Stravinsky was born near St. Petersburg, Russia in 1882. Although his father was a singer in the Imperial Opera, both of his parents wanted him to pursue a career in law; therefore, he began a legal education at the University of St. Petersburg. At the same time, he continued to practice his music on the side, and eventually accepted as a composition student by Rimsky-Korsakov, with whom he studied for three years. It quickly became clear that he was meant to be a composer, not a lawyer.

His first major achievements were three commissions from Sergei Diaghilev (1872-1929) for one of the premiere ballet companies in all of Europe, the Ballet Russes. The resulting ballets, Firebird (1910), Petroushka (1911), and Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring - 1913), established the composer’s fame as a leader in new music. Within just a few years, Stravinsky’s style in progressed dramatically from impressionism to an avant-garde style, which foreshadowed the music of the mid to late 20th century. The Rite of Spring (1913) for example, is viewed as an example of primitivism for both its subject matter (a virgin sacrifice in a primal culture) and for the brutal rhythms and harmonic structures.

While the subject, rhythm, and harmonic structure of his ballets are undoubtedly new, the compositions did retain the massive orchestras of Mahler’s earlier works. Stravinsky later turned to smaller ensembles; however, the impact of those first works was immediate and substantial. At the Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring, a riot erupted during the performance. Although now the violent reaction of the normally placid Parisian audience is attributed more to Vaclav Nijinsky’s modern choreography than to Stravinsky’s music, the brashness and shocking originality of the music undoubtedly encouraged the crowd’s histrionics.

The outbreak of World War I forced Stravinsky and his wife to move to Switzerland, and the Russian Revolution ensured that they could not return home. As postwar economic conditions made it difficult to stage works as large as Petroushka, his works after The Rite became smaller, more musically efficient, and more along the lines of Classical style. Works including L’Histoire du Soldat (A Soldiers Tale, 1918), Les Noces (The Wedding, 1923), and Oedipus Rex (1927) adapted classical forms to the dramatic needs of the subject matter. Works like the Symphony for Wind Instruments (1920), Concerto for Piano and Winds (1924), Symphony of Psalms (1930), Symphony in C (1940), and the Symphony in Three Movements (1945) are all Classical in form and mood even though they break the mold of traditional tonality.

These works from Stravinsky’s middle stage usher in the Neoclassical period of 20th century music. Characterized by a return to the style and absolute forms of the Classical era within the framework of 20th century compositional techniques, Neo-Classicism was a reaction against the emotionalism of Romantic-era music. Furthermore, this new style also sought to explore the possibilities of timbre produced by solo instruments in small ensembles.

In 1939, World War once again forced Stravinsky to move. This time, he relocated to the United States, settling in Los Angeles where he remained until his death at 89. Ironically, Stravinsky moved to within several miles of Schoenberg, but, although the two men never disliked each other, the substantial differences in their approaches to composition kept them apart. Although Stravinsky admired Schoenberg’s work, he did not apply serial techniques until after Schoenberg’s death in 1951.

Stravinsky began to use serial techniques in some of his works, such as Agon (1957) and Threni (1958). He did not attempt to ‘steal’ ideas from Schoenberg, but rather remolded them into his own style. In fact, his approach to serialism owes more to Anton Webern than to Schoenberg. Indeed, the rhythmic structures of Canticum Sacrum or any of the later works show that the essence of Stravinsky’s compositional style did not change with his adoption of serialism.