Music & Ballet How ballet music took centre stage | Page 6

Formal innovation was everywhere in the arts during the
early years of the twentieth century, and this was as true
in ballet music as any other discipline. A major iconoclast
in ballet music came in the form of Igor Stravinsky, an
astonishingly young Russian composer who shocked and
delighted the ballet world with his score for The
Firebird (performed by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Paris)
at the age of just 27. Perhaps what’s most impressive
about Stravinsky’s game-changing work was that the
composer hadn’t even been the first choice of
choreographer Michel Fokine. That honour was originally
meant for Anatol Liadov, but the composer found himself
unable to create anything befitting the mystical folkloric
tale of the supernatural bird. Though the original principal
ballerina left the production on account of her distaste for
the music, the rest of the world was delighted by
Stravinsky’s innovative score, which bore the hallmark of
Russian folk melodies and the techniques of Stravinsky’s
teacher Rimsky-Korsakov. The première of the work was
rapturously received, with commentators calling it a
“danced symphony”. Like his predecessor Tchaikovsky,
Stravinsky had helped to bring ballet music to the fore.
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