Igor Stravinsky (1882 - 1971) | Igor Stravinsky Russia / international composer

Igor Stravinsky
(1882 - 1971)

Russia / international composer who has started two major strains of contemporary music. He studied with Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, and his early works such as Symphony No. 1 in E flat, show the influence of this master. Almost immediately, he began to look for the music of the french impressionist Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel, while maintaining its national vision. This has resulted in such pieces fireworks, Wildlife and shepherdess, and major ballet Firebird. It is not just a question of life, however. A new musical element in the mix - clean orchestral textures, "bright" instrumentation and focus on stamping, irregular rhythms - heard especially in the Firebird's "Infernal Dance of the King Katschei.

Firebird has led to two successful ballets for Diaghilev's Ballets Russes: Petrouchka and Le Sacre du Printemps, two monuments to music of the twentieth century. The Russian element less romantic and more "objective". In Le Sacre, the "hellish" Firebird had erupted into a unique, epic "barbarism", so much so that some of the riots in Paris First hearing. The score was an icon of modern music and influenced many other modern giants, including Serge Prokofieff (Symphony No. 2 and 3, Scythian Suite, and they are seven), Béla Bartók (Allegro Barbaro, The Miraculous Mandarin, the piano sonata, cantata and Profana), Darius Milhaud (Les Choéphores), Arthur Honegger (symphonic movements), and the young Aaron Copland (Grohg). Stravinsky felt uncomfortable with the direction and almost immediately turned back, searching for a sparer music. Work in this transition period symphonies of wind instruments and some of the opera Le Rossignol.

The end of World War II, music by Stravinsky, I am further in this direction with L'Histoire du Soldat, Tango, and Ragtime. In these notes, he introduces a comparison with the aesthetic and what at first seems a parody but which turns out to be an element of "objectivity", a cubist collage with everyday objects. At the same time, it is classical procedures and updates for an extended harmonic language. Masterpieces of the byte, the "ballet with song" Pulcinella, and Oedipus Rex, hand Lian oratorio. The new style, as neo-classicism, "says the loyalty of most composers. Stravinsky, as Leonard Bernstein said, was the re-tuning. Between the wars, it was probably the most influential composer, particularly in the United States and France. His masterpieces include the Concerto for two pianos strong piano and violin concertos, ballets Apollo and Jeu de Cartes, Concerto in D for Strings in Concert, Dumbarton Oaks Concerto, Symphony of Psalms, Symphony in three movements , Symphony in C, Ebony Concerto, Mass, which led to the length of the opera The Rake's Progress (libretto by WH Auden and Chester Kallman), classic of the twentieth century.

According to The Rake's Progress, Stravinsky felt that he had reached a creative impasse with the neoclassic style. He turned to serialism and became strongly influenced by the manner of Anton Webern, but he never lost his personal musical imprint. Major works of movements for piano and orchestra, The Dove Descending Breaks the Air for chorus, Cantata, In Memoriam Dylan Thomas, Three Shakespeare Songs, Threni, Introit, and Requiem Canticles.

Stravinsky wrote the music with the art of a fine jeweler. Almost everything he has written very high quality, much of it classical.