Igor Stravinsky

This trick, however, soon exhausts itself." (1948). Mother Teresa did not disclose her order's financial situation except where she was required to do so by law. "One trick characterizes all of Stravinsky's formal endeavors: the effort of his music to portray time as in a circus tableau and to present time complexes as though they were spatial. See Missionaries of Charity for a detailed discussion of these allegations. Part of the composer's error, in Adorno's view, was his neo-classicism, but more important was his music's "pseudomorphism of painting", playing off of le temps éspace (space) rather than le temps durée (duration) of Henri Bergson. It has been alleged by former employees of Mother Teresa's order, including ex-nun Susan Shields, that Teresa refused to authorize the purchase of medical equipment, and that donated money was instead transferred to the Vatican Bank for general use, even if it was specifically earmarked for charitable purposes. In his book Philosophy of Modern Music (1948) Theodor Adorno calls Stravinsky an acrobat, a civil servant, a tailor's dummy, hebephrenic, psychotic, infantile, fascist, and devoted to making money. In contrast to the conditions at her homes, Mother Teresa sought medical treatment for herself at renowned medical clinics in the United States, Europe, and India, drawing charges of hypocrisy from critics such as Hitchens.

He compares Stravinsky's choice of, "the drabbest and least significant phrases", to Gertrude Stein's: "Everday they were gay there, they were regularly gay there everyday" ("Helen Furr and Georgine Skeene", 1922), "whose effect would be equally appreciated by someone with no knowledge of English whatsoever". Mother Teresa herself referred to the facilities as "Houses of the Dying". They are merely successions of notes that can conveniently be divided into groups of three, five, and seven and set against other mathematical groups", and the cadenza for solo drums is, "musical purity...achieved by a species of musical castration". Similar points of view have also been expressed by some former volunteers who worked for Teresa's order. Further, the "melodic fragments in L'Histoire du Soldat are completely meaningless themselves. There have been a series of other reports documenting inattention to medical care in the order's facilities. Composer Constant Lambert (1936) described pieces such as L'Histoire du Soldat (A Soldier's Tale) as containing, "essentially cold-blooded abstraction". The formulary at the facility Fox visited lacked strong analgesics which he felt clearly separated Mother Teresa's approach from the hospice movement.

What has become of the works that made up the program of the Stravinsky concert which created such a stir a few years ago? Practically the whole lot are already on the shelf, and they will remain there until a few jaded neurotics once more feel a desire to eat ashes and fill their belly with the east wind." Musical Times, London, October 1923 (ibid.). Fox conceded that the regimen he observed included cleanliness, the tending of wounds and sores, and kindness, but he noted that the sisters' approach to managing pain was "disturbingly lacking". "All the signs indicate a strong reaction against the nightmare of noise and eccentricity that was one of the legacies of the war... Fox specifically held Teresa responsible for conditions in this home, and observed that her order did not distinguish between curable and incurable patients, so that people who could otherwise survive would be at risk of dying from infections and lack of treatment. Practically it has no relation to music at all as most of us understand the word." Musical Times, London, August 1, 1913 (Slonimsky, 1953). Dr. There is certainly an impelling rhythm traceable. He observed that sisters and volunteers, some of whom had no medical knowledge, had to make decisions about patient care, because of the lack of doctors in the hospice.

To say that much of it is hideous as sound is a mild description. Robin Fox, then editor of the British medical journal The Lancet, visited the Home for Dying Destitutes in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and described the medical care the patients received as "haphazard". "The music of Le Sacre du Printemps baffles verbal description. In 1991, Dr. Yet their influence on succeeding generations of composers was equalled if not exceeded by that of Stravinsky. Many of Teresa's donors were evidently under the impression that their money was being used to build hospitals. It must also be noted that composers such as Anton Webern, Alban Berg and Arnold Schoenberg were also exploring some of these orchestral and instrumental techniques in the early 20th century. Some defenders of the order argue that missionary activity—already declared in the name of the order—was a central part of Teresa's calling.

The most famous passage is the opening of the Rite of Spring where Stravsinky uses the extreme reaches of the bassoon to simulate the symbolic "awakening" of a spring morning. He stated, for example, that none of the eight facilities that the Missionaries of Charity run in Papua New Guinea have any residents in them, being purely for the purpose of converting local people to Catholicism. Another notable innovation of orchestral technique that can be partially attributed to Stravinsky is the exploitation of the extreme ranges of instruments. Chatterjee alleged that many operations of the order engage in no charitable activity at all but instead use their funds for missionary work. This combining of distinct timbres would become almost a cliche in post-World War II classical music. According to a Stern magazine report about Mother Teresa, the (Protestant) Assembly of God charity serves 18,000 meals daily in Calcutta (now called Kolkata), many more than all the Mission of Charity homes together. For example, in L'Histoire du Soldat (A Soldier's Tale) the forces used are clarinet, bassoon, tenor and bass trombone, double bass, cornet, violin and percussion, a very striking combination for its time (1918). Chatterjee added that the public image of Mother Teresa as a "helper of the poor" was misleading, and that only a few hundred people are served by even the largest of the homes.

But it is when he started to turn away from this tendency that he began to innovate by introducing unique combinations of instruments. I think the world is being much helped by the suffering of the poor people.". Stravinsky continued this Romantic trend of writing for huge orchestral forces, especially in the early ballets. In Hitchens' interpretation, Teresa's own words on poverty proved that "her intention was not to help people." He quoted Teresa's words at a 1981 press conference in which she was asked: "Do you teach the poor to endure their lot?" She replied: "I think it is very beautiful for the poor to accept their lot, to share it with the passion of Christ. They, in turn, were influenced by the expansion of the traditional classical orchestra by Richard Wagner through his use of large forces and unusual instruments. Christopher Hitchens described Mother Teresa's organization as a cult which promoted suffering and did not help those in need. Composers such as Anton Bruckner and Gustav Mahler were well regarded for their skill at writing for the medium. Critics assert that someone held to be a "living saint" should be held to a higher standard of behavior.

The late 19th century and early 20th century was a time ripe with orchestral innovation. They allege that similar standards are not applied to other companies and individuals who have had dealings with Maxwell and Keating. He did this so well, in fact, that only in recent scholarship, such as in Richard Taruskin's Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions: A Biography of the Works Through Mavra [1], have analysts uncovered the original source material for some of the music in The Rite. Supporters of Mother Teresa see charges such as those above as clear examples of double-standards and attempts of "guilt by association". He strips these themes to their most basic outline, melody alone, and often contorts them beyond recognition with additive notes, inversions, diminutions, and other techniques. There is no suggestion that she was aware of any theft before accepting the donation in either case; criticism instead focuses on Teresa's plea for leniency in the Keating case, her refusal to return the money, and the lack of media investigations of her relationships to these individuals. Yet in Le Sacre du Printemps we see Stravinsky again innovating in his use of folk themes. She also accepted money from the British publisher Robert Maxwell, who, as was later revealed, embezzled UK£450 million from his employees' pension funds.

Two notable examples are Béla Bartók and Zoltán Kodály. The district attorney responded in private and asked her to return the money, which she declined. There were other composers in the early 20th century who collected and augmented their native folk music and used these themes in their work. Teresa interceded on his behalf and wrote a letter to the court urging leniency. Such compositional "borrowing" would come into vogue in the 1960s, as in the work Sinfonia by Luciano Berio. Critics also cite the case of Charles Keating, who stole in excess of US$252 million in the Savings and Loan scandal of the 1980s, and who had donated $1.25 million to Mother Teresa's cause. Here it is the music of Tchaikovsky, specifically Swan Lake, that Stravinsky uses as his source. By the time of her death, the Missionaries of Charity had houses in most Communist countries.

He used the same technique in the ballet The Fairy's Kiss of 1928. Critics said her actions compromised her perceived moral authority through unwise and controversial political associations; her supporters defended such associations, saying she had to deal with political realities of the time in order to lobby for her causes. Here he uses the music of Pergolesi as source material, sometimes directly quoting it and other times simply reinventing it, to create a new and refreshing work. In 1987 Teresa visited Albania and visited the grave of the former Communist leader Enver Hoxha. Stravinsky used the now very postmodern technique of direct musical quotation and pastiche as early as 1920 in his work Pulcinella. There she said that the Duvaliers "loved their poor," and that "their love was reciprocated.". A sort of final statement for the style, the opera was largely ridiculed as too "backward looking" even by those who had lauded the new style only three decades earlier. In 1981, Teresa flew to Haiti to accept the Legion d'Honneur from the right-wing dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier, who, after being ousted, was found to have stolen millions of dollars from the impoverished country.

Ironically, it was Stravinsky himself who announced the death of Neoclassicism, at least in his own work if not for the world, with the completion of his opera The Rake's Progress in 1951. Or you do not believe in it, and the gesture is as innocent and well-meaningly innocuous as chasing a fly away with a wave of the hand.". Certainly by the late 1920s and 1930s, Neoclassicism as an accepted modern genre was prevalent throughout art music circles around the world. Simon Leys, in a letter to the New York Review of Books, wrote: "Either you believe in the supernatural effect of this gesture – and then you should dearly wish for it. Stravinsky may have been preceded in these devices by earlier composers such as Erik Satie, but no doubt when Copland was composing his Appalachian Spring ballet he was taking Stravinsky as his model. Some of Mother Teresa's defenders have argued that baptisms are either soul-saving or harmless and hence the criticisms would be pointless (a variant of Pascal's Wager). The clear harmonies, looking back to the Classical music era of Mozart and Bach, and the simpler combinations of rhythm and melody were a direct response to the complexities of the Second Viennese School. Critics have argued that patients were not provided sufficient information to make an informed decision about whether they wanted to be baptized and the theological significance of a Christian baptism.

Stravinsky announced his new style in 1923 with the stripped-down and delicately scored Octet for winds. So 29,000 have died in that one house [in Kalighat] from the time we began in 1952.". 1, "Classical" of 1916-17. We ask the person, do you want a blessing by which your sins will be forgiven and you receive God? They have never refused. Sergei Prokofiev once chided Stravinsky for his neo-classical mannerisms, though sympathetically, as Prokofiev had broken similar musical ground in his Symphony No. Peter. Stravinsky was the greatest, if not the first, practitioner of the "neoclassic" style, a style that would be later adopted by composers as diverse as Darius Milhaud and Aaron Copland. We call baptism ticket for St.

Such techniques foreshadowed by several decades the minimalist works of composers such as Terry Riley and Steve Reich. Peter, as we call it. These passages are notable not only for this pastiche-quality but also for their length: Stravinsky treats them as whole and complete musical sections. not one has died without receiving the special ticket for St. At various other times in the work Stravinsky also pits several ostinati against one another without regard to harmony or tempo, creating a pastiche, a sort of musical equivalent of a Cubist painting. In a speech at the Scripps Clinic in California in January 1992, she said: "Something very beautiful.. This is perhaps the first instance in music of extended ostinato which is neither used for variation nor for accompaniment of melody. Mother Teresa encouraged members of her order to baptize dying patients, without regard to the individual's religion.

The most famous passage, as noted above, is the eighth note ostinato of the strings accented by eight french horns that occurs in the section Auguries of Spring (Dances of the Young Girls). No hospitals were ever built. The same ballet is also notable for its relentless use of ostinati. Hitchens alleged that Teresa was glad to suggest to donors that the money went to aid and the building of healthcare facilities for the poor in India and elsewhere, while evidence points instead to it being spent largely on missionary work in Africa, with large funds at Teresa's discretion. In the "Rite of Spring" he introduces additive permutations, that is, subtracting or adding a note to a motif without regard to changes in meter. Neither Mother Teresa nor the Vatican has ever revealed how much money her order received, nor what it was spent on; estimates range into the hundreds of millions of dollars. However, Stravinsky's use of motivic development was unique in the way he permutated his motifs. Chatterjee himself published The Final Verdict in 2003, a less polemic work than those of Hitchens and Ali, but equally critical of Teresa's operations.

The first great innovator in this method was Beethoven; the famous "fate motif" which opens Fifth Symphony and reappears throughout the work in surprising and refreshing permutations is a classic example. The next year, Hitchens published The Missionary Position: Mother Teresa in Theory and Practice, a pamphlet which repeated many of the accusations in the documentary. Motivic development, that is using a distinct musical phrase that is subsequently altered and developed throughout a piece of music, has its roots in the sonata form of Mozart's age. In 1994, two atheist British journalists, Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ali, produced a critical British Channel 4 documentary, Hell's Angel, based on Chatterjee's work. Stravinsky began re-thinking his use of the motif and ostinato as early as The Firebird ballet, but his use of these elements reached its full flowering in The Rite of Spring. Aroup Chatterjee, who had briefly worked in one of Mother Teresa's homes, began investigations into the finances and other practices of Teresa's order. As a consequence, his influence on composers both during his lifetime and after his death was, and remains, considerable. An Indian-born writer living in Britain, Dr.

Stravinsky's work embraced multiple compositional styles, revolutionised orchestration, spanned several genres, practically reinvented ballet form and incorporated multiple cultures, languages and literatures. 276.). Indeed, these characteristics are what make Stravinsky's output so unique when compared with the work of contemporaneous serial composers. (Chatterjee, p. The ballet is thus a sort of miniature encyclopedia of Stravinsky, containing many of the signatures to be found throughout his compositions, whether primitivist, neo-classic, or serial: rhythmic quirkiness and experimentation, harmonic ingenuity, and a deft ear for masterful orchestration. Mother Teresa's comments were even criticized outside India within Catholic media. Some numbers of Agon recollect the "white-note" tonality of the neo-classic period, while others (the Bransle Gay, e.g.) display his unique re-interpretation of serial method. There are no strikes." These approving comments were seen as a result of the friendship between Teresa and the Congress Party.

An important transitional work of this period in Stravinsky's work, was a return to the ballet: Agon, a work for twelve dancers written from 1954 to 1957. There are more jobs. He later began expanding his use of the technique in works often based on biblical texts, such as Threni (1958), A Sermon, a Narrative, and a Prayer (1961), and The Flood (1962). After Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's suspension of civil liberties in 1975, Mother Teresa said: "People are happier. Stravinsky first began to dabble in the twelve tone technique in smaller vocal works such as the Cantata (1952), Three Songs from Shakespeare (1953) and In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954), as if he were testing the system. However, when Diana, Princess of Wales divorced, she spoke approvingly of it in a magazine interview. Regardless, the next fifteen years were spent writing the works in this style. Teresa also campaigned tirelessly against divorce, insisting it should be made illegal; she organized an unsuccessful campaign to keep the Irish ban on divorce in 1996.

No doubt, Stravinsky was aided in his understanding of, or even conversion to, the twelve tone method by his confidant and helper Robert Craft, who had long been advocating the change. While this stance is in line with that of the Roman Catholic Church, which asserts natural family planning is the only acceptable form of birth control, even in cases where conception is the result of sexual abuse or rape, her critics assert that Teresa dogmatically refused to acknowledge the related problems of overpopulation, especially in cities like Calcutta. Only after the death of Arnold Schoenberg, the inventor of the twelve tone system, in 1951 did Stravinsky begin making use of the technique in his own works. because it is pure killing.". After the opera's completion Stravinsky never wrote another "neo-classic" work and instead began writing the music that came to define his final stylistic change. She characterized her views later when asked in 1993 about a 14-year-old rape victim in Ireland, "Abortion can never be necessary.. The music is direct but quirky; it borrows from classic tonal harmony but also interjects surprising dissonances; it features Stravinsky's trademark off-rhythms; and it harkens back to the operas and themes of Monteverdi, Gluck and Mozart. Even in these circumstances, she asserted her rejection of abortion by publicly renouncing abortion as an option and by calling upon the women left behind to keep their unborn children.

This opera, written to a libretto by Auden and based on the etchings of Hogarth, encapsulates everything that Stravinsky had perfected in the previous 20 years of his neo-classic period. In the aftermath of the Bangladesh Liberation War, it was determined that more than 450,000 women in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) had been systematically raped, giving birth to a few thousand war-babies. The pinnacle of this period is the opera The Rake's Progress completed in 1951. Because if a mother can kill her own child, what will prevent us from killing ourselves or one another? Nothing.". Apollon, Persephone (1933) and Orpheus (1947) also mark Stravinsky's concern, during this period, of not only returning to "Classic" music but also returning to "Classic" themes: in these instances, the mythology of the ancient Greeks. In her Nobel Prize acceptance speech, she declared, "Abortion is the worst evil, and the greatest enemy of peace.. Some larger works from this period are the three symphonies: the Symphonie des Psaumes (Symphony of Psalms) (1930), Symphony in C (1940) and Symphony in Three Movements (1945). Mother Teresa frequently spoke against abortion and artificial contraception in meetings with high level government officials.

Other works such as Oedipus Rex (1927), Apollon Musagete (1928) and the Dumbarton Oaks concerto continue this trend. A second accepted miracle is required for her to proceed to canonization. In these new works, written roughly between 1920 and 1950, Stravinsky turns largely to wind instruments, the piano, and choral and chamber works. [3] Teresa was formally beatified by Pope John Paul II on October 19, 2003 with the title Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. This "neo-classical" style involved the abandonment of the large orchestras demanded by the ballets. The issue of the alleged miracle proved controversial in India around the time of Mother Teresa's beatification. Both of these works feature what was to become a hallmark of this period; that is, Stravinsky's return, or "looking back", to the classical music of Mozart and Bach and their contemporaries. Everything has changed for the better." [2].

The next phase of Stravinsky's compositional style, slightly overlapping the first, is marked by two works: Pulcinella 1920 and the Octet (1923) for wind instruments. Now my children are being educated with the help of the nuns and I have been able to buy a small piece of land. Other pieces from this period include: Renard (1916), Histoire du soldat (A Soldier's Tale) (1918), and Les Noces (The Wedding) (1923). Our situation was terrible and we didn't know what to do. There are several famous passages in the work, but two are of particular note: the opening theme played on a bassoon with notes at the very top of its register, almost out of range; and the thumping, off kilter eighth-note motif played by strings and accented by French horns on off-rhythms (See Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) for a more detailed account of this work). A story in The Daily Telegraph quoted him as saying: "It was her miracle healing that cured my wife. Here, the composer draws on the brutalism of pagan Russia, reflecting these sentiments in roughly-drawn, stinging motifs that appear throughout the work. Besra's husband later withdrew his objections and attributed the healing to a miracle.

But it is the third ballet, The Rite of Spring, that is generally considered the apotheosis of Stravinsky's "Russian Period". The doctors who treated Monica Besra denied the claims of a miracle healing and said that they had come under pressure from the Missionaries of Charity to acknowledge that the healing process was the result of a miracle. Petrushka, too, is distinctively scored and the first of Stravinsky's ballets to draw on folk mythology. According to Monica Besra in TIME Asia [1], records of her treatment were removed by a member of the order from the hospital and are now with a nun. The first of the ballets, L'oiseau de feu, is notable for its unusual introduction (triplets in the low basses) and sweeping orchestration. Besra's husband initially said that the tumor was cured by later hospital treatment. The ballets have several shared characteristics: they are scored for extremely large orchestras; they use Russian folk themes and motifs; and they bear the mark of Rimsky-Korsakov's imaginative scoring and instrumentation. Monica Besra said that a beam of light emanated from the picture, curing the cancerous tumor.

The first of Stravinsky's major stylistic periods (excluding some early minor works) was inaugurated by the three ballets he composed for Diaghilev. In 2002, the Vatican recognized as a miracle the healing of a tumor in the abdomen of an Indian woman, Monica Besra, following the application of a locket containing Teresa's picture. Most of his compositions can be placed in one of the three. This process requires the documentation of a miracle performed from the intercession of Mother Teresa. Stravinsky's career largely falls into three distinct stylistic periods. Following Teresa's death in 1997, the Holy See began the process of beatification, the second step towards possible canonization, or sainthood. He has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6340 Hollywood Boulevard. Her life-long devotion to the care of the poor, the sick, and the disadvantaged was one of the highest examples of service to humanity.".

Stravinsky's life had encompassed most of the 20th Century, including many of its modern classical music styles, and he influenced composers both during and after his lifetime. She is peace in the world." Nawaz Sharif, the Prime Minister of Pakistan said that Teresa was "A rare and unique individual who lived long for higher purposes. His grave is close to the tomb of his long-time collaborator Diaghilev. Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, for example, said: "She is the United Nations. He died in New York City on April 6, 1971 at the age of 88 and was buried in Venice on the cemetery island of San Michele. The former U.N. In 1962 he accepted an invitation to return to Russia for a series of concerts, but remained an émigré firmly based in the West. Her death was widely considered a great tragedy within both secular and religious communities.

At the end of his life he was even setting Hebrew scripture in Abraham and Isaac. Mother Teresa was granted a full state funeral by the Indian Government, an honor normally given to presidents and prime ministers, in gratitude for her services to the poor of all religions in India. The texts and literary sources for his work began with a period of interest in Russian folklore, progressed to classical authors and the Latin liturgy, and moved on to contemporary France (André Gide, in Persephone) and eventually English literature: Auden, Eliot, and medieval English verse. These included hospices and homes for people with HIV/AIDS, leprosy and tuberculosis, soup kitchens, children's and family counseling programs, orphanages, and schools. Stravinsky's taste in literature was wide and reflected his constant desire for new discoveries. At the time of her death, Mother Teresa's Missionaries of Charity had over 4,000 sisters, an associated brotherhood of 300 members, and over 100,000 lay volunteers, operating 610 missions in 123 countries. Craft lived with Stravinsky until his death, acting as interpreter, chronicler, assistant conductor and factotum for countless musical and social tasks. The Archbishop of Calcutta, Henry Sebastian D'Souza, says he ordered a priest to perform an exorcism on Mother Teresa shortly before she died because he thought she was being attacked by the devil.

Auden, the need to acquire more familiarity with the English-speaking world coincided with his meeting the conductor and musicologist Robert Craft. On March 13, 1997 she stepped down from the head of Missionaries of Charity and died on September 5, 1997, just 9 days after her 87th birthday. H. She underwent heart surgery, but it was clear that her health was declining. When he planned to write an opera with W. Later that year, in August, she suffered from malaria, and failure of the left heart ventricle. For a time he preserved a ring of emigré Russian friends and contacts, but eventually realised that this would not sustain his intellectual and professional life in the USA. In April 1997, Mother Teresa fell and broke her collar bone.

Stravinsky had adapted to life in France, but moving to America aged 58 was a very different prospect. Mother Teresa agreed to continue her work as head of the Missionaries of Charity. He continued to live in the United States until his death in 1971, unsuccessfully writing music for films. A secret ballot vote was carried out, and all the nuns, except herself, voted for Mother Teresa to stay. He moved to the United States in 1939 and became a naturalized citizen in 1945. She offered to resign her position as head of the order. He returned to Paris in 1920 to write more ballets as well as many other works. In 1991, returning to her home country, she opened a home in Tirana, Albania.

However, because of World War I and the October Revolution in Russia he moved to Switzerland in 1914. In 1991, after a bout of pneumonia while in Mexico, she had further heart problems. That ballet ended up being the famous L'Oiseau de Feu. After a second attack in 1989 she received a pacemaker. He commissioned Stravinsky to write a ballet for his theater; so in 1911, Stravinsky traveled to Paris. In 1983 Teresa suffered a heart attack in Rome, while visiting Pope John Paul II. Eventually Stravinsky's music was noticed by Serge Diaghilev, the director of the Ballets Russes in Paris. In 1982, Mother Teresa persuaded Israelis and Palestinians, who were in the midst of a skirmish, to cease fire long enough to rescue 37 mentally-handicapped patients from a besieged hospital in Beirut.

At the same time he had a disregard of his social inferiors: Robert Craft was embarrassed by his habit of tapping a glass with a fork and loudly demanding attention in restaurants. When Mother Teresa received the prize, she was asked, "What can we do to promote world peace?" Her answer was simple: "Go home and love your family." In the same year, she was also awarded the Balzan Prize for promoting peace and brotherhood among the nations. For example, Otto Klemperer, who knew Schoenberg well, said that he always found Stravinsky much more co-operative and easy to deal with. In 1979 Teresa was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, "for work undertaken in the struggle to overcome poverty and distress, which also constitute a threat to peace." She refused the conventional ceremonial banquet given to laureates, and asked that the $6,000 funds be diverted to the poor in Calcutta. Most people who knew him through dealings connected with performances spoke of him as polite, courteous and helpful. In 1972 Mother Teresa was awarded the Nehru Prize for her promotion of international peace and understanding. Paris, Venice, Berlin, London and New York all hosted successful appearances as pianist and conductor. Other awards bestowed upon her included a Kennedy Prize (1971), the Albert Schweitzer International Prize (1975), the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom (1985) and the Congressional Gold Medal (1994), honorary citizenship of the United States (November 16, 1996), and honorary degrees from a number of universities.

Stravinsky proved adept at playing the part of "man of the world", acquiring a keen instinct for business matters and appearing relaxed and comfortable in many of the world's major cities. In 1971 Paul VI awarded her the first Pope John XXIII Peace Prize. The composer was also able to attract commissions: most of his work from The Firebird onwards was written for specific occasions and paid for generously. Muggeridge later converted to Catholicism. In the early 1920s Leopold Stokowski was able to give Stravinsky regular support through a pseudonymous "benefactor". Others in the crew thought it more likely ascribable to a new type of Kodak film. Patronage too was never far away. Muggeridge claimed this was "divine light" from Mother Teresa herself.

After her death Stravinsky and Vera were married in New York where they had gone from France to escape the war in 1940. After returning from India, however, the footage was found to be extremely well-lit. Katerina soon learned of the relationship and accepted it as inevitable and permanent. During the filming of the documentary, footage taken in poor lighting conditions, particularly the Home for the Dying, was thought unlikely to be of usable quality by the crew. From then until the death of Katerina in 1939 Stravinsky led a deft double-life, spending some of his time with his first family and the rest with Vera. Her fame can be in large part attributed to the 1969 documentary Something Beautiful for God by Malcolm Muggeridge and his 1971 book of the same title, which is still in print. When Stravinsky met Vera in the early 1920s she was married to the painter and stage designer Serge Sudeikin, but they soon began an affair which led to her leaving her husband. By the early 1970s, Mother Teresa had become an international celebrity.

Their marriage endured for 33 years, but the true love of his life, and partner until his death, was his second wife Vera de Bosset (1888-1982). In answer to the requests of many priests, in 1981 Mother Teresa also began the Corpus Christi Movement for Priests. He was still young when he married his cousin Katerina Nossenko, who he had known since early childhood, on 23 January 1906. Lay Catholics and non-Catholics were enrolled in the Co-Workers of Mother Teresa, the Sick and Suffering Co-Workers, and the Lay Missionaries of Charity. Although a notorious philanderer (even rumoured to have affairs with high-class partners such as Coco Chanel) Stravinsky was also a family man who devoted considerable amounts of his time and expenditure to his sons and daughters. The Missionaries of Charity Brothers was founded in 1963, and a contemplative branch of the Sisters followed in 1976. Relatively short of stature and not conventionally handsome, Stravinsky was nevertheless photogenic, as many pictures show. Mother Teresa's work inspired other Catholics to affiliate themselves with her order.

Not only was he the principal composer for Sergei Diaghilev's Ballet Russes, but Stravinsky also collaborated with Pablo Picasso (Pulcinella, 1920), Jean Cocteau (Oedipus Rex, 1927) and George Balanchine (Apollon Musagete, 1928). In addition, the first Missionaries of Charity home in the United States was established in the South Bronx, New York. This desire manifested itself in several of his Paris collaborations. The order's first house outside India was in Venezuela, and others followed in Rome and Tanzania, and eventually in many countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe, including Albania. Stravinsky displayed an inexhaustible desire to learn and explore art, literature, and life. Teresa's order started to rapidly grow, with new homes opening all over the globe. (He succeeded: the 1913 première of Le sacre du printemps turned into a riot.). In 1965, by granting a Decree of Praise, Pope Paul VI granted Mother Teresa's request to expand her order to other countries.

As he himself said, with these premieres his intention was "[to send] them all to hell". The order soon began to attract both recruits and charitable donations, and by the 1960s had opened hospices, orphanges and leper houses all over India. The ballets trace his stylistic development: from the L'oiseau de feu, whose style draws largely on Rimsky-Korsakov, to Petrushka's emphasis on bitonality, and finally to the savage polyphonic dissonance of Le sacre du printemps. Soon after she opened another hospice, Nirmal Hriday (Pure Heart), a home for lepers called Shanti Nagar (City of Peace), and an orphanage. During his stay in the city, he composed three major works for the Ballets Russes—L'oiseau de feu, Petrushka (1911), and Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) (1913). With the help of Indian officials she converted an abandoned Hindu temple into the Kalighat Home for the Dying, a free hospice for the poor. Stravinsky left Russia for the first time in 1910, going to Paris to attend the premiere of his ballet L'oiseau de feu (The Firebird). In October 1950 Teresa received Vatican permission to start her own order, which the Vatican originally labeled as the Diocesan Congregation of the Calcutta Diocese, but which later became known as the Missionaries of Charity, whose mission was to care for (in her own words) "the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.".

In 1902, at the age of 20, Stravinsky became the pupil of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, probably the leading Russian composer of the time. Soon she was joined by voluntary helpers, and she received financial support from church organizations and the municipal authorities. Composition came later. She then started an open-air school for homeless children. Petersburg, Stravinsky originally studied to be a lawyer. She quit the high school and, after a short course with the Medical Mission Sisters in Patna, she returned to Calcutta and found temporary lodging with the Little Sisters of the Poor. Though his father was a bass singer at the Mariinsky Theater in St. In 1948 she received permission from Pope Pius XII, via the Archbishop of Calcutta, to leave her community and live as an independent nun.

Petersburg and dominated by his father and elder brother, Stravinsky's early childhood was a mix of experience that hinted little at the cosmopolitan artist he was to become. In September 1946, by her own account, she received a calling from God "to serve Him among the poorest of the poor.". Brought up in an apartment in St. She later said that the poverty all around left a deep impression on her. Petersburg, Russia. Mary's High School in Calcutta, becoming its principal in 1944. Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), near St. From 1930 to 1948 Mother Teresa taught geography and catechism at St.

. She took her final vows in May 1937, acquiring the religious title Mother Teresa. He was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people of the century. In 1931, she made her first vows there, choosing the name Sister Mary Teresa in honour of Teresa of Avila and Thérèse de Lisieux. A quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian, Stravinsky was one of the most authoritative composers in 20th century music, both in the West and in his native land. After a few months training at the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Dublin she was sent to Darjeeling in India as a novice sister. Robert Craft transcribed several interviews with the composer, which were published as Conversations with Stravinsky. She chose the Sisters of Loreto because of their vocation to provide education for girls.

In it, he famously claimed that music was incapable of "expressing anything but itself". At 18, the Vatican granted Teresa permission to leave Skopje and join the Sisters of Loreto, an Irish community of nuns in Rathfarnham with a mission in Calcutta. With the help of Alexis Roland-Manuel, Stravinsky composed a theoretical work entitled Poetics of Music. She was a member of the youth group in her local parish called Sodality. He was also a writer. She recounted that she felt a vocation to help the poor from the age of 12, and decided to train for missionary work in India. Stravinsky also achieved fame as a pianist and conductor, often at the premieres of his own works. Little is known of Teresa's early life except from her own reminiscences.

His oeuvre included everything from symphonies to piano miniatures. They were Catholics, even though most Albanians are Muslim and the majority of the population in their native Macedonia are Macedonian Orthodox. Stravinsky also wrote in a broad spectrum of ensemble combinations and classical forms. Her parents, Nikollë (Kolë) and Dranafile Bojaxhiu, came from the city of Prizren in the south of Kosovo. For some, these ballets practically reinvented the genre. Her parents had three children, and Agnes Gonxhe was youngest. He composed in the neo-classical and serialist styles, but he is best known for two works from his earlier, Russian period: Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) and L'oiseau de feu (The Firebird). Teresa was born as Agnes Gonxhe Bojaxhiu in Üsküb, a town in the Ottoman province of Kosovo (now Skopje in the Republic of Macedonia), where her father was a successful merchant.

Igor Fyodorovitch Stravinsky (Russian: Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский) (June 17, 1882 – April 6, 1971) was a Russian-American composer of modern classical music. . Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts, ISBN 0060927518.
. The composer and his works, ISBN 0571049230. While for some, Teresa was the embodiment of a "living saint," others such as Christopher Hitchens, who believed her to be "a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and a fraud," have raised questions about her public statements, working practices, political connections, and funding. Eric Walter White, Stravinsky. Teresa was also known for her books about Christian spirituality and prayer, some of which were written together with her close friend Frère Roger.

Pribaoutki for voice, flute, oboe, clarinet, bassoon, vln, vla, vc, double bass (1914). Trois petites chansons voice and piano (or small orchestra) (1913/1930). Trois poésies de la lyrique japonaise for voice and piano or chamber orchestra (1913). Balmont for voice and piano or small orchestra (1911/1954).

Two Poems of K. Deux poèmes de Paul Verlaine for bariton and piano or orchestra Op.9 (1910/1951). Two Melodies for mezzo-soprano and piano Op.6 (1908). Pastorale wordless soprano and piano (1907).