A day like today: Stravinski

Not all works of art have an easy birth; In Paris, in 1913, a ballet called The Consecration of Spring was being premiered. The music was so revolutionary that when the play began, many yelled and demanded that it be suspended. In the meantime, an enchanted lady slapped a gentleman who was wailing that ballet.

Among the public there were famous musicians summoned by the play; for example Camille Saint-Saëns and Florent Schmitt, shouted that the composer was a fraud. Maurice Ravel shouted from another side that the author was a portentous genius. The Austrian ambassador laughed and a German nobleman called him a stupid blasphemer.

A Spanish princess said that she was 60 years old and that no one had ever teased her before. While Debussy, he cried out for them to listen to that wonderful music.

That work that created so much noise was the creation of a Russian musician based in Paris and it was another sign that he had come to the world of music to revolutionize it forever.

This musician of a family of artists and with very early studies in the staff, was Igor Stravinsky, one of the great composers of the twentieth century, was born one day as today June 17, 1882, near St. Petersburg, to move the twentieth century with his new conception of music.