Igor Stravinsky Igor Stravinsky example essay topic

290 words
Igor Stravinsky (1882 – 1971) Igor Stravinsky was the son of a leading bass at the Maryinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, . He began two of the major strains of contemporary music. His early work, like the Symphony No. 1, was influenced by Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Later he inclined toward the music of the French impressionists Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, represented in pieces like Fireworks, The Faun, the Shepherdess, and the major ballet Firebird. Firebird's success led to two more ballets for Diaghilev's Ballets russes: Petrouchka and Le Sacre du Printemps, both famous pieces of the twentieth-century music. World War I disrupted the activities of the Ballets Ruses and caused Stravinsky to seek refuge in Switzerland.

He did not return to Russia until 1962, though his works of 1914-18 are almost mostly Russian folk tales and songs: Les notes (' The Wedding' Renard (a soldiers tale). In the early 1920's he avoided string instruments because of their expressive nuances, preferring the wind, percussion, piano and even pianola. But he returned to the full orchestra to crate Handel-Verdi imagery of the opera-oratorio Oedipus rex, and then wrote for strings alone in Apollon musagete (1928). In 1939, Stravinsky moved to the USA, followed by Vera Sudeikina, his love since 1921 and who was to be his second wife (his first wife and his mother had both died earlier the same year).

In 1940 they settled in Hollywood, were he worked on music intended for films, orchestral pieces, including the Symphony in Three Movements (1945). The later 1940's were devoted to The Rake's Progress, he continued to compose into his mid-80's, also conducting concerts and making many gramophone records of his music.