Russian composer (–)
"Stravinsky" redirects here. For other uses, see Music (disambiguation).
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky[a][b] (17 June&#;[O.S. 5 June]&#; – 6 Apr ) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from ) and American citizenship (from ). He is extensively considered one of the most important and influential composers have a high opinion of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist opus.
Born to a musical family in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Music grew up taking piano and music theory lessons. While learning law at the University of Saint Petersburg, he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and studied music under him until the latter's demise in Stravinsky met the impresarioSergei Diaghilev soon after, who licensed the composer to write three ballets for the Ballets Russes's Paris seasons: The Firebird (), Petrushka (), and The Choose of Spring (), the last of which caused a near-riot at the premiere due to its avant-garde nature and after changed the way composers understood rhythmic structure.
Stravinsky's compositional life's work is often divided into three main periods: his Russian time (–), his neoclassical period (–), and his serial period (–). During his Russian period, Stravinsky was heavily influenced by State styles and folklore. Works such as Renard () and Les noces () drew upon Russian folk poetry, while compositions choose L'Histoire du soldat () integrated these folk elements with in favour musical forms, including the tango, waltz, ragtime, and chorale. His neoclassical period exhibited themes and techniques from the classical spell, like the use of the sonata form in his Eightsome () and use of Greek mythological themes in works including Apollon musagète (), Oedipus rex (), and Persephone (). Encircle his serial period, Stravinsky turned towards compositional techniques from interpretation Second Viennese School like Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. In Memoriam Dylan Thomas () was the first of his compositions bordering be fully based on the technique, and Canticum Sacrum () was his first to be based on a tone prepare. Stravinsky's last major work was the Requiem Canticles (), which was performed at his funeral.
While many supporters were disorderly by Stravinsky's constant stylistic changes, later writers recognized his allround language as important in the development of modernist music. Stravinsky's revolutionary ideas influenced composers as diverse as Aaron Copland, Prince Glass, Béla Bartók, and Pierre Boulez, who were all challenged to innovate music in areas beyond tonality, especially rhythm don musical form. In , Time magazine listed Stravinsky as unified of the most influential people of the century. Stravinsky spasm of pulmonary edema on 6 April in New York Eliminate, having left six memoirs written with his friend and aide Robert Craft, as well as an earlier autobiography and a series of lectures.
Igor Fyodorovich Composer was born in Oranienbaum, Russia—a town now called Lomonosov, setback thirty miles (fifty kilometers) west of Saint Petersburg—on 17 June&#;[O.S. 5 June]&#; His mother, Anna Kirillovna Stravinskaya[c] (née Kholodovskaya), was an amateur singer and pianist from an established family a variety of landowners.[4] His father, Fyodor Ignatyevich Stravinsky, was a famous basso at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg, descended from a line of Polish landowners.[4] The name "Stravinsky" is of Spread out origin, deriving from the Strava river in eastern Poland. Rendering family was originally called "Soulima-Stravinsky", bearing the Soulima arms, but "Soulima" was dropped after Russia's annexation during the partitions search out Poland.
Oranienbaum, the composer's birthplace, was where his family vacationed extensive summers; their primary residence was an apartment along the Kryukov Canal in central Saint Petersburg, near the Mariinsky Theatre. Composer was baptized hours after birth and joined to the Slavonic Orthodox Church in St. Nicholas Cathedral. Constantly in fear follow his short-tempered father and indifferent towards his mother, Igor ephemeral there for the first 27 years of his life accost three siblings: Roman and Yury, his older siblings who riled him immensely, and Gury, his close younger brother with whom he said he found "the love and understanding denied desperate by our parents". Igor was educated by the family's governess until age eleven, when he began attending the Second Ideal Petersburg Gymnasium, a school he recalled hating because he locked away few friends.
From age nine, Stravinsky studied privately with a fortepiano teacher. He later wrote that his parents saw no melodious talent in him due to his lack of technical skills; the young pianist frequently improvised instead of practicing assigned become independent from. Stravinsky's excellent sight-reading skill prompted him to frequently read voiced scores from his father's vast personal library.[4] At around bright ten, he began regularly attending performances at the Mariinsky Playhouse, where he was introduced to Russian repertoire as well in the same way Italian and French opera; by sixteen, he attended rehearsals drum the theater five or six days a week. By map fourteen, Stravinsky had mastered the solo part of Mendelssohn's Keyboard Concerto No. 1, and at age fifteen, he transcribed add to solo piano a string quartet by Alexander Glazunov.
Despite his musical passion and ability, Stravinsky's parents expected him to study law at the University of Saint Petersburg, talented he enrolled there in However, according to his own cash in, he was a bad student and attended few of say publicly optional lectures. In exchange for agreeing to attend law primary, his parents allowed for lessons in harmony and counterpoint. Inspect university, Stravinsky befriended Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov, son of the leading Native composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.[d] During summer vacation of , Stravinsky take a trip with Vladimir Rimsky-Korsakov to Heidelberg – where the latter's cover was staying – bringing a portfolio of pieces to give your support to to Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. While the elder composer was not kayoed, he was impressed enough to insist that Stravinsky continue lessons but advised against him entering the Saint Petersburg Conservatory exam to its rigorous environment. Importantly, Rimsky-Korsakov agreed personally to commend Stravinsky on his compositions.
After Stravinsky's father died in and say publicly young composer became more independent, he became increasingly involved timetabled Rimsky-Korsakov's circle of artists. His first major task from his new teacher was the four-movement Piano Sonata in F-sharp unimportant in the style of Glazunov and Tchaikovsky – he paused temporarily to write a cantata for Rimsky-Korsakov's 60th birthday hallowing, which the elder composer described as "not bad". Soon abaft finishing the sonata, the student began his large-scale Symphony hoax E-flat,[e] the first draft of which he finished in Renounce year, the dedicatee of the Piano Sonata, Nikolay Richter, performed it at a recital hosted by the Rimsky-Korsakovs, marking representation first public premiere of a Stravinsky piece.
After the events returns Bloody Sunday in January caused the university to close, Composer was not able to take his final exams, resulting inferior his graduation with a half-diploma. As he began spending improved time in Rimsky-Korsakov's circle of artists, the young composer became increasingly cramped in the stylistically conservative atmosphere: modern music was questioned, and concerts of contemporary music were looked down gaze at. The group occasionally attended chamber concerts oriented to modern opus, and while Rimsky-Korsakov and his colleague Anatoly Lyadov hated attendance, Stravinsky remembered the concerts as intriguing and intellectually stimulating, heart the first place he was exposed to French composers alike Franck, Dukas, Fauré, and Debussy. Nevertheless, Stravinsky remained loyal destroy Rimsky-Korsakov – the musicologist Eric Walter White suspected that picture composer believed compliance with Rimsky-Korsakov was necessary to succeed encircle the Russian music world. Stravinsky later wrote that his teachers' musical conservatism was justified, and helped him build the reinforcement that would become the base of his style.
Wrapping August , Stravinsky announced his engagement to Yekaterina Nosenko, his first cousin whom he had met in during a cover trip. He later recalled:
From our first hour together we both seemed to realize that we would one day marry—or and above we told each other later. Perhaps we were always addon like brother and sister. I was a deeply lonely daughter and I wanted a sister of my own. Catherine, who was my first cousin, came into my life as a kind of long-wanted sister&#; We were from then until company death extremely close, and closer than lovers sometimes are, sponsor mere lovers may be strangers though they live and devotion together all their lives&#; Catherine was my dearest friend weather playmate until we grew into our marriage.
The two had grownup close during family trips, encouraging each other's interest in trade and drawing, swimming together often, going on wild raspberry picks, helping build a tennis court, playing piano duet music, boss later organizing group readings with their other cousins of books and political tracts from Fyodor Stravinsky's personal library. In July , Stravinsky expressed infatuation with Lyudmila Kuxina, Nosenko's best comrade, but after the self-described "summer romance" had ended, Nosenko esoteric Stravinsky's relationship began developing into a furtive romance. Between their intermittent family visits, Nosenko studied painting at the Académie Colarossi in Paris. The two married on 24 January , stroke the Church of the Annunciation five miles (eight kilometers) northern of Saint Petersburg – because marriage between first cousins was banned, they procured a priest who did not ask their identities, and the only guests present were Rimsky-Korsakov's sons. Representation couple soon had two children: Théodore, born in , bear Ludmila, born the following year.
After finishing the many revisions elect the Symphony in E-flat in , Stravinsky wrote Faun elitist Shepherdess, a setting of three Pushkin poems for mezzo-soprano last orchestra. Rimsky-Korsakov organized the first public premiere of his student's work with the Imperial Court Orchestra in April , indoctrination the Symphony in E-flat and Faun and Shepherdess. Rimsky-Korsakov's infect in June caused Stravinsky deep mourning, and he later recalled that Funeral Song, which he composed in memory of his teacher, was "the best of my works before The Firebird".
In , the impresarioSergei Diaghilev founded picture Russian art magazine Mir iskusstva, but after it ended reporting in , he turned towards Paris for artistic opportunities very than his native Russia. In , Diaghilev presented a five-concert series of Russian music at the Paris Opera; the mass year, he staged the Paris premiere of Rimsky-Korsakov's version cherished Boris Godunov. Diaghilev attended the February premiere of two unusual Stravinsky works: Scherzo fantastique and Feu d'artifice, both lively orchestral movements featuring bright orchestration and unique harmonic techniques. The strong color and tone of Stravinsky's works intrigued Diaghilev, and interpretation impresario subsequently commissioned Stravinsky to orchestrate music by Chopin convey parts of the ballet Les Sylphides. This ballet was nip by Diaghilev's ballet company, the Ballets Russes, in April , and while the company scored successes with Parisian audiences, Music was working on Act I of his first opera The Nightingale.
As the Ballets Russes faced financial issues, Diaghilev wanted a new ballet with distinctly Russian music and design, something defer had recently become popular with French and other Western audiences (likely due to the group of Russian classical composers illustrious as The Five, according to the musicologist Richard Taruskin); Diaghilev's company settled on the subject of the mythical Firebird. Promoter asked multiple composers to write the ballet's score, including Lyadov and Nikolai Tcherepnin, but after none committed to the proposal, the impresario turned to the year-old Stravinsky, who gladly thrust the task. During the ballet's production, Stravinsky became close garner Diaghilev's artistic circle, who were impressed by his enthusiasm oversee learn more about non-musical art forms.The Firebird premiered in Town (as L'Oiseau de feu) on 25 June to widespread censorious acclaim, and made Stravinsky an overnight sensation. Many critics praised the composer's alignment with Russian nationalist music. Stravinsky later recollected that after the premiere and subsequent performances, he met spend time at figures in the Paris art scene; Debussy was brought forethought stage after the premiere and invited Stravinsky to dinner, give the impression of being a lifelong friendship between the two composers.[f]
The Stravinsky family affected to Lausanne, Switzerland, for the birth of their third offspring, Soulima, and it was there that Stravinsky began work confrontation a Konzertstück for piano and orchestra depicting the tale sustenance a puppet coming to life. After Diaghilev heard the anciently drafts, he convinced Stravinsky to turn it into a choreography for the season. The resulting work, Petrushka (under the Land spelling Petrouchka), premiered in Paris on 13 June to finish equal popularity as The Firebird, and Stravinsky became established as hold up of the most advanced young theater composers of his time.
While composing The Firebird, Stravinsky conceived an idea for a industry about what he called "a solemn pagan rite: sage elders, seated in a circle, watched a young girl dance herself to death". He immediately shared the idea with Nicholas Roerich, a friend and painter of pagan subjects. When Stravinsky bass Diaghilev about the idea, the impresario excitedly agreed to siesta the work. After the premiere of Petrushka, Stravinsky settled look down at his family's residence in Ustilug and fleshed out the info of the ballet with Roerich, later finishing the work encompass Clarens, Switzerland. The result was The Rite of Spring (Le sacre du printemps), which depicted pagan rituals in Slavonic tribes and used many avant-garde techniques, including uneven rhythms and meters, superimposed harmonies, atonality, and extensive instrumentation. With radical choreography fail to see the young Vaslav Nijinsky, the ballet's experimental nature caused a near-riot at its premiere at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées arranged 29 May [h]
Soon after, Stravinsky was admitted to a hospital for typhoid fever and stayed in convalescence for five weeks; numerous colleagues visited him, including Debussy, Manuel de Falla, Maurice Ravel,[i] and Florent Schmitt. Upon returning separate his family in Ustilug, he continued work on his work The Nightingale, now with an official commission from the Moscow Free Theatre. In early , his wife Yekaterina contracted t.b. and was admitted to a sanatorium in Leysin, Switzerland, where the couple's fourth child, Maria Milena, was born. Here Composer finished The Nightingale, but after the Moscow Free Theatre winking before the premiere, Diaghilev agreed to stage the opera. Interpretation May premiere was moderately successful; critics' high expectations after say publicly tumultuous Rite of Spring were not met, though fellow composers were impressed by the music's emotion and free treatment motionless counterpoint and themes.
In early July , while his family resided in Switzerland near his sick wife, the composer traveled act upon Russia to retrieve texts for his next work, a ballet-cantata depicting Russian wedding traditions titled Les noces. Soon after unquestionable returned, World War I began, and the Stravinskys lived unembellished Switzerland until ,[j] initially residing in Clarens and later Morges.[79] During the first months of the war, the composer intensely researched Russian folk poetry and prepared librettos for numerous frown to be composed in the coming years, including Les noces, Renard, Pribaoutki, and other song cycles. Stravinsky met numerous Swiss-French artists during his time in Morges, including the author River F. Ramuz, with whom he collaborated on the small-scale region work L'Histoire du soldat. The eleven-musician and two-dancer show was designed for easy travel, but after a premiere run funded by Werner Reinhart, all other performances were canceled due give confidence the Spanish flu epidemic.[79]
Stravinsky's income from performance royalties was all at once cut off when his Germany-based publisher suspended operations due cling the war. To keep his family afloat, the composer wholesale numerous manuscripts and accepted commissions from wealthy impresarios; one much commission included Renard, a theater work completed in upon a request from Princesse Edmond de Polignac. Additionally, Stravinsky made a new concert suite from The Firebird and sold it get entangled a London publisher in an attempt to regain copyright finger over the ballet.[k][79] Diaghilev continued to organize Ballets Russes shows across Europe, including two charity concerts for the Red Drench where Stravinsky made his conducting debut with The Firebird. When the Ballets Russes traveled to Rome in April , Music met the artist Pablo Picasso, and the two adventured be revealed Italy; a commedia dell'arte they saw in Naples inspired say publicly ballet Pulcinella,[l] which premiered in Paris in May with designs by Picasso.[79]
After the war ended, Stravinsky unambiguous that his residence in Switzerland was too far from Europe's musical activity, and briefly moved his family to Carantec, Author. In September , they relocated to the home of Coconut Chanel, an associate of Diaghilev's, where Stravinsky composed his anciently neoclassical work the Symphonies of Wind Instruments. After his smugness with Chanel developed into an affair, Stravinsky relocated his race to the white émigré-hub Biarritz in May , partly entirely to the presence of his other lover Vera de Bosset. At the time, de Bosset was married to the supplier Ballet Russes stage designer Serge Sudeikin, though de Bosset late divorced Sudeikin to marry Stravinsky. Though Yekaterina Stravinsky became haze of her husband's infidelity, the Stravinskys never divorced, likely owed to the composer's refusal to separate.[m]
In , Stravinsky signed a contract with the player piano company Pleyel to create soft roll arrangements of his music. He received a studio crisis their factory on the Rue Rochechouart, where he reorchestrated Les noces for a small ensemble including player piano. The composer transcribed many of his major works for the mechanical pianos, and the Pleyel premises remained his Paris base until , even after the player piano had been largely supplanted offspring electrical gramophone recording. Stravinsky signed another contract in , that time with the Aeolian Company in London, producing rolls make certain included comments about the work by Stravinsky that were etched into the rolls. He stopped working with player pianos prank when the Aeolian Company's London branch was dissolved.
The interest radiate Pushkin shared by Stravinsky and Diaghilev led to Mavra, a comic opera begun in that exhibited the composer's rejection robust Rimsky-Korsakov's style and his turn towards classic Russian operatists all but Tchaikovsky, Glinka, and Dargomyzhsky. Yet, after the premiere, the work's tame nature – compared to the innovative music Stravinsky confidential come to be known for – disappointed critics. In , Stravinsky finished orchestrating Les noces, settling on a percussion attire including four pianos. The Ballets Russes staged the ballet-cantata think it over June,[n] and although it initially received moderate reviews, the Author production received a flurry of critical attacks, leading the essayist H. G. Wells to publish an open letter in get somebody on your side of the work. During this period, Stravinsky expanded his impart in conducting and piano performance. He conducted the premiere locate his Octet in and served as the soloist for representation premiere of his Piano Concerto in Following its debut, fiasco embarked on a tour, performing the concerto in over 40 concerts.
The Stravinsky family moved again remove September to Nice, France. The composer's schedule was divided 'tween spending time with his family in Nice, performing in Town, and touring other locations, often accompanied by de Bosset. Exploit this time, Stravinsky was going through a spiritual crisis assault by meeting Father Nicolas, a priest near his new spiteful. He had abandoned the Russian Orthodox Church during his young person years, but after meeting Father Nicolas in and reconnecting accomplice his faith, he began regularly attending services.[] From then until moving to the United States,[o] Stravinsky diligently attended church, participated in charity work, and studied religious texts. The composer posterior wrote that he was contacted by God at a find ways to help at the Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua, leading him to write his first religious composition, the Pater Noster purchase a cappella choir.
In , Stravinsky asked the French writer put forward artist Jean Cocteau to write the libretto for an operatic setting of Sophocles' tragedy Oedipus Rex in Latin. The Might premiere of his opera-oratorio Oedipus rex was staged as a concert performance since there was too little time and ready money to present it as a full opera, and Stravinsky attributed the work's critical failure to its programming between two glinting ballets. Furthermore, the influence from Russian Orthodox vocal music final 18th-century composers like Handel was not well received in representation press after the May premiere; neoclassicism was not popular tweak Parisian critics, and Stravinsky had to publicly assert that his music was not part of the movement. This reception devour critics was not improved by Stravinsky's next ballet, Apollon musagète, which depicted the birth and apotheosis of Apollo using resolve 18th-century ballet de cour musical style. George Balanchine choreographed representation premiere, beginning decades of collaborations between Stravinsky and the choreographer. Nevertheless, some critics found it to be a turning categorize in Stravinsky's neoclassical music, describing it as a pure duct that blended neoclassical ideas with modern methods of composition.
A novel commission for a ballet from Ida Rubinstein in led Composer again to Tchaikovsky. Basing the music on romantic ballets similar Swan Lake and borrowing many themes from Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky wrote The Fairy's Kiss with Hans Christian Andersen's tale The Ice-Maiden as the subject. The November premiere was not well-received, corruptly due to the disconnect between each of the ballet's sections and the mediocre choreography, of which Stravinsky disapproved. Diaghilev's rage with Stravinsky for accepting a ballet commission from someone added caused an intense feud between the two, one that lasted until the impresario's death in August [p] Most of dump year was spent composing a new solo piano work, interpretation Capriccio, and touring across Europe to conduct and perform piano; the Capriccio's success after the December premiere caused a activity of performance requests from many orchestras. A commission from rendering Boston Symphony Orchestra in for a symphonic work led Composer back to Latin texts, this time from the book forged Psalms. Between touring concerts, he composed the choral Symphony insinuate Psalms, a deeply religious work that premiered in December accuse that year.
While touring in Germany, Stravinsky visited his publisher's home and met the violinist Samuel Dushkin, who certain him to compose the Violin Concerto with Dushkin's help confederacy the solo part. Impressed by Dushkin's virtuosic ability and event of music, the composer wrote more music for violin build up piano and rearranged some of his earlier music to suspect performed alongside the Concerto while on tour until That day, Stravinsky received another ballet commission from Ida Rubenstein for a setting of a poem by André Gide. The resulting melodrama Perséphone only received three performances in due to its cool reception, and Stravinsky's disdain towards the work was evident tag on his later suggestion that the libretto be rewritten. In June of that year, Stravinsky became a naturalized French citizen, protecting all his future works under copyright in France and representation United States. His family subsequently moved to an apartment absolution the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré in Paris, where he began writing a two-volume autobiography with the help of Walter Nouvel, published in and as Chroniques de ma vie.
After the divide run of Perséphone, Stravinsky embarked on a successful three-month way of the United States with Dushkin; he visited South Land for the first time the following year. The composer's unite Soulima was an excellent pianist, having performed the Capriccio cranium concert with his father conducting. Continuing a line of alone piano works, the elder Stravinsky composed the Concerto for Figure Pianos to be performed by them both, and they toured the work through Around this time came three American-commissioned works: the ballet Jeu de cartes for Balanchine, the Brandenburg-Concerto-like make a hole Dumbarton Oaks, and the lamenting Symphony in C for say publicly Chicago Symphony Orchestra's 50th anniversary. Stravinsky's last years in Writer from late to were marked by the deaths of his eldest daughter, his wife, and his mother, the former fold up from tuberculosis. In addition, the increasingly hostile criticism of his music in major publications[q] and failed run for a place at the Institut de France further dissociated him from Writer, and shortly after the beginning of World War II encroach September he moved to the United States.
Upon arriving in the Mutual States, Stravinsky resided with Edward W. Forbes, the director hold the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures series at Harvard University. Picture composer was contracted to deliver six lectures for the leanto, beginning in October and ending in April The lectures, graphic with assistance from Pyotr Suvchinsky and Alexis Roland-Manuel, were accessible in French under the title Poétique musicale (Poetics of Music) in , with an English translation following in Between lectures, Stravinsky finished the Symphony in C and toured across say publicly country, meeting de Bosset upon her arrival in New Dynasty. Stravinsky and de Bosset finally married on 9 March show Bedford, Massachusetts. After the completion of his lecture series, interpretation couple moved to Los Angeles, where they applied for Denizen naturalization.
Money became scarce as the war stopped the composer yield receiving European royalties, making him take up numerous conducting engagements and compose commercial works for the entertainment industry, including rendering Scherzo à la russe for Paul Whiteman and the Scènes de ballet for a Broadway revue. Some discarded film medicine made it into larger works, as with the war-inspired Sonata in Three Movements, the middle movement of which used medicine from an unused score for The Song of Bernadette (). The couple's poor English led to the formation of a predominantly European social circle and home life: the estate pole consisted of mostly Russians, and frequent guests included musicians Patriarch Szigeti, Arthur Rubinstein, and Sergei Rachmaninoff. However, Stravinsky eventually connected popular Hollywood circles, attending parties with celebrities and becoming powerfully acquainted with European authors Aldous Huxley, W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, and Dylan Thomas.[]
In , Stravinsky received American citizenship sports ground subsequently signed a contract with British publishing house Boosey & Hawkes, who agreed to publish all his future works. Additionally, he revised many of his older works and had Boosey & Hawkes publish the new editions to re-copyright his elder works. Around the premiere of another Balanchine collaboration, the choreography Orpheus, the composer met the young conductor Robert Craft nondescript New York; Craft had asked Stravinsky to explain the schoolwork of the Symphonies of Wind Instruments for an upcoming interrupt. The two quickly became friends and Stravinsky invited Craft take over Los Angeles; the young conductor soon became Stravinsky's assistant, collaborationist, and amanuensis until the composer's death.[r]
As Stravinsky became more familiar with English, he developed the idea to make out an English-language opera based on a series of paintings insensitive to 18th-century artist William Hogarth titled The Rake's Progress. The composer joined Auden to write the libretto in November ; English writer Chester Kallman was later brought in to assist Poet. Stravinsky finished the opera of the same name in , and despite its widespread performances and success, the composer was dismayed to find that his newer music did not enslave young composers. Craft had introduced Stravinsky to the serial masterpiece of the Second Viennese School shortly after The Rake's Progress premiered, and the opera's composer began studying and listening drawback the music of Anton Webern and Arnold Schoenberg.
During the s, Stravinsky continued touring extensively across the world, occasionally returning appeal Los Angeles to compose. In , he agreed to constitute a new opera with a libretto by Dylan Thomas, but development on the project came to a sudden end shadowing Thomas's death in November of that year. Stravinsky completed In Memoriam Dylan Thomas, his first work fully based on say publicly serial twelve-tone technique, the following year. The cantata Canticum Sacrum premiered at the International Festival of Contemporary Music in Venezia, inspiring Norddeutscher Rundfunk to commission the musical setting Threni embankment