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Stravinsky is shown here conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra through Petrushka.
Stravinsky also achieved fame as a pianist and conductor, often at the premieres of his own works. He was also a writer. With the help of his protege Robert CraftRobert Lawson Craft (born October 20, 1923) is an American conductor and writer on music. Craft was born in Kingston, New York and studied music at the Juilliard School. He became particlarly interested in early music by the likes of Claudio Monteverdi an, who helped with the composer's English grammar, Stravinsky composed a theoretic work entitled Poetics of Music. In it, he famously claimed that music was incapable of "expressing anything but itself". Craft also transcribed several interviews with the composer, which were published as Conversations with Stravinsky.
A quintessentially cosmopolitanThe term cosmopolitan refers to an individual which has kept their roots from their country of origin, yet adopted a wide taste for other cultures, and so is both local and global at the same time. The term is derived from Greek cosmos the global, and pol RussiaThe Russian Federation ( Russian: , transliteration: Rossiyskaya Federatsiya or Rossijskaja Federacija , or Russia (Russian: , transliteration: Rossiya or Rossija , is a country that stretches over a vast expanse of eastern Europe and northern Asia. Withn, Stravinsky was one of the most authoritative composers in 20th century19th century 20th century 21st century more centuries) Decades: 1900s 1910s 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s As a means of recording the passage of time, the 20th century was that century which lasted from 1901- 2000 in the sense of the Gre music, both in the West and in his native land. He was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people of the century.
Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum (now LomonosovLomonosov , formerly Oranienbaum , is a city and in northwestern Russia, on the shore of the Bay of Finland west of St. Petersburg. Located on the southern coast of the Gulf of Finland, near Kronshtadt, and 39 km south of Saint Petersburg, it is the site), near St. Petersburg, Russia. Brought up in an apartment in St. Petersburg and dominated by his father and elder brother, Stravinsky's early childhood was a mix of experience that hinted little at the cosmopolitan artist he was to become. Though his father was a bass singer at the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Stravinsky originally studied to be a lawyer. Composition came later. In 1902, at the age of 20, Stravinsky became the pupil of Rimsky-Korsakov, probably the leading Russian composer of the time.
Stravinsky left Russia for the first time in 1910, going to Paris to attend the premiere of his ballet The Firebird. During his stay in the city, he composed three major works for the Ballets Russes—The Firebird, Petroushka ( 1911), and The Rite of Spring ( 1913). The ballets trace his stylistic development: from the Firebird, whose style draws largely on Tchaikovsky, Glazunov and Rimsky-Korsakov, to Petroushka's emphasis on bitonality, and finally to the savage polyphonic dissonance of The Rite. As he himself said, with these premieres his intention was "[to send] them all to hell". (He succeeded: the 1913 première of The Rite turned into a riot.)
Stravinsky displayed an inexhaustible desire to learn and explore art, literature, and life. This desire manifested itself in several of his Paris collaborations. Not only was he the principal composer for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, but Stravinsky also collaborated with Pablo Picasso (Pulcinella, 1920), Jean Cocteau (Oedipus Rex, 1927) and George Balanchine (Apollon Musagete, 1928).
Stravinsky and Pablo Picasso collaborated on Pulcinella in 1920. Picasso took the opportunity to make several sketches of the composer. Relatively short of stature and not conventionally handsome, Stravinsky was nevertheless photogenic, as many pictures show. Although a notorious philanderer (even rumoured to have affairs with high-class partners such as Coco Chanel) Stravinsky was also a family man who devoted considerable amounts of his time and expenditure to his sons and daughters. He was still young when he married his cousin Katerina Nossenko , who he had known since early childhood, on 23 January 1906. Their marriage endured for 33 years, but the true love of his life, and partner until his death, was his second wife Vera de Bosset .
When Stravinsky met Vera in the early 1920s she was married to the painter and stage designer Serge Sudeikin , but they soon began an affair which led to her leaving her husband. From then until the death of Katerina in 1939 Stravinsky led a deft double-life, spending some of his time with his first family and the rest with Vera. Katerina soon learned of the relationship and accepted it as inevitable and permanent. After her death Stravinsky and Vera were married in New York where they had gone from France to escape the war in 1940.
Patronage too was never far away. In the early 1920s Leopold Stokowski was able to give Stravinsky regular support through a pseudonymous "benefactor". The composer was also able to attract commissions: most of his work from The Firebird onwards was written for specific occasions and paid for generously.
Stravinsky proved adept at playing the part of "man of the world", acquiring a keen instinct for business matters and appearing relaxed and comfortable in many of the world's major cities. Paris, Venice, Berlin, London and New York all hosted successful appearances as pianist and conductor. Most people who knew him through dealings connected with performances spoke of him as polite, courteous and helpful. For example, Otto Klemperer, who knew Schoenberg well, said that he always found Stravinsky much more co-operative and easy to deal with. At the same time he had a disregard of his social inferiors: Robert Craft was embarrassed by his habit of tapping a glass with a fork and loudly demanding attention in restaurants.
Having left Russia in 1920, Stravinsky spent most of his time until World War II in Paris (except for the World War I years which he spent in Switzerland). From the 1950s until his death in 1971 he lived in the United States. Stravinsky had adapted to life in France, but moving to America aged 58 was a very different prospect. For a time he preserved a ring of emigré Russian friends and contacts, but eventually realised that this would not sustain his intellectual and professional life in the USA. When he planned to write an opera with W. H. Auden, the need to acquire more familiarity with the English-speaking world coincided with his meeting the conductor and musicologist Robert Craft. Craft lived with Stravinsky until his death, acting as interpreter, chronicler, assistant conductor and factotum for countless musical and social tasks.
Stravinsky's taste in literature was wide and reflected his constant desire for new discoveries. The texts and literary sources for his work began with a period of interest in Russian folklore, progressed to classical authors and the Latin liturgy , and moved on to contemporary France ( André Gide, in Persephone) and eventually English literature: Auden, Eliot, and mediaeval English verse. At the end of his life he was even setting Hebrew scripture in Abraham and Isaac.
In 1962 he accepted an invitation to return to Russia for a series of concerts, but remained an emigre firmly based in the West.
He died in New York City on April 6, 1971 at the age of 89 and was buried in Venice on the cemetery island of San Michele. His grave is close to the tomb of his early collaborator Diaghilev. Stravinsky's life had encompassed most of the 20th Century, including many of its modern classical music styles, and he influenced composers both during and after his lifetime. He has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6340 Hollywood Boulevard.
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