Our Composer (Stravinsky)

Igor Fedorovich Stravinsky was born June 17, 1882, in Oranienbaum, Russia, the son of a leading bass singer at a opera house in Saint Petersburg. Although he didn't make the best grades, Stravinsky studied law at the University of Saint Petersburg. There he met the son of Russian composer Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, and his friend's famous father guided Stravinsky's early compositional efforts. In 1908 the Russian impresario Sergey Diaghilev, impressed by Stravinsky's orchestral works 'Scherzo fantastique' and 'Fireworks', asked …

…he took a more serialist approach. In 1967, in his mid-80s and failing in health, Stravinsky died, on April 6, 1971, in New York City and was buried in Venice,Calaforina. During his lifetime, Stravinsky used many musical styles, Russian-influenced style, primitivism, jazz, neoclassicism, simultaneous use of two keys, atonality, and serialism. To continue in one path, in his words, was “to go backward.” Stravinsky's works both reflected and influenced the most important things of 20th-century music.