structural:summarization, stylistic:tone, information:filtering
Illness and wartime collaborations

Soon after, Stravinsky was admitted to a hospital for typhoid fever and stayed in recovery for five weeks; numerous colleagues visited him, including Debussy, Manuel de Falla, Maurice Ravel, and Florent Schmitt. Upon returning to his family in Ustilug, he continued work on his opera The Nightingale, now with an official commission from the Moscow Free Theatre. In early 1914, his wife Yekaterina contracted tuberculosis and was admitted to a sanatorium in Leysin, Switzerland, where the couple's fourth child, Maria Milena, was born. Here Stravinsky finished The Nightingale, but after the Moscow Free Theatre closed before the premiere, Diaghilev agreed to stage the opera. The May 1914 premiere was moderately successful; critics' high expectations after the tumultuous Rite of Spring were not met, though fellow composers were impressed by the music's emotion and free treatment of counterpoint and themes.

In early July 1914, while his family resided in Switzerland near his sick wife, the composer traveled to Russia to retrieve texts for his next work, a ballet-cantata depicting Russian wedding traditions titled Les noces. Soon after he returned, World War I began, and the Stravinskys lived in Switzerland until 1920, initially residing in Clarens and later Morges. During the first months of the war, the composer intensely researched Russian folk poetry and prepared librettos for numerous works to be composed in the coming years, including Les noces, Renard, Pribaoutki, and other song cycles. Stravinsky met numerous Swiss-French artists during his time in Morges, including the author Charles F. Ramuz, with whom he collaborated on the small-scale theater work L'Histoire du soldat. The eleven-musician and two-dancer show was designed for easy travel, but after a premiere run funded by Werner Reinhart, all other performances were canceled due to the Spanish flu epidemic.

Stravinsky's income from performance royalties was suddenly cut off when his Germany-based publisher suspended operations due to the war. To keep his family afloat, the composer sold numerous manuscripts and accepted commissions from wealthy impresarios; one such commission included Renard, a theater work completed in 1916 upon a request from Princesse Edmond de Polignac. Additionally, Stravinsky made a new concert suite from The Firebird and sold it to a London publisher in an attempt to regain copyright control over the ballet. Diaghilev continued to organize Ballets Russes shows across Europe, including two charity concerts for the Red Cross where Stravinsky made his conducting debut with The Firebird. When the Ballets Russes traveled to Rome in April 1917, Stravinsky met the artist Pablo Picasso, and the two adventured around Italy; a commedia dell'arte they saw in Naples inspired the ballet Pulcinella, which premiered in Paris in May 1920 with designs by Picasso.