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Introduction

Modernism is a style that cannot be defined for there are very many ways to describe it. It is the rejection of old forms and values of the Victorian era; it is experimentation and a search for different types of expression; and it is constantly changing. Igor Stravinsky is known as the father of Modernism in music. That is because his experimentations with different types of music and his constantly changing styles go unparalleled by any other musician of the twentieth century. His music is commonly perceived as a combination of dissonant as opposed to consonant rhythms, primitive beats, and contrasts and has touched all the composers of the twentieth century. Prokofiev and Boulez are just two who have been influenced by his works. The greatness of the contributions of these composers today testifies to the greatness of Stravinsky himself.

Stravinsky's Family and How They Affected his Career

Igor Fedorovich Stravinsky was born to Anna Kholodovsky and Feodor Ignatievitch Stravinsky on June 18th, 1882 at Oranienbaum, Russia. He was the third child of the four to be born. His brothers were Roman, Youry, and Goury of whom Goury was his favorite. Goury was the only brother who pursued a career in music. According to Dobrin, he was a baritone and, later on in life, Igor composed the "Two Poems of Verlaine" for him. Igor was an avid reader as a child and at the age of nine began to learn the piano where he came to know the work of Rimsky-Korsakov who greatly inspired much of his music. His father Feodor Ignatievitch had a law degree in Kiev and was a bass singer for the opera. Igor's relationship with his father was usually a hostile one when Igor was not sick, which he often was. This tension was the source of much of the frustration and bitterness he had in adolescence. At the age of 16, Stravinsky began to attend many operas at the Maryinsky Theatre where his father held a prominent position. According to Routh, "It was thus in the theatre, with the strong, endemic tradition of Russian opera it represented, that his creative personality was first formed" (3). Yet despite his musical interest he attended St. Petersburg University for four years, 1901-1905, here he was supposed to be studying criminal law and legal philosophy. Instead his time was filled with music because in 1902 his father died and he was better able to follow his interest. In the same year he was introduced to Rimsky-Korsakov who encouraged him to take music lessons, which he did with him privately over the next six years. Not only was Rimsky-Korsakov a teacher who offered advice criticism and encouragement, he was also something of a father figure in Stravinsky's life at that time. During these six years Stravinsky got married to his first cousin Catherine, who was his childhood friend, on the 24th of January in 1906. It is also during these years that he began to develop his own musical style.

Stravinsky's Early Musical Career

As mentioned earlier, Rimsky-Korsakov was Stravinsky's first teacher. Yet Rimsky-Korsakov was strict in his approach to music and was "on the whole uninterested in new music from France and Germany" (Routh 4). So Stravinsky tried to expose himself to the concert life of St. Petersburg, though most of the time he found it dull and uninteresting. It was while he was on this journey that he first became familiar with the "Evenings of Contemporary music," which included the works of young Russian composers, and the French school composed of Debussy, Ravel, Dukas, d'Indy, Couperin, Monteverdi, and Bach (Routh 4). According to Routh, Stravinsky learned and began to create his own music from the influence of these composers and Symphony in E flat was his first substantial success at orchestration. From then on he became, as we know it today, "an up and rising star" in the music world.

Stravinsky's introduction to Diaghilev and "The Firebird"

However it was Diaghilev who became the guiding force of Stravinsky's musical career. Diaghilev was a pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov's who also attended St. Petersburg University. He is best known for the creation of the Ballets Russes. On February 6,1909, Diaghilev first heard the works of Stravinsky "Fireworks" and "Scherzo Fantastique" as conducted by Alexander Siloti. He then invited Stravinsky to write the score for a ballet "The Firebird," which Stravinsky did. It is known until this day as his first international success despite the use of irregular rhythms and harsh dissonances. He then began to work on "Le Sacre du Printempts," or "The Rite of Spring" as we know it, which, like "The Firebird" used fantasy. However before he could really get going on "Le Sacre" he began work on "Petrushka," which was based on Russian folklore. He used Folkine as the choreographer for he had already worked with Folkine on "The Firebird". It also was a success and it was there that he was first introduced to the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky (Dobrin 45).

The Creation of "Le Sacre"

Once "Petrushka" was finished he began to finish "Le Sacre" which had been placed on the side for several reasons. Despite his lack of experience Nijinksy was appointed as the choreographer for "Le Sacre." Nijinsky was as inexperienced as they come. He knew nothing of the basic elements of music and the score, which Stravinsky had composed, is to this day one of the most complex pieces of music. On the day of the premier there was an uproar due not only to the dancing but to the music as well, telling us that the music was in no way conservative or acceptable. Stravinsky still used the same primitive beats and contrasts that he was earlier known for. Yet Routh elaborates more on the events saying there was screaming and yelling back and forth between the audiences, a riot broke out between pro-Stravinskys and anti-Stravinskys, and about fifty people were taken into police custody. According to Stravinsky the failure of the first performance of "Le Sacre" was due to the failure of Nijinsky to coordinate the dancers in such a way that they accompanied the music. Stravinsky always held music first and foremost and believed that the music was the main point and the dance was just an accompaniment. Despite the failure of the first performance however, "Le Sacre" was performed a few more times and on April 5, 1914 a concert performance was given of it in Paris and this time it was far from a failure. In fact Stravinsky was carried though the streets of Paris by the young audience. By this time Stravinsky had become an important figure in the Paris salons and was well by the French artists and intellectuals. This was the beginning of his career as the world most influential musician of the 20th century.

World War I

After "Le Sacre," along with a few other works, he was asked to finish "Le Rossignol," an earlier work, by the Theatre Libre of Moscow. He had begun it in 1909 with Mitusov and hadn't touched it since then, because other works had intervened. Stravinsky quickly saw that his style had matured greatly and in 1917 cut out the first act, which was the act he had written earlier. This was after the beginning of World War I, in which Russia was also involved. In July 1914, Stravinsky made his last visit to Oustilug in Russia for during the war he was completely cut off from Russia and was staying in Switzerland, as were many musicians and artists. To soothe his homesickness, Stravinsky composed several Russian folk works including the famous folk ballet "Les Noces". This work is an important one in Stravinsky's career because it set a precedent for another work called "Histoire du soldat."

"Histoire Du Soldat"-During World War I

"Histoire du soldat" was a completely new venture on Stravinsky's part for four main reasons. The first reason is that it was the first work composed by Stravinsky that was created in the absence of Dhiagilev's contribution. For that reason it was not considered a " true Russian work" (Routh 23). The second reason is that, since it was created in a time of war and poverty for most artists and musicians, the format it was presented in was completely unheard of in that day and age. It was presented as a traveling theatre with two or three characters and a small number of instruments. According to Routh,

"Histoire du soldat" was conceived as a story to be read, played and danced. The stage with actors would be in the center, with the musicians on one side and the reader on the other. These three complementary elements would alternate in solos and ensembles. Stravinsky's score was to be independent, capable of separate performance as a concert suite. (20)

Stravinsky Begins To Experiment With Different Musical Styles

After Stravinsky's sudden development of "Histoire du Soldat," he never stayed on the same track. He continued to change his musical style. The first innovation he made after his discovery of jazz was with the "eighteenth century Italian baroque style." (Routh 23). The work was to be called "Pulcinella" and it was proposed by Dhiagilev who was at the time disconcerted at Stravinsky's deviation from Russian music. This was another important step in Stravinsky's musical evolution because he wasn't just composing his own music or synthesizing an already established style of music with his own. He was, as Routh so aptly put it, "Assimilating and recomposing incomplete fragments of early music" (24). This process appealed to the aesthetic side of his personality. "Pulcinella" was the last work he composed in Switzerland and with that and the end of the war he headed back to Paris. The years after he returned to Paris marked the beginning of the end of his "Russian" works. The first of these last "Russian" works was a remake of Tchaikovsky's ballet, "The Sleeping Beauty." Stravinsky did it and he was satisfied with the result for it reinforced his newly found ideals of classical beauty that were not apparent in his earlier works. The second of the works was the opera "Mavra" which was taken from a story by Pushkin. According to Routh, "Stravinsky saw himself not in the narrowly nationalist line of 'The Five', but in the truly cosmopolitan tradition of Pushkin, Glinka and Tchaikovsky, to whose memory Mavra is dedicated" (26). The last of the "Russian works" was "Renard," another opera, that had been started earlier in Switzerland along with "Les Noces." The presentation of the work was nothing short of a disappointment for Stravinsky. "In seeking to recapture the spirit of freshness and spontaneity of the Italo-Russian school, and to rediscover the Old Russian comic opera of Glinka and Dargomijsky, Stravinsky failed to interest a contemporary audience, who were expecting to hear something akin to "Le Sacre" or "Petrushka"" (Routh 27). This is also considered an important point in Stravinsky's musical evolution. His music was taking a step toward neoclassicism, the exclusive use of wind instruments, and "structure in a instrumental piece" (Routh 28).

Stravinsky Continues Experimentation

As stated in the previous paragraph Stravinsky's music had begun to take a different direction. He stopped composing for Dhiagilev and struck out on his own for he had always written for Dhiagilev and composed works mainly for the theater. Now he began to write purely instrumental works mostly because he was "cut off from his mother tongue, Russian, and he had not yet assimilated the language of his newly adopted country, France" (Routh 30). Not only that, but he began to conduct his own pieces and play the piano. After his departure from the influence of Dhiagilev he began to travel quite a bit and it was during this time that he first appeared in America in 1925, where he was greeted by full houses and praises. After all the traveling and composing he finally settled down to write his next dramatic work. He fell into a bit of a quandary over what language to do it in, because he didn't want to be normal, as if that were possible. He finally decided to do it in Latin, and for a subject chose a classical Greek myth. With the classical Greek myths he wasn't so much being the trendsetter this time around as he was following the example set by his contemporaries who were at that time doing the same thing. Stravinsky settled on "Oedipus Rex," which was an opera oratorio because it was an opera sung to the audience rather than the other characters and "there is no operatic movement" (Routh 33). It was not as much of a success as Stravinsky hoped because it was more solemn in comparison to his other more colorful fantastic works and as with all of his works none knew quit what to expect. Despite the little success of "Oedipus Rex," Stravinsky embarked on another work based on Greek mythology, "Apollo Musagetes." This time he used an orchestra of strings rather than woodwind instruments adopting a diatonic style. According to Pinkerton, diatonic means of or through the key or staying in the original key [the C major scale]. Melodies and harmonies using only those notes are diatonic. Once again it was a major point in Stravinsky's musical evolution because it was the last work produced by the Ballets Russes. Another ballet called "The Fairy's Kiss," based on a fairy tale by Hans Andersen, was created in the classical style of a white ballet which he had previously used in Apollo. A white ballet is defined by Routh as a stage work in which "the art is revealed in all its purity, without dramatic conflicts or contrasts" (34). "The Fairy's Kiss" caused a breach between Dhiagilev and Stravinsky because it was the first work Stravinsky had ever done with a company other than the Ballets Russes. They never publicly reconciled and Dhiagilev died on August 19, 1929.

Stravinsky Turns To Religious Works

Stravinsky's next development turned out to be a series of religious works the first of which was "Symphony of Psalms." "Symphony of Psalms" is a large-scale symphonic piece. Routh says, "He was not attracted to the symphonic form as bequeathed by the nineteenth century. His work would not conform to the conventions of sonata form" (37). Even while he was composing other such religious work he began to work with a new element, composition of works for a solo instrument. This instrument was the violin and it was a great challenge for him because though he had written for the violin before he did not play or understand it as he did the piano. Therefore he wrote one composition for the violin, "Violin Concerto," and another for both the violin and the piano, "Duo Concertant." He continued to compose solo works for the violin and piano.

World War II

On September 20, 1939 Stravinsky arrived in New York City to live in America. This change in scenery was caused by the political tension in Europe on the dawn of World War II, the loss of his two daughters, mother, and wife, and the slowly declining interest of his European audience in his recent music. As soon as he arrived he set off giving six lectures of his music at Harvard and directing a seminar in musical analysis. In March 9, 1940 Stravinsky married Vera Bosset, the niece of one of the many artists he had worked with in Switzerland. During that same year they settled in Los Angeles with Stravinsky at the ripe old age of fifty-eight. Los Angeles, at the time of the second world war, was where the artists were happening and during the beginning of Stravinsky's life in that city he was asked to do many movie scores, which he never did. The next score that he composed was known as an abstract ballet. It was called "Danses Concertantes" and it was not the last. Before he composed another abstract ballet however he began again to compose religious works such as "Babel" and "The Ode," "Babel" being important because it was the first time Stravinsky used an English text. After these two religious works he went back to the notion of an abstract ballet. This one was called "Scenes de Ballet" and according to Routh, "The piece is a period portrait of Broadway in the last years of the war" (42).

Stravinsky's reaction to World War II And His Continual Experimentation

"Symphony in three movements" premiered on January 24, 1946, one month after Stravinsky became an American citizen. The "Symphony in three movements" was a work that Stravinsky had been composing over three years and it was inspired by the events of the world, more specifically World War II, as many of his works are. It was the largest and most intense symphonic work he ever wrote. On March 21, 1948 Stravinsky met a young 24-year-old conductor, Robert Craft, whose main interest was in contemporary music, specifically the new serialism. Craft is best known as the man who introduced Stravinsky to the second Viennese school. After the symphony, Stravinsky set out to again make a dramatic work. The first was "Orpheus" and the second was "The Rake's Progress." It took Stravinsky three years to write "The Rake's Progress" doing one act each year. It is his longest single work and it is important because it is one of Stravinsky's encounters with the problem of the use of the English language with which Robert Craft assists him. The next work in which he encounters this problem is the "Cantata" which according to Routh, ". . . is a technical study in canon, inversion and retrograde, and one that is prophetic of Stravinky's future discoveries of style" (53). His next discovery of style was serialism and the use of it by Webern who he chose out of all the contemporaries to create his own serial style. Serial music, as defined by The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition 2001, is

. . . the body of compositions whose fundamental syntactical reference is a particular ordering (called series or row) of the twelve pitch classes-C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B-that constitute the equal-tempered scale? Instead, the presence of harmonic successions resulting from controlled juxtaposition of various row forms gives serial pieces their coherence. These forms are the prime, retrograde (pitch order reversed), inversion (interval direction reversed), and retrograde inversion, and the twelve transpositional degrees of the foregoing. Thus, the row functions as an ordering of intervals and not of absolute pitches.

Conclusion

With "The Rite of Spring" came the destruction of the old romantic style of music, the reintroduction of the concept of rhythm in the music of the twentieth century, and the reign of a composer named Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky is one of the most influential composers of the twentieth century. He crossed over so many times into so many different genres that other composers can't help but be affected by his works. He composed music with a broad variety of subjects and in every style there was. No composer till this day has accomplished this feat. Without him we might not have had a Prokofiev, a Shostakovich or a Miaskovsky. Without him Russia may have never really experienced the influence of Western music before the Iron Curtain. His music epitomizes all of twentieth century music because he has done it all. This is what makes him one of the most influential people of the twentieth century.

Works Cited

• Craft, Robert.Chronicle of a Friendship 1948-1972. New York: Knopf, 1972.

• Dobrin, Arnold.Igor Stravinsky His Life And Times. New York: Crowell Company, 1970.

• Pinkerton. "Diatonic."Jazz Glossary Plus Jan. 2003. 16 February, 2003.

• Routh, Frances.The Master Musician Stravinsky. London: Dent, 1975.

• "Serial Music."The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002.