Summary: <br> Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) circa 1968<br> <br> <br> <br> We offer up our very best birthday wishes to Igor Stravinsky, who was born 137 years ago today, on June 17, 1882.<br> <br> <br> <br> A word of warning: saying Happy Birthday! to a Russian born before February 14, 1918 — as Stravinsky was — is an exercise in asterisks and parentheses. This is because it wasn’t until February 14, 1918 that Russia stopped using the Julian Calendar (which was named for Julius Caesar and went into effect on January 1, 45 B.C.E.) and joined pretty much the rest of world in using the Gregorian Calendar (which was introduced in October 1582 and named for Pope Gregory XIII). According to the old-style Julian Calendar, Stravinsky was born on June 5, 1882. For reasons entirely his own, Stravinsky made everything that much more complicated by celebrating his birthday on June 18. Whatever; June 17th is Stravinsky’s Gregorian Calendar birthday and a happy birthday we wish him.<br> <br> <br> <br> Stravinsky in 1910, at the time of the premiere of The Firebird<br> <br> <br> <br> Stravinsky was the defining composer of the twentieth century.<br> <br> <br> <br> He began his compositional life as a Russian musical nationalist, writing in the style of his teacher, the great Russian nationalist composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov.<br> <br> <br> <br> But even as he studied with Rimsky-Korsakov, the young Stravinsky fell under the spell of Claude Debussy, and so inspired, he composed a number of works that reflect Debussy’s so-called Impressionist style. It was thanks to one of these works that he came to the attention of the impresario and visionary Serge Diaghilev in 1909. Diaghilev commissioned Stravinsky to compose a series of scores for the Ballet Russes, The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (composed in 1912). The Firebird made the 28-year-old Stravinsky an international star, and the brutal (“Fauvist”) The Rite of Spring — inarguably the most important single work composed in the twentieth century — vaulted Stravinsky to the forefront of Western music, where he remained until his death (on April 6, 1971).<br> <br> <br> <br> Stravinsky in 1914, at the age of 32<br> <br> <br> <br> Like so many of his generation, Stravinsky was appalled by the catastrophic destruction and incomprehensible barbarity of World War One (1914–1918). In the years immediately following the war, he turned away from the explicit musical modernism of his pre-war music and looked for inspiration to the musical styles of the past, principally the Baroque and Classical eras, music that appeared, on its surface, to represent simpler, more “humane” times.<br> <br> <br> <br> Stravinsky in 1927, at the age of 45<br> <br> <br> <br> During the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s, he was equally swept away by the force and energy of such “popular” musical idioms as ragtime, tango, and big-band jazz, and he composed works that evoked all of these idioms. And then in the mid 1950s and 1960s Stravinsky — now in his seventies and early eighties — underwent yet another compositional transformation and began writing ultra-modern, serial music.<br> <br> <br> <br> (For many if not most of his friends and fans, Stravinsky’s late-in-life conversion from neo-Classicism/neo-tonalism to serialism was considered a betrayal of historic import, on the lines of those perpetrated by Judas, Brutus, Benedict Arnold and Fredo Corleone. In the 1950s, the great oppositional poles of neo-Classicism/neo-tonalism versus serialism defined the compositional politics of the day. Consequently, to see Stravinsky cross the line and not just fraternize but mate with the serialist enemy was seen by many as being as heretical as it was inexplicable!)<br> <br> <br> <br> Stravinsky conducting in 1965, at the age of 82<br> <br> <br> <br> Stravinsky’s last major work — Requiem Canticles — was completed and pre...
