Suite from the "Firebird" (1919)
Igor Stravinsky
Many of the very greatest composers have revealed their genius at an early age; Igor Stravinsky was not among that number. Growing up surrounded by music and learning, the son of a celebrated singer at the Maryiinsky Opera in Saint Petersburg, Stravinsky received a thorough musical training as a boy, but only began to show a serious interest in composition around the age of twenty. Friendship with the youngest son of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov led to a meeting with the composer, who became an unofficial tutor and advisor, even something of a father figure to the young man. In his early twenties Stravinsky composed a series of bland and well-crafted works which showed little sign of his eventual gifts, among them a piano sonata and a Symphony in E-flat, which reflected the influence of Tchaikovsky and Borodin. But in his mid-twenties he began to undergo a remarkable transformation. Not long before Rimsky's death in 1908 Stravinsky showed him sketches for a projected opera, The Nightingale," and the “Scherzo Fantastique,” perhaps the most important of the early compositions. Soon after, in early 1909, the Scherzo was heard at its premiere by the man who would become the key figure in the Stravinsky's career, Sergei Diaghilev. In that same year Diaghilev launched the first of what would become his annual "Russian seasons" in Paris, presenting classical ballet productions, as well as an ambitious repertoire of Russian operas, all of which were utterly unknown in the West. The operas dazzled the Parisian audiences with their colorful Oriental exoticism---but lost money. While the initial ballet evenings astonished the public with the superior gifts of Russian dancers, in style and subject-matter they remained close to the familiar styles of French classical ballet. Diaghilev realized that he needed to develop a repertory of distinctively RUSSlAN ballet, bringing together virtuoso dance and the sort of vivid textures and rhythms of Russian music which made such a powerful impression in the opera performances. (From a distance of 90 years it is difficult to comprehend that such a style of ballet hardly existed at the time. Apart from Tchaikovsky, whose musical idiom was fairly familiar to western audiences, hardly any first-rate Russian composers wrote for the ballet before Stravinsky. In a blunt and scathing letter Rimsky-Korsakov himself laid out good reasons why he would NEVER be caught dead writing a ballet, among them: "it is a degenerate art...the best thing ballet has to offer dances, are boring...there is no need for good music in ballet...ballet music is usually performed in a sloppy, perfunctory way..." ! (Sadly, Rimsky died too soon to see his own imprecations swept aside by the work of his protégé. Determined to produce a distinctive RUSSIAN ballet for his 1910 season in Paris, Diaghilev proposed a new ballet based on Russian folk tales, the FIREBIRD, which would be a feast for eye and ear, a spectacle unlike any other ever seen in Paris. The music was originally to have been composed by Diaghilev's staff conductor, Nikolai Tcherepnin, who quickly withdrew from the project. Then, after a period of squabbling, no fewer than three other composers were offered the commission---all refused. One of the familiar myths about the originas of the “Firebird” has it that Anatol Liadov, a respected composer of the older generation, was offered the commission, but as usual worked in a lackadaisical manner. The truth is that only when four or five composers shunned the commission was Stravinsky selected for the job, proceeding to compose the 45-minute score in little more than four months, in time for the hugely successful premiere in Paris on 24th June, 1910. As was said of Lord Byron, Stravinsky "awoke to find himself famous." A year PETRUSHKA appeared, and in 1912 LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS was composed, although not performed until 1913. Thus, turning away from Tchaikovsky's classicism (much as Stravinsky himself revered that musical idiom), genuine "Russian" ballet came into being with The FIREBIRD drawing upon unique Russian musical traditions, and in the process establishing the international supremacy of Russian dance. With Paris (and the world at large) conquered by the dancers of Diaghilev's BALLETS RUSSES, the world of ballet underwent a seismic transformation not again witnessed until the remarkable achievement of George Balanchine in bringing the traditions of ballet to New York a quarter century later.
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