How Stravinsky Stopped Being a Rimsky-Korsakov Pupil

This chapter focuses on a dramatic moment in the life of Igor Stravinsky when he was forced to choose between loyalty to the memory of his beloved teacher Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov on the one hand, and his new loyalty, both commercial and artistic, to Sergei Diaghilev on the other hand—a choice, in effect, between St. Petersburg and Paris. After Rimsky-Korsakov's death, Stravinsky's opinions on his teacher were rather odd. His comments were contradictory, his evaluations widely diverging, doubtless stemming from the fact that it was not always clear whether he was writing under the influence of Rimsky-Korsakov or in reaction to him. Stravinsky's active departure from his teacher's ways required no more than five years, and the end of this period was marked by a decisive full stop: Rimsky-Korsakov's completion of Modest Musorgsky's unfinished Khovanshchina was pushed aside when Stravinsky, together with Diaghilev and Maurice Ravel, issued a new version designed to correct all of Rimsky-Korsakov's “errors.”