. For the neoclassical Stravinsky, Pulcinella is witty and immediately likable.