CHAPTER II

THE EARLY WORKS: 1909-1920

L'Oiseau de Feu (Original 1910 version)

Stravinsky's earliest works for orchestra, those written before 1909, did
not include piano in the orchestration, as can be seen in Table 2. His first
orchestral work to include piano was his transcription of Frederic Chopin's
Valse Brillante in E flat Major, Op. 18, for Sergei Diaghilev's ballet Les
Sylphides in 1909. It is impossible to say to what extent the piano was utilized
in this transcription for, according to Dominique-Rene de Lerma's guide to
publications of Stravinsky's music, this arrangement is unpublished and/or
lost.^"* The first original orchestral composition to include piano was L'Oiseau
de Feu, written from 1909 to 1910 for Diaghilev and his Ballet Russe. The
score called for an extremely large orchestra of two piccolos, two flutes, two
oboes, English horn, three clarinets, bass clarinet, three bassoons,
contrabassoon, four horns, three tnmipets, three trombones, tuba, three
onstage trumpets, two onstage tenor tubas, two onstage bass tubas, timpani,
triangle, tambourine, cymbals, bass dnmi, tam-tam, glockenspiel, xylophone,
celesta, three harps, piano, and the usual complement of strings. Stravinsky
once made the comment that "the orchestral body of The Firebird was
wastefiiUy large, but I was more proud of some of the orchestration than of the
music itself."^^
It is highly possible that Stravinsky used the piano in these works for
Diaghilev simply because it was available to him for the first time; another

^*Dominique-Rene de Lerma and Thomas J. Ahrens, Igor Fedorovitch

Stravinsky, 1882-1971; A Practical Guide To Publications of His Music (Kent,
Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1974), p. 119.

^^Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), p. 131.

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