Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (Russian: Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский) (17th Ju… Read Full Bio ↴Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (Russian: Игорь Фёдорович Стравинский) (17th June 1882 – 6th April 1971) was a Russian composer who first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Serge Diaghilev and performed by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (Russian Ballet): L'Oiseau de feu ("The Firebird") (1910), Petrushka (1911), and Le sacre du printemps ("The Rite of Spring") (1913).
Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. After his first, Russian (expressionistic), phase he turned in the 1920s to neoclassicism. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue, symphony), frequently concealed a vein of intense emotion beneath a surface appearance of detachment or austerity, and often paid tribute to the music of earlier masters, for example J.S. Bach, Verdi and Tchaikovsky.
In the 1950s he adopted serial procedures, using the new techniques over the final twenty years of his life to write works that were briefer and of greater rhythmic, harmonic, and textural complexity than his earlier music. Their intricacy notwithstanding, these pieces share traits with all of Stravinsky's earlier output; rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few cells comprising only two or three notes, and clarity of form, instrumentation, and of utterance.
Stravinsky only started using the twelve-tone system after the death of Schoenberg in 1951. At that time dodecaphony was a well-known and widely spread system that was generally accepted as a valuable 'replacement' of the tonal system. Therefore, some musicologists thought it wiser to consider the serial works of Stravinsky as a sort of neo-dodecaphony, meaning that they are also conceived as "neoclassical".
Stravinsky achieved fame as a pianist and conductor, often at the premieres of his works. He was a writer and compiled, with the help of Alexis Roland-Manuel, a theoretical work entitled Poetics of Music, in which he famously claimed that music was incapable of "expressing anything but itself". Several interviews in which the composer spoke to Robert Craft were published as Conversations with Stravinsky. They collaborated on five further volumes over the following decade.
Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. After his first, Russian (expressionistic), phase he turned in the 1920s to neoclassicism. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms (concerto grosso, fugue, symphony), frequently concealed a vein of intense emotion beneath a surface appearance of detachment or austerity, and often paid tribute to the music of earlier masters, for example J.S. Bach, Verdi and Tchaikovsky.
In the 1950s he adopted serial procedures, using the new techniques over the final twenty years of his life to write works that were briefer and of greater rhythmic, harmonic, and textural complexity than his earlier music. Their intricacy notwithstanding, these pieces share traits with all of Stravinsky's earlier output; rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few cells comprising only two or three notes, and clarity of form, instrumentation, and of utterance.
Stravinsky only started using the twelve-tone system after the death of Schoenberg in 1951. At that time dodecaphony was a well-known and widely spread system that was generally accepted as a valuable 'replacement' of the tonal system. Therefore, some musicologists thought it wiser to consider the serial works of Stravinsky as a sort of neo-dodecaphony, meaning that they are also conceived as "neoclassical".
Stravinsky achieved fame as a pianist and conductor, often at the premieres of his works. He was a writer and compiled, with the help of Alexis Roland-Manuel, a theoretical work entitled Poetics of Music, in which he famously claimed that music was incapable of "expressing anything but itself". Several interviews in which the composer spoke to Robert Craft were published as Conversations with Stravinsky. They collaborated on five further volumes over the following decade.
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02L'Oiseau de Feu (The Firebird): Danse infernale de tous les sujets de Kastchei - Excerpt 1910 Version4:40Igor Stravinsky
03L'Oiseau de Feu (The Firebird): Berceuse (l'Oiseau de feu) - Excerpt 1910 Version2:32Igor Stravinsky
05L'Oiseau de Feu (The Firebird): Mort de Kastchei - Profonds ténèbres - Excerpt 1910 Version1:20Igor Stravinsky
06L'Oiseau de Feu (The Firebird): Disparition du palais et des sortilèges de Kastchei, animation des chevaliers pétrifiés, allegresse générale - Excerpt 1910 Version2:49Igor Stravinsky
07Petrushka (excerpts): Scene I - The Shrove-tide Fair/The Charlatan's Booth/Russian Dance0:52Philharmonia Orchestra
13Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring): Les augures printanières (Danse des adolescentes) - Excerpts3:02Igor Stravinsky
18Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring): Adoration de la terre (Le Sage) - Excerpts0:25Igor Stravinsky
30I. Sinfonia. Lento - Allegro moderato from Octet for Wind Instruments - Excerpt3:40Esa-Pekka Salonen
31III. Allegro from Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments (Revised version, 1950) - Excerpt5:02Igor Stravinsky
36I. Tempo giusto from Concerto in E-flat for Chamber Orchestra "Dumbarton Oaks" - Excerpt4:24Igor Stravinsky
44"Good people, just a moment:..." from The Rake's Progress (Opera in Three Acts - Excerpt)2:35Igor Stravinsky
47II. Ma tu, cagion di quella: Madrigale XVIII, Libro quinto from Monumentum pro Gesualdo di Venosa as Cd Annum - Excerpt1:56Igor Stravinsky
51Requiem Canticles (To the memory of Helen Buchanan Seeger): III. Dies Irae - Excerpts0:53Robert Craft
52Requiem Canticles (To the memory of Helen Buchanan Seeger): IV. Tuba Mirum - Excerpts0:59Robert Craft
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Essential Igor Stravinsky
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