Rhythmically Russian

Russian Composer Igor Stravinsky was born on June 17 in 1882. Stravinsky has been hailed as one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century.

Of his contributions to music, one is his unusual use of rhythms. One musicologist has said that "Stravinsky is perhaps the only composer who has raised rhythm in itself to the dignity of art", and the composer Aaron Copland was very influenced by Stravinky's use of rhythms. Stravinsky also made use of polytonality, or musical lines in multiple clashing keys at the same time.

His early compositions can be seen as Russian nationalistic. The most famous are his first three ballets, The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring.

Here is an old video of the composer himself conducting part of The Firebird, which has a very late-romantic feel to it. If it sounds familiar to you, it may be because Fantasia 2000 has used some of the music from this ballet for its finale (the one about the spring sprite and elk vs. the "volcano bird").

The music I'd like to play of Petrushka is a piano version made by the composer himself of some pieces from the ballet. Here are the first and second movements - notice the competing rhythms in the two hands, clever chord patterns, and lightning fast arpeggios in the first piece; and in the second piece (starting at 2:33), the striking dissonances that resolve into ethereal flittings and floatings - this is really fascinating music! Finally, here's a fragment of Shrovetide Fair, which gives a taste of the relentless rhythmic drive and repetition of chords that is so often part of Stravinsky's music.

The Rite of Spring is probably Stravinsky's most famous (and most infamous) work. It has very interesting and beautiful moments, but mostly it is full of brutal dissonance and very complex rhythms. The 1913 Paris crowd listening to its premiere did not like it at all - there were boos, tomatoes thrown, and riots throughout! It's likely that both the dissonant music as well as the ballet was offensive to them, given that the work is about pagan rituals and human sacrifice. I think I'd rather avoid watching the ballet myself! Here is a link to a four-hands version, played by one person (he recorded the 1st part and plays over it with a special piano). This gets a bit thick at times (whereas the many different instruments of the orchestra and each unique timbre do the piece more justice), but it is interesting to hear some of it on piano if you're already familiar with the piece. Here is the version played for the original Disney Fantasia movie, Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. I personally find this very interesting to watch - it seems to enhance the music for me, and is much more uplifting to me than Stravinsky's own program for the piece, which I find frankly disturbing.

All the above compositions were from Stravinsky's early period. His middle period of composition is termed Neoclassical. During this time, he wrote music which reinvestigated the compositional style of the classical period. One such piece is his Symphony of Psalms. Just prior to writing it, Stravinsky had a re-awakening of his Christian faith, and this is partly what inspired him to write the piece. Here is the third movement (Psalm 150) of the work.

Although I don't have any examples to play, his last period of composing featured music written with twelve-tone-row technique (serialism), in which the 12 half-steps of the chromatic scale are all treated equally and used in a certain order. The effect is atonality in music. This compositional technique was popularized by the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg, and will be explored here more on his birthday.