He was so impressed by Stravinsky ’s work that he asked the composer to write the music for a ballet based on the Russian fairy tale of the Fire Bird. Serge Diaghilev, who had recently established his Ballet Russe in Paris, attended a 1908 performance of Stravinsky ’s Fireworks in St. Other early influences on Stravinsky ’s work were Scriabin, Tchaikovsky, Debussy, and Dukas. One of his first big compositions, the Symphony in E-flat Majorin 1907, clearly showed the influences of Rimsky-Korsakov ’s style. Stravinsky became the composer ’s private student in 1903 and continued in this capacity until Rimsky-Korsakov ’s death in 1908. When Stravinsky ’s father died in 1902, Rimsky-Korsakov became the young man ’s substitute father and musical mentor as he continued with studies at law school. As a teenager he became more interested in improvisation and began dabbling in composition.Ī key influence of Stravinsky ’s early work was the famous Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, whom Stravinsky met around 1900. Trips to the ballet and opera were commonplace for the young Stravinsky, but his early training did not reveal any significant talent, nor did his compositions foreshadow his musical explorations of the future. He began taking piano lessons at the age of nine, and also studied composition as a child. He also had a tremendous influence on other composers who followed him, although he had little interest in discussing his own music.Īs the son of a renowned singer at the Imperial Opera in Russia, Stravinsky was surrounded by classical music while growing up. While his so-called “intellectual ” scores often didn ’t strike a chord with audiences, his colleagues generally regarded him as one of the best musical technicians of his time.
Stravinsky stressed that music was notes and nothing more, and that composition should be an expression of form and logic rather than passion.
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His shift to Neo-classicism after World War I resulted in a series of compositions hallmarked by simplicity and restraint that were often critically praised but not favored by the public. ” Long considered the leader of the musical avant garde, Stravinsky developed his reputation by putting his own musical label on the classical styles of the past. Schonberg remarked in The Lives of the Great Composers, “What Stravinsky represented, among many other things, was a compete rupture with Romanticism. Few composers have made such dramatic breaks from the status quo in classical music as Igor Stravinsky did in the twentieth century.
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