Happy birthday, Igor! You know you've pricked the popular consciousness when you become the subject of a piece of Google-artistry.
Today is Igor Stravinsky's birthday, and it has inspired Google to create an effete, sub-Chagall image to surround their lettering. The iconography is a little strange: there's a firebird, a few floating note-heads, some not-very-pagan-looking flowers (a subtle homage to Les Noces?) and a caterpillar – I don't actually know of any Stravinsky pieces about caterpillars, but I suppose that's just a bit of Google-ised artistic license.
Still, given how many people are going to see this today, it's a big event for 20th-century music and its reception. Today isn't even a major anniversary, in the sense of being one of the big round numbers that classical music festivals love to celebrate (Igor was born 127 years ago, in 1882), so praise be to Google for having the imagination to mark the occasion.
And if you click through the Google logo to some Stravinsky links, you'll find the best piece of video footage of Stravinsky conducting that I know: the end of his performance of The Firebird in London in 1965 with the New Philharmonia – appended today with dozens of Google-inspired happy birthday wishes.
