melodies (S. Gorodetzkij), op.6for Mezzo Soprano and PianoScherzo fantastique, op.3 (mp3 - score)for OrchestraFeu d'Artifice (Fireworks), op.4 (mp3 - score)for OrchestraChant funebre, op.5for Wind OrchestraNot published; lostQuatre Etudes (Four Studies), op. 7for Piano3. The early Diaghilev ballets, 191014.Igor and Katya, now with two children, had been living for a year in a flat in the Angliysky Prospekt, and it was here, between December 1909 and early May 1910, that the bulk of The Firebird was composed. In February the composer broke off for long enough to make arrangements of Grieg's piano piece Kobold op.71 no.3 for a charity ball in which a young dance protege of Diaghilev's called Vaclav Nizhinsky was making his solo debut. The piano score of The Firebird was then completed on 21 March/3 April, the orchestral score on 5/18 May, and the 45-minute ballet had its first performance in the Russian season at the Opera in Paris on 25 June. The spectacular success of this first of a long line of Diaghilev ballet commissions barely disguises now the fact that the music was both derivative and to some extent formulaic. It was true that, at orchestral rehearsals, Stravinsky had to explain the music to the bewildered players, and that, at the first rehearsal, the sonorities were so unexpected that dancers missed their entrances. But this was mainly because of the actual orchestration, in which a huge force was handled with the same wizardry and dexterity that had already been seen in St Petersburg as masks for a lack of musical substance. As music drama, The Firebird broke little new ground. The scenario, cobbled together by a committee of Diaghilev's collaborators with Fokine at their head, was an old-fashioned sequence of dances linked by pas d'action, much like Coppelia or Swan Lake. As for the music, Stravinsky had borrowed the old Rimsky-Korsakov idea of depicting evil or magic in structured chromatics, good or human in diatonics or folksong. His Firebird cavorts to flickering, Skryabinesque harmonies and gasping rhythmic phrases, while the human princesses dance to music which Glazunov himself would not have disowned, and the hero Prince Ivan and his bride are portrayed in Borodinesque settings of authentic folk tunes. The demon Kashchey's dance is infectiously rhythmic; but its phrasing is routine. Of course, Stravinsky's mastery of these varied resources was and remains astonishing (and not only in view of his limited experience). But it might not have portended any outstanding innovative genius. The success, all the same, was sensational. Overnight Stravinsky became a household name. Socially he was lionized. He was befriended by the Parisian great and good, by Diaghilev's aristocratic backers, by composers like Debussy, Ravel and Satie, by writers like Claudel, Proust, Gide and D'Annunzio, and even by the venerable Sarah Bernhardt. It was all very different from the provincial St Petersburg of his experience, with its coteries of Rimsky-Korsakov hangers-on and its so-called Contemporaries evenings. The whole point of the Ballets Russes was that it was a fusion of art forms, and through it Stravinsky was automatically brought into contact with intellectual and aesthetic spheres