Igor Stravinski

Igor Fiodorovitch Stravinski (in), Russian Type-setter naturalized French, then American, was born the June 17th 1882 in Orianenbaum, close to Saint-Pétersbourg. He is deceased the April 6th 1971 with New York, at the 88 years age.

First great successes

Igor Stravinski is born with Oranienbaum the June 17th 1882. Autodidact, disciple of Rimski-Korsakov, his first works carry the print of the Russian tradition ( Symphonie in E flat in the line of Glazounov, Sonata for piano and violin in F sharp which makes think a little of Rachmaninov) but quickly it émancipe, taking as a starting point the French heritage, ( fantastic Scherzo , very prédebussyste and especially the fires of artifices under the influence of Dukas of the Sorcerer's apprentice ). Contacted by Diaghilev, with the head of the troop of the Russian Ballets installed in Paris, it knows the glory, which will not leave it any more, with three Ballet S created by this one with its troop of ballet: the Bird of fire (1910), Petrouchka (1911) and the Rite of Spring (1913) to scandalous creation - especially following the choreography of Nijinski (between 1910 and 1913), whose revolutionary and “barbarian” side comes in particular from a prevalence of the rate/rhythm on the other musical parameters. Same time dates the opera the Nightingale (1908 - 1914) whose first act approaches Nikolaï Rimski-Korsakov, whereas the second and third acts are in the mobility of Petrouchka and the Sacre . Let us quote also the hieratic one and short cantata the King of the stars , (on a text of the Russian poet Symbolist Balmont) where the sequence of agreements without resolutions brings it closer to research of a Scriabine to the same time.

The following years see Stravinski - which leaves definitively Russia in 1914 and will return there only once, in 1962 - to approach more restricted formations, this is due also to the pangs of the First World War which puts the activities of Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet out of night light, and also to the already fragile health of the type-setter. let us quote inter alia its Renard , between 1915 and 1916, “burlesque history sung and played”, the History of the soldier (1918), on a French text of Ramuz which it meets with Montreux in Switzerland. This work marks its “final rupture with the Russian orchestral school in which had been raised”, and the Weddings (1917 - 1923), danced cantata which celebrates and sublimates the traditions of deep Russia, and whose final version makes the dead end on the full orchestra for an original formation (four pianos and an abundant percussion). Stravinski also approaches the instrumental pure music with the 3 parts for clarinet alone, as well as the three parts and the concertino for string quartet.

The Neoclassicism

With Pulcinella (1920), according to Pergolèse, begins the period known as “neo-classic” from Stravinski: it will last until the opera The Rake' S Progress , in 1951. It borrows then from the musics of (Machaut, Bach, Weber, Rossini, Tchaïkovski and others, but with a humor, a trade and an originality not having anything an epigone. This period sees being born from new works like Symphonie of wind instruments (1920), the Octuor for wind instruments (1922 - 1923), the Symphonie of psalms (1929-30), the Symphonie in three movements (1945), Orphée (1947) or the Messe (1948), but also the comic opera Mavra (1922), the opera-oratorio Œdipus Rex (1928), the ballets Apollo musagète (1928) and Card deck (1936), the melodrama Perséphone (1934), the concerto Dumbarton Oaks (1938) and the Symphony in C (1940).

The ultimate creative period

Towards 1950, vis-a-vis the growing impact of the three Viennese (Schönberg, Berg, and especially Webern) and to a lesser extent of Varèse - which works to him more with the sounds than with the concepts and the legacy of the past -, Stravinski can seem the spokesperson of the musical “reaction”. It then carries out its most spectacular volte-face apparently by adopting a very personal Sérialisme, more in the line of Webern that of Schönberg. In testify after shy persons tests in the cantata to 1952 on English medieval texts, the Septuor - in particular the gigue, wink in Schönberg of the opus 23 (1953) -, the Three songs of Shakespeare (1953), In memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954) then, especially, the Canticum Sacrum (1956) and the ballet Agon (1957). Its style is done stripped, of a size austerity, and the religious inspiration occupies an important place, with Threni (1958), main work, Abraham and Isaac (1963) dedicated to the nation of Israel and sung in Hebrew, lugubrious the Introïtus (1965) or ultimate the Requiem canticles (1966) which seems a summary of all its work. Still let us quote Mouvements for piano and orchestra (1959) very webernien of pace and ignored the Variations (Aldous Huxley In Memoriam) for orchestra (1963) where the old lion holds the high dragee with all the young generation: several passages make think of the Karlheinz Stockhausen Gruppen .

For Stravinski, the music is intended “to institute an order in the things, including and especially an order between the man and time. Made construction, the order reached, all is known as”. It left like writings Chroniques of my life (1935) and musical Poétique (1942), and presents its ideas in its many discussions (joined together in volumes) with its disciple Robert Craft.

A work of a deep unity

One with the practice to divide the evolution of Stravinski into three periods: Russian, neo-classic and serial. But, in its beginnings, it recreates more than it does not borrow folk material, and the elements of its language are not Russian source, but mark the result of certain Western traditions. Its neoclassicism is as for him not a pastiche, but the starting point of a research, that of stylistic objectivity within the framework of the universality of the form and the spirit, which explains the persistence of its interest for the subjects except time, quasi ritual. Its serial works, finally, push with its more extreme consequences the preoccupation with a rigor to the detriment of the subjective element and take support on the only collective musical phenomenon of the 20th century. Its course seems thus either a succession of adhesions and disengagements, but of a deep unity.

List works

List of works of Igor Stravinski

See too

External bonds

Simple: Igor Stravinsky

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