Ígor Stravinsky – A Complete Biography

Introduction

Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971) reshaped 20th-century music with an imagination that moved from the raw, rhythm-driven energy of his early Russian ballets to lucid neoclassicism and, later, to rigorous twelve-tone composition. His career—rooted in imperial Russia, forged in Paris and Switzerland, and crowned in the United States—became a touchstone for musical modernism. Few composers matched his range, craft, and influence.

Childhood

Stravinsky was born on June 17, 1882 (June 5, Old Style), in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), near St. Petersburg, into a cultivated family: his father, Fyodor, was a leading operatic bass at the Mariinsky Theatre, and his mother, Anna, an accomplished pianist. The family’s artistic milieu and frequent visits to the theater formed the boy’s earliest musical memories; he began piano lessons at nine.

Youth

Obeying his parents, Stravinsky entered law studies at St. Petersburg University, but private composition lessons with Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov—arranged through the composer’s son, a fellow student—proved decisive. Rimsky-Korsakov trained him in orchestration and mentored his first public pieces. In 1909 the impresario Serge Diaghilev heard Stravinsky’s Scherzo fantastique and quickly recruited the young composer for the Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910) made him famous overnight; Petrushka (1911) followed; and on May 29, 1913, The Rite of Spring ignited the most notorious opening-night scandal in musical theater.

World War I uprooted Stravinsky and effectively stranded his family in Switzerland (1914–1920), where financial constraints encouraged leaner, small-scale experiments: the folk-inflected theater pieces Renard (1916) and the mixed-media fable L’Histoire du soldat (1918) typify this condensed radicalism.

Adulthood

After the war Stravinsky settled in France (1920–1939), renewing ties with Diaghilev but also forging a new idiom—neoclassicism—crystalized by Pulcinella (1920) and continuing through works for the stage and concert hall. He took French citizenship in 1934, experienced a spiritual reawakening in the mid-1920s that colored works like Oedipus Rex (1927) and the Symphony of Psalms (1930), and collaborated with figures such as George Balanchine.

In 1939 Stravinsky moved to the United States, settling in California, later becoming a U.S. citizen (1945). In the postwar decades he embraced serial (twelve-tone) procedures with distinctive clarity—evident in works like Canticum Sacrum (1955), Agon (1957), and Threni (1958)—while touring as a conductor and recording his music extensively. In these years, his long association with ballet continued to shape American dance and concert life.

Major Compositions (selected, by period)

Russian period (to c. 1920)

• The Firebird (1910): brilliant orchestration and folkloric color launched his international reputation.
• Petrushka (1911): a kinetic portrait of a tragic puppet at Shrovetide Fair.
• The Rite of Spring (1913): a landmark in rhythm, harmony, and orchestral force; its Paris premiere caused a now-legendary uproar.
• Renard (1916) and L’Histoire du soldat (1918): reduced forces, theatrical economy, and modern idioms.

Neoclassical period (c. 1920s–40s)

• Pulcinella (1920): a witty “re-composition” after Pergolesi; often cited as the opening of his neoclassical phase.
• Apollon musagète (1928) and Oedipus Rex (1927): spare, luminous textures and ritualized drama.
• Symphonies of Wind Instruments (1920, rev. 1947): an austere memorial to Debussy, later standardized in a revised edition.
• Symphony of Psalms (1930), Symphony in C (1940), Symphony in Three Movements (1945), and the jazz-tinged Ebony Concerto (1945): concert works that extend his neoclassical breadth.

Serial/late period (1950s–60s)

• Canticum Sacrum (1955), Agon (1957), Threni (1958), Movements for Piano and Orchestra (1959), A Sermon, a Narrative and a Prayer (1961), The Flood (1962), and Requiem Canticles (1966): twelve-tone methods refracted through his clarity of line and timbre.

Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes
Diaghilev’s company not only jump-started Stravinsky’s career; it commissioned a string of his pivotal scores—The Firebird, Petrushka, Le Sacre du printemps, Pulcinella, Le Chant du rossignol, Le Renard, and Les Noces—defining modern ballet’s marriage of movement, music, and design.

Death

In declining health, Stravinsky left Los Angeles for New York in 1969. He died on April 6, 1971, in New York City. Honoring his wishes, the funeral took place in Venice, and he was buried on the cemetery island of San Michele—near Serge Diaghilev, whose early faith had revealed his genius to the world.

Conclusion

Across six decades, Stravinsky repeatedly reinvented his language without losing his unmistakable voice. From pagan ritual and urban puppet-life to Latin oratorio and crystalline serialism, he turned constraint into invention and tradition into living form. His music’s rhythmic bite, structural poise, and theatrical intelligence still define what “modern” can mean in the concert hall and on the stage.