Igor Stravinsky claimed of his 1911 ballet Petrushka that it “was the first piece in which I’ve had the full confidence of my inner ear,” and that it “was the first piece that really represents me, as I think of myself.” Premiered 100 years ago this year, Petrushka was composed on the heels of the tremendously successful ballet The Firebird, which Stravinsky had completed the year before. The composer who once declared that his music was "best understood by children and animals" subsequently finished the tremendously groundbreaking ballet The Rite of Spring in 1913, immediately following Petrushka. The Rite of Spring now ranks as perhaps the single most important and influential composition of the 20th century, if not at the very least among a very few most important.
Igor Stravinsky has since assumed such an iconic role in music history that he’s now practically monolithic in stature. Given this, it’s particularly strange to imagine him as a young composer, still somewhat insecure about what he could accomplish, still refining his techniques, and harboring notions of a sound that he believed could be more. Stravinsky didn’t even feel prepared to compose the confidence-securing ballet The Firebird when he did. In fact, it was visionary impresario Serge Diaghilev who prompted Stravinsky to begin working on the defining piece. Nonetheless, The Rite of Spring started a revolution two years later. Igor Stravinsky had managed to gain a deep confidence in his own unique voice, a permission to follow his natural instincts, and through this personal confidence was ultimately able to create works that changed the course of music. We can't all be Stravinsky, of course, but if an individual follows his or her deepest instincts, who knows what might be possible?
