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Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky [a] (17 June [ O.S. 5 June] 1882 – 6 April 1971) was a Russian composer and conductor with French citizenship (from 1934) and United States citizenship (from 1945). He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music .
- 6 April 1971 (aged 88), New York City, US
- 166J, Ms 10344
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- 17 June 1882, Oranienbaum, Saint Petersburg, Russia
- Overview
- Life and career
Igor Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer whose work revolutionized musical thought and sensibility in the 20th century. His fame rests on a few works, notably The Rite of Spring (1913), wherein he presented a new concept of music involving constantly changing rhythms and metric imbalances, a brilliantly original orchestration, and drastically dissonant harmonies.
What is Igor Stravinsky famous for?
Igor Stravinsky’s collaborations with Serge Diaghilev for the Ballet Russes, including The Firebird (1910), made him known overnight. Other compositions included The Rite of Spring (1913), which provoked one of the most famous first-night riots in the history of musical theatre, and The Rake’s Progress (1951).
What was Igor Stravinsky’s family like?
Igor Stravinsky’s father, Fyodor, was one of the leading Russian operatic basses of his day, and Igor’s mother, Anna, was a talented pianist. Igor married his cousin Catherine Nossenko and had four children. In 1940, after the deaths of his eldest daughter (1938), his wife (1939), and his mother (1939), he married Vera de Bosset.
How was Igor Stravinsky educated?
Stravinsky’s father was one of the leading Russian operatic basses of his day, and the mixture of the musical, theatrical, and literary spheres in the Stravinsky family household exerted a lasting influence on the composer. Nevertheless his own musical aptitude emerged quite slowly. As a boy he was given lessons in piano and music theory. But then he studied law and philosophy at St. Petersburg University (graduating in 1905), and only gradually did he become aware of his vocation for musical composition. In 1902 he showed some of his early pieces to the composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (whose son Vladimir was a fellow law student), and Rimsky-Korsakov was sufficiently impressed to agree to take Stravinsky as a private pupil, while at the same time advising him not to enter the conservatory for conventional academic training.
Rimsky-Korsakov tutored Stravinsky mainly in orchestration and acted as the budding composer’s mentor, discussing each new work and offering suggestions. He also used his influence to get his pupil’s music performed. Several of Stravinsky’s student works were performed in the weekly gatherings of Rimsky-Korsakov’s class, and two of his works for orchestra—the Symphony in E-flat Major and The Faun and the Shepherdess, a song cycle with words by Aleksandr Pushkin—were played by the Court Orchestra in 1908, the year Rimsky-Korsakov died. In February 1909 a short but brilliant orchestral piece, the Scherzo fantastique was performed in St. Petersburg at a concert attended by the impresario Serge Diaghilev, who was so impressed by Stravinsky’s promise as a composer that he quickly commissioned some orchestral arrangements for the summer season of his Ballets Russes in Paris. For the 1910 ballet season Diaghilev approached Stravinsky again, this time commissioning the musical score for a new full-length ballet on the subject of the Firebird.
The premiere of The Firebird at the Paris Opéra on June 25, 1910, was a dazzling success that made Stravinsky known overnight as one of the most gifted of the younger generation of composers. This work showed how fully he had assimilated the flamboyant Romanticism and orchestral palette of his master. The Firebird was the first of a series of spectacular collaborations between Stravinsky and Diaghilev’s company. The following year saw the Ballets Russes’s premiere on June 13, 1911, of the ballet Petrushka, with Vaslav Nijinsky dancing the title role to Stravinsky’s musical score. Meanwhile, Stravinsky had conceived the idea of writing a kind of symphonic pagan ritual to be called Great Sacrifice. The result was The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du printemps), the composition of which was spread over two years (1911–13). The first performance of The Rite of Spring at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées on May 29, 1913, provoked one of the more famous first-night riots in the history of musical theatre. Stirred by Nijinsky’s unusual and suggestive choreography and Stravinsky’s creative and daring music, the audience cheered, protested, and argued among themselves during the performance, creating such a clamour that the dancers could not hear the orchestra. This highly original composition, with its shifting and audacious rhythms and its unresolved dissonances, was an early modernist landmark. From this point on, Stravinsky was known as “the composer of The Rite of Spring” and the destructive modernist par excellence. But he himself was already moving away from such post-Romantic extravagances, and world events of the next few years only hastened that process.
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Stravinsky’s successes in Paris with the Ballets Russes effectively uprooted him from St. Petersburg. He had married his cousin Catherine Nossenko in 1906, and, after the premiere of The Firebird in 1910, he brought her and their two children to France. The outbreak of World War I in 1914 seriously disrupted the Ballets Russes’s activities in western Europe, however, and Stravinsky found he could no longer rely on that company as a regular outlet for his new compositions. The war also effectively marooned him in Switzerland, where he and his family had regularly spent their winters, and it was there that they spent most of the war. The Russian Revolution of October 1917 finally extinguished any hope Stravinsky may have had of returning to his native land.
Apr 2, 2014 · Learn about the life and works of influential Russian composer Igor Stravinsky, who created such famed works as 'The Rite of Spring,' 'Symphony in C' and 'The Rake's Progress.' Find out his early influences, his departure to Switzerland and France, his move to the US, his death and his legacy.
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Learn about the life and works of Igor Stravinsky, one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. From his childhood in Russia to his exile in Switzerland and France, discover his artistic journey and his collaborations with Diaghilev, Picasso, Nijinsky and others.
Mar 5, 2024 · Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was a Russian composer best known for his works for the stage, such as the ballets The Firebird, Petrushka, and the groundbreaking The Rite of Spring. The modernist composer lived in Switzerland, France, and then the United States.
- Mark Cartwright
Sep 29, 2022 · Learn about the life and career of Igor Stravinsky, one of the 20th century’s most influential and innovative composers. Discover his musical influences, achievements, personal relationships, and legacy in this article that covers his early years, his famous works, his exile, his legacy, and his Hollywood connection.
Definition. Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) was a Russian composer best known for his works for the stage, such as the ballets The Firebird, Petrushka, and the groundbreaking The Rite of Spring. The modernist composer lived in Switzerland, France, and then the United States.
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