The Rite of Spring Léon Vallas opined that Stravinsky had written music 30 years ahead of its time, suitable to be heard in 1940. Coincidentally, it was in that year that Walt Disney released "Fantasia", an animated feature film using music from "The Rite" and other classical compositions, conducted by Stokowski. The "Rite" segment of the film depicted the Earth's prehistory, with the creation of life, leading to the extinction of the dinosaurs as the finale. Among those impressed by the film was Gunther Schuller, later a composer, conductor and jazz scholar. The "Rite of Spring" sequence, he says, overwhelmed him and determined his
The Firebird was looking for fresh compositional talent. The ballet was the first of Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes productions to have an all-original score composed for it. Alexandre Benois wrote in 1910 that he had two years earlier suggested to Diaghilev the production of a Russian nationalist ballet, an idea all the more attractive given both the newly awakened French passion for Russian dance and also the ruinously expensive costs of staging opera. The inspiration of mixing the mythical Firebird with the unrelated Russian tale of Koschei the Deathless possibly came from a popular child's verse by Yakov Polonsky, "A Winter's Journey"