The Firebird in Full Score (Original 1910 Version)

by Igor Stravinsky

In 1910, following his successful orchestration of selections for the ballet Les Sylphides , the innovative young composer Igor Stravinsky was commissioned by the director of the Ballets Russes, Serge Diaghilev, to create a completely new score. The dazzling result was The Firebird , a work which brought overnight success to its creator and distinguished him as the most gifted of the younger generation of Russian composers. Based on Russian fairy tales, the piece, according to Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, has "all the coloring of a Russian child's picture book…brilliant orchestration, glowing color…an extraordinary evocative power which literally enchants the listener."
Today, The Firebird is as popular and enthusiastically received as it was following its triumphant premiere in Paris more than a century ago. Greatly admired for its orchestrations and harmony, the composition is widely studied by practicing musicians and music students.
Now the complete score of this modern masterpiece is available in this handsome, authoritative, and inexpensive edition, which includes a list of instruments and English translations of the stage directions.

Genres: Music, Scores

176 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 1983

About the author

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely acknowledged as one of the most important and influential composers of 20th century music.

He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1946. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works.

He also published a number of books throughout his career, almost always with the aid of a collaborator, sometimes uncredited. In his 1936 autobiography, Chronicles of My Life, written with the help of Walter Nouvel, Stravinsky included his infamous statement that "music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all."