Igor Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky (Russian: {{lang|ru|????? ????????? ???????????}}) (June 17, 1882 – April 6, 1971) was a Russian-American composer of modern classical music. He composed in the neo-classical and serialist styles, but he is best known for two works from his earlier, Russian period: Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) and L'oiseau de feu (The Firebird). For some, these daring and innovative ballets practically reinvented the genre. Stravinsky also wrote in a broad spectrum of ensemble combinations and classical forms. His oeuvre included everything from symphonies to piano miniatures.

Influence and innovation

Stravinsky's work embraced multiple compositional styles, revolutionised orchestration, spanned several genres, practically reinvented ballet form and incorporated multiple cultures, languages and literatures. As a consequence, his influence on composers both during his lifetime and after his death was, and remains, considerable.

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Compositional innovations

Stravinsky began re-thinking his use of the motif and ostinato as early as The Firebird ballet, but his use of these elements reached its full flowering in The Rite of Spring.

Related Topics:
Motif - Ostinato

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Motivic development, that is using a distinct musical phrase that is subsequently altered and developed throughout a piece of music, has its roots in the sonata form of Mozart's age. The first great innovator in this method was Beethoven; the famous "fate motif" which opens Fifth Symphony and reappears throughout the work in surprising and refreshing permutations is a classic example. However, Stravinsky's use of motivic development was unique in the way he permutated his motifs. In the "Rite of Spring" he introduces additive permutations, that is, subtracting or adding a note to a motif without regard to changes in meter.

Related Topics:
Sonata form - Beethoven - Fifth Symphony

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The same ballet is also notable for its relentless use of ostinati. The most famous passage, as noted above, is the eighth note ostinato of the strings accented by eight french horns that occurs in the section Auguries of Spring (Dances of the Young Girls). This is perhaps the first instance in music of extended ostinato which is neither used for variation nor for accompaniment of melody. At various other times in the work Stravinsky also pits several ostinati against one another without regard to harmony or tempo, creating a pastiche, a sort of musical equivalent of a Cubist painting. These passages are notable not only for this pastiche-quality but also for their length: Stravinsky treats them as whole and complete musical sections.

Related Topics:
French horn - Harmony - Tempo - Pastiche - Cubist

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Such techniques foreshadowed by several decades the minimalist works of composers such as Terry Riley and Steve Reich.

Related Topics:
Minimalist - Terry Riley - Steve Reich

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Neoclassicism

Stravinsky was the greatest, if not the first, practitioner of the "neoclassic" style, a style that would be later adopted by composers as diverse as Darius Milhaud and Aaron Copland. Sergei Prokofiev once chided Stravinsky for his neo-classical mannerisms, though sympathetically, as Prokofiev had broken similar musical ground in his Symphony No. 1, "Classical" of 1916-17.

Related Topics:
Darius Milhaud - Aaron Copland - Sergei Prokofiev - Symphony No. 1, ''"Classical"''

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Stravinsky announced his new style in 1923 with the stripped-down and delicately scored Octet for winds. The clear harmonies, looking back to the Classical music era of Mozart and Bach, and the simpler combinations of rhythm and melody were a direct response to the complexities of the Second Viennese School. Stravinsky may have been preceded in these devices by earlier composers such as Erik Satie, but no doubt when Copland was composing his Appalachian Spring ballet he was taking Stravinsky as his model.

Related Topics:
1923 - Classical music era - Mozart - Bach - Second Viennese School - Erik Satie - Appalachian Spring

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Certainly by the late 1920s and 1930s, Neoclassicism as an accepted modern genre was prevalent throughout art music circles around the world. Ironically, it was Stravinsky himself who announced the death of Neoclassicism, at least in his own work if not for the world, with the completion of his opera The Rake's Progress in 1951. A sort of final statement for the style, the opera was largely ridiculed as too "backward looking" even by those who had lauded the new style only three decades earlier.

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Quotation and pastiche

Stravinsky used the now very postmodern technique of direct musical quotation and pastiche as early as 1920 in his work Pulcinella. Here he uses the music of Pergolesi as source material, sometimes directly quoting it and other times simply reinventing it, to create a new and refreshing work. He used the same technique in the ballet The Fairy's Kiss of 1928. Here it is the music of Tchaikovsky, specifically Swan Lake, that Stravinsky uses as his source. Such compositional "borrowing" would come into vogue in the 1960s, as in the work Sinfonia by Luciano Berio.

Related Topics:
Postmodern - Tchaikovsky - Swan Lake - 1960 - Luciano Berio

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Use of folk material

There were other composers in the early 20th century who collected and augmented their native folk music and used these themes in their work. Two notable examples are Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. Yet in Le Sacre du Printemps we see Stravinsky again innovating in his use of folk themes. He strips these themes to their most basic outline, melody alone, and often contorts them beyond recognition with additive notes, inversions, diminutions, and other techniques. He did this so well, in fact, that only in recent scholarship, such as in Richard Taruskin's Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through Mavra http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0520070992/qid=1088714967/sr=1-6/ref=sr_1_6/102-2385533-5218561?v=glance&s=books, have analysts uncovered the original source material for some of the music in The Rite.

Related Topics:
20th century - Folk music - Béla Bartók - Zoltán Kodály - Inversion - Diminution

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Orchestral innovations

The late 19th century and early 20th century was a time ripe with orchestral innovation. Composers such as Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler were well regarded for their skill at writing for the medium. They, in turn, were influenced by the expansion of the traditional classical orchestra by Richard Wagner through his use of large forces and unusual instruments.

Related Topics:
19th century - 20th century - Anton Bruckner - Gustav Mahler - Richard Wagner

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Stravinsky continued this Romantic trend of writing for huge orchestral forces, especially in the early ballets. But it is when he started to turn away from this tendency that he began to innovate by introducing unique combinations of instruments. For example, in L'Histoire du Soldat (A Soldier's Tale) the forces used are clarinet, bassoon, tenor and bass trombone, double bass, cornet, violin and percussion, a very striking combination for its time (1918). This combining of distinct timbres would become almost a cliche in post-World War II classical music.

Related Topics:
Romantic - Clarinet - Bassoon - Trombone - Double bass - Cornet - Violin - Percussion - Cliche - World War II

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Another notable innovation of orchestral technique that can be partially attributed to Stravinsky is the exploitation of the extreme ranges of instruments. The most famous passage is the opening of the Rite of Spring where Stravsinky uses the extreme reaches of the bassoon to simulate the symbolic "awakening" of a spring morning.

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It must also be noted that composers such as Anton Webern, Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg were also exploring some of these orchestral and instrumental techniques in the early 20th century. Yet their influence on succeeding generations of composers was equalled if not exceeded by that of Stravinsky.

Related Topics:
Anton Webern - Alban Berg - Arnold Schoenberg

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