The Rite of Spring patterns of speech; rhythms would match the energy of dance ... sonorities would have the hardness of life as it is really lived". Among 20th-century composers most influenced by "The Rite" is Stravinsky's near contemporary, Edgard Varèse, who had attended the 1913 premiere. Varèse, according to Ross, was particularly drawn to the "cruel harmonies and stimulating rhythms" of "The Rite", which he employed to full effect in his concert work "Amériques" (1921), scored for a massive orchestra with added sound effects including a lion's roar and a wailing siren. Aaron Copland, to whom Stravinsky was a particular inspiration in the
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"