Igor Stravinsky

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 summer 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.

Stravinsky’s Symphony in E Flat Major (1905-1907) was his first piece picked by Rimsky to be performed in private and public concerts in St. Petersburg. His last composition approved by Rimsky was Fireworks (1908). This was a brief symphonic "poem" that Stravinsky wrote as a wedding present for Rimsky’s daughter. Sadly however, Rimsky died in the summer of 1908 before he could hear it performed. After Rimsky’s death, Stravinsky composed a funeral march in memory of his teacher and friend.

When Fireworks and an earlier orche...

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... health slowly deteriorated. Eventually, his bad health caused a slowing down of his compositional activity, but even as late as 1970 he was working on instrumental transcriptions of some of Bach's preludes and fugues. He died in New York City on April 6, 1971. He was buried in Venice on the island of San Michele.

	Overall, Stravinsky has given major contributions to the history of music. He never seemed to start a composition with partial ideas, but always examined his works with a critical ear.

He made bold experiments with harmony and used a wide knowledge of music of all kinds for his effects. This had neat results whenever time, meter, and dynamics were concerned.

Stravinsky explored patterns of compound meters and broke down the tradition of symmetrical phrasing. He restored to music the sense of an unwavering pulse, and this helped to make so many of his works just right for dancing. His music made a "clean" sound, meaning there was no filling in just for the sake of filling in. All these contributions are so essential to the development of music in the 20th century. Who knows where modern music would be right now without the works of Igor Stravinsky?