By the time he put the finishing touches on the Rite of Spring in November of 1912 in the Ch\u00c3\u00a2telard Hotel in Clarens, Switzerland, Stravinsky had spent three years studying Russian pagan rituals, Lithuanian folk songs and crafting the dissonant sacre chord, in which an F-flat major combines with an E-flat major with added minor seventh. The rehearsal process wasn\u2019t easy either. Stravinsky fired the German pianist and the orchestra and performers only had a few opportunities to practice at the Th\u00c3\u00a9\u00c3\u00a2tre des Champs-\u00c3\u2030lys\u00c3\u00a9es in Paris, where the Rite debuted in May 1913. But the Russian born composer pulled it off, and his composition now stands as a 20th century masterpiece.<\/p>\n
Stravinsky is one of seven eminent creators of the 20st century profiled by Harvard professor Howard Gardner in his 1993 book Creating Minds. The others are Pablo Picasso, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, Martha Graham, Mahatma Gandhi and Albert Einstein. One can debate the list but Gardner\u2019s foremost conclusion is uncontroversial: creative breakthroughs in any domain require strenuous work and a willingness to challenge the establishment.<\/p>\n
The psychology of creativity\u201d\u201cboth empirical research and popular literature for the lay audience\u201d\u201cmisses this. It reduces creativity to warm showers and blue rooms, forgetting that the life of the eminent creator is not soothing; it is a struggle\u201d\u201ca grossly uneven wrestling match with the muses<\/b>.<\/p>\n