Miniature essays: Igor Stravinsky

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IGOR STRAVINSKY
Igor Stravinsky was born at Oranienbaum, near St. Petersburg, on June 5th (18th), 1882. His father, an operatic singer, who won great favour with the public of the Russian capital at the Maryinsky Theatre, soon discovered remarkable musical gifts in the boy, which he did not neglect to develop, although he wished him to grow up to a legal career. In accordance with this plan, Igor Stravinsky, on having reached adolescence, entered the University of St. Petersburg and devoted himself to the study of jurisprudence, not without periodical and almost irresistible impulsions to abandon it for music. He had thus reached the age of twenty-two, when a meeting with Rimsky-Korsakov, who saw and appreciated the young man's astonishing talent, proved the decisive event of his life. Rimsky-Korsakov declared himself willing to accept him as a pupil.
The direct outcome of Rimsky-Korsakov's tuition was, first of all, a Symphony, begun in 1905 and finished in 1907. This was succeeded by Faun and Shepherdess, a song-cycle with orchestra, and two orchestral works, Fireworks and Scherzo fantastique. The latter was the means of bringing about a meeting that was destined to direct Stravinsky's activities into a new channel: he made the acquaintance of Serge Diaghilev, who was struck by the vitality and colour of the work he had heard, and who induced him to set to music one of the ballets he proposed to produce. This was the Firebird (1910), which was followed in due course by Petrushka (1911) and Le Sacre du Printemps (1913). Next came an opera, begun some years earlier, The Nightingale, finished in 1914, the second and third acts of which were later converted into the symphonic poem, The Song of the Nightingale (1917). Stravinsky left Russia at an early stage of his career and has since lived alternately in Paris and on the shores of the Lake of Geneva.