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Updated: June 9, 2025
Igor Fedorovitch Strawinsky was born at Oranienbaum near Petrograd, June 5th, 1882. His father was a bass singer attached to the court. Igor was destined for a legal career. But in 1902 he met Rimsky-Korsakoff in Heidelberg, and abandoned all idea of studying the law. He studied with Rimsky till 1906.
The death of Igor filled the hearts of the Drevlians with hope. Their great enemy was gone; the new prince was a child: might they not gain power as well as liberty? Their prince Male should marry Olga the widow, and all would be well with them. So twenty of their leading men were sent to Kief, where they presented themselves to the queenly regent.
In the meantime Igor, crushed by misfortune, and hopeless of deliverance, sought solace for his woes in religion. "For a long time," said he, "I have desired to consecrate my heart to God. Even in the height of prosperity this was my strongest wish. What can be more proper for me now that I am at the very gates of the tomb?"
If there is any symphony that can be called pre-eminently virile and Russian, it is assuredly Borodin's second, the great one in B-minor. And in "Prince Igor" and the symphonic poem "On the Steppes," for the first time, continental Asia, with its sharp beat of savage drums and its oceanic wastes of grass, its strong Kurdish beverages and jerked steaks, comes into modern music.
Elias, the most ancient church of Kief, and there took the same oath at the altar of the Christian's God. The renowned Russian historian, Nestor, who was a monk in the monastery at Kief, records that at that time there were numerous Christians in Kief. Igor sent the imperial embassadors back to Constantinople laden with rich presents.
So Olga became regent of the kingdom, and Sveneld was made leader of the army. How deeply Olga loved Igor we are not prepared to say, but we are told some strange tales of what she did to avenge him. These tales we may believe or not, as we please. They are legends only, like those of early Rome, but they are all the history we have, and so we repeat the story much as old Nestor has told it.
The two Russian kingdoms, that of Rurik in the north, and that of Ascolod and Dir on the Dnieper, rapidly extended as these enterprising kings, by arms, subjected adjacent nations to their sway. Rurik remained upon the throne fifteen years, and then died, surrendering his crown to his son Igor, still a child. A relative, Oleg, was intrusted with the regency, during the minority of the boy king.
As I watched these processions climbing the steps in apparently careless and spontaneous fashion, and yet producing so graceful a result, I remembered the mad leap of the archers down the stage in Prince Igor, which is also apparently careless and spontaneous and full of wild and irregular beauty, yet never varies a hair-breadth from one performance to the next.
And some men there were, Moussorgsky and Borodin, who were quick enough of imagination to become the instruments of their folk and respond to its need. And so, when we would hear Russian speech, we go to them as we go to Dostoievsky and to Tolstoy. It is in "Boris" and "Prince Igor" as richly as it is in any work. But the men of the other school did not hear the appeal.
Igor crushed the insurrection with energy which astonished all who knew him, and which spread his fame far and wide through all the wilds of Russia, as a monarch thoroughly capable of maintaining his command.
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