Igor Stravinsky

A detailed Summary of Igor Stravinsky

Igor Stravinsky is considered by many the greatest composer of the 20th Century. Several composers have made breakthroughs and great accomplishments in the past 100 years, but Stravinsky has dominated nearly every trend set. He was born near St. Petersburg, Russia in Oranienbaum, on June 17, 1882. He was born to a famous Russian bass opera singer, Fyodor Ignatyevich Stravinsky.

Igor Stravinsky was third of a family of four boys. He grew up hearing his father practicing his opera and attending local ballets. He also started taking piano lessons when he was 9 years old and continued on with musical notation and composition instruction. All throughout his early life he studied music. However, although he had been brought up with music and loved it dearly, his parents did not want him to pursue a musical career. His background was musical. His parents viewed his efforts as a musician as childish, but on the other hand indulged him in it with the piano and the operas and the ballets. In 1902 he was sent to St. Petersburg University to study criminal law and legal philosophy to honor his parents' wishes. While he was there, he still concentrated on his music and especially his composing. In the summ

er of 1902 he was introduced to the Russian composer, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. Rimsky was extremely impressed with Stravinsky's early compositions that he convinced him not to enter the conservatory for academic training, but to study privately with him as his teacher. He was tutored privately by Rimsky in instrumentation and orchestration for about three years. In 1905, Stravinsky graduated from the St. Petersburg University. In the meantime, he continued his studies with Rimsky. The next year, his mind still not made up about becoming a professional musician, he married his second cousin, Catherine Nossenko.

Shortly after the war, Stravinsky's and Diaghilev were reunited. He started writing for ballets again, but in 1929, Diaghilev died, and his ballet company folded. However, Stravinsky's composition of ballet scores did not come to an end with Diaghilev's death. In the late 1920s, a Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein started a company of her own and commissioned two ballet scores from Stravinsky, The Fairy's Kiss (1928) and Persephone (1934).

For the next few years, Stravinsky and Diaghilev worked very closely together. Diaghilev wanted all of Stravinsky's new works to be produced by his company. Stravinsky's next two works for the ballet, Petrouchka (1910-11) and The Rite of Spring (1912-13) are perfectly crafted, powerful pieces, drawing on Stravinsky's rhythmic and harmonic imagination. The most amazing part is that Stravinsky had not even reached middle age at the time he composed these pieces. The Rite of Spring created a violent reaction because no one had ever heard music that carried this much premature power. It was almost as though there was a sense of jealousy from his colleagues. The entire musical establishment criticized stravinsky, but he didn't really seem to care.

Stravinsky explored patterns of compound meters and broke down the tradition of symmetrica

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