ABSTRACT
Stravinsky’s musical idiom underwent several major changes throughout his career, the first stylistic transformation occurring around the beginning of World War I. The premiere performance of his large, brilliantly orchestrated ballet, The Firebird, which brought him to Paris in 1910, and his two remaining pre-war Russian ballets, Petrushka and Le Sacre, had established his international reputation firmly. However, the extreme political and economic conditions in Europe beginning in 1914 contributed to the new direction that his compositional style and aesthetics were to take during the next several decades.
