![]() Petrushka is also a work which revels in Russian folk music, from the opening notes (an Easter song from Smolensk) to the Gypsy Dance in the fourth scene. Stravinsky began to use these orchestral colors in the same way that Romantic and Classical composers had used themes, substituting color for melody, musical montage for Brahmsian "developing variations." He exploited the capabilities of the orchestras with bold, bright washes of sound that bring to mind the sparkle of vibrant colors. He utilized rhythmic groupings which were unbalanced. Indeed, the composer explored color and rhythm in ways which were similarly abstracted. This kind of composition has been likened to the paintings of Picasso and Georges Braque, where figures and scenes are distorted and abstracted, where a painted object might be made up of several blocks of loosely related color. Stravinsky began his turn away from "developmental" form, often instead creating contrasts with bold blocks of sound, a technique which would become a hallmark of his style. Like The Firebird before it, the ballet was a great success unlike that earlier work, however, Petrushka was a crucial step away from the late-Romantic orchestral prototype. Stravinsky was responsible for most of the scenario. The completed work - Petrushka - was first performed in 1911 at the Châtelet Theater in Paris, with Pierre Monteux conducting and Vaslav Nijinsky dancing the title role. Diaghilev heard possibilities in the nascent Konzertstück and convinced the composer to create a ballet score. It was, according to the composer, a piece with which he could refresh himself. ![]() He was surprised to find Stravinsky working on a completely different piece, a semi-concerto for piano and orchestra. It was arguably his first mature work and it established him in the world of music and created a favorable relationship with the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and the Paris-based Ballets Russes, but it did not establish Stravinsky as the infant terrible whose Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring, 1913) would resonate with musicians, audiences, composers, writers, and scholars for the rest of the century.ĭiaghilev and Stravinsky had already agreed on the general outline of their next collaboration (which would become the Rite) when the impresario came to visit the composer in Lausanne. This was not the Stravinsky we think of now, this was Stravinsky the student of Rimsky-Korsakov and admirer of Tchaikovsky. It was for him a break from the Russian composers he admired and yet, the music still affirmed their influence. The 1908 composition of music for the ballet The Firebird was a turning point for the composer, then 28. Time and again throughout his career, Stravinsky grappled with this issue of freedom. "I experience a sort of terror when, at the moment of setting to work and finding myself before the infinitude of possibilities that present themselves, I have the feeling that everything is permissible to me… Will I then have to lose myself in this abyss of freedom?" So wrote Igor Stravinsky in his 1946 lectures at Harvard University, collected, translated, and printed as the Poetics of Music.
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