Dynamic Russian-born composer Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (1882-1971), a child of Pre-Soviet Russia, was born on this day in Oranienbaum. He was a mediocre student who grew up immersed in music, inspired by his father, a singer with the Imperial Opera.

"The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self," he once said.

With his brilliant ballet scores The Firebird (1909) and Petrushka (1911), Stravinsky rose to fame. The success filled him with "absolute conviction" as he spent three years writing his masterpiece, Le sacre du printemps, (The Rite of Spring, 1913).

The opera premiered to a major scandal at Paris' Théâtre des Champs-Élysées as the intricate and innovative score shocked the audience into a guerre morte, pandemonium, because of its "perverse" choreography and "blasphemous" revolutionary rhythms.

"I left the hall in rage," Stravinsky said of the crowd's reaction. "The music was so familiar to me; I loved it, and I could not understand why people who had not yet heard it wanted to protest in advance."

"My music," he explained, "is best understood by children and animals."

Le sacre was an earthquake of primal rhythms. The entire orchestra became a single percussive unit to celebrate what Stravinsky called "the most wonderful event of every year of my childhood... the violent Russian spring that seemed to begin in an hour and was like the whole earth cracking."

In rejecting the rules and celebrating the passion of his muse, the maestro created new standards, fresh sounds, with dynamic force as potent as love.