#Composer stravinsky serial#

He refused to sign Otto Klemperer’s petition on behalf of musicians who were losing their jobs in the Third Reich, perhaps because a large proportion of his income came from Germany in the early 1930s. Throughout the 1930s Stravinsky travelled to Germany to conduct and perform, and was still corresponding with publishers in Germany until 1939. In contrast, Stravinsky’s confidante, Robert Craft, has written that Stravinsky ‘loathed’ the Nazis, and kept a scrapbook filled with annotated pictures of Himmler and Goering in bizarre poses. Stravinsky is known to have been Fascist and anti-Bolshevik, and some of his actions have been interpreted as sympathetic towards the Nazis he also admired Mussolini, playing for him on a number of occasions in Italy and giving him gifts. Instead he settled in Switzerland and then Paris, becoming a naturalised French citizen in 1934. They include Russian folk quotations and harmonies, as well as influences from Glazunov, Wagner, Debussy and Dvořák.īecause of the outbreak of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, Stravinsky was unable to return to his native country until 1962. These early compositions are still amongst the composer’s most well-known works. Two further ballets, Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913), and an opera, Le Rossignol (The Nightingale, 1913), propelled Stravinsky to international fame. Diaghilev commissioned a new ballet from Stravinsky, and in 1910 The Firebird premiered in Paris, making the young composer an overnight sensation. Shortly after this Stravinsky met the ballet and opera impresario Serge Diaghilev, who was creating a showcase of Russian opera and ballet to be shown in Paris. After studying law at university in St Petersburg, he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and began studying composition until the latter’s death in 1908. His father was an esteemed bass singer at the Mariinsky Theatre, but the young Stravinsky was discouraged from pursuing music as a career. Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, near St Petersburg, where he studied piano from a young age. Scholars have debated the extent to which the composer expressed antisemitism in his writing as well as his musical works. Although he was not directly at risk of persecution during the Second World War, Stravinsky emigrated to America in September 1939.

#Composer stravinsky serial#

His works are generally categorised into three periods: Russian (1907-1919), Neoclassical (1920-1954) and Serial (1954-1968). The Russian-born (naturalised French, then American) composer, conductor and pianist wrote ballets, symphonic works, operas, concertos, masses and vocal compositions the orchestral suite of his ballet The Rite of Spring is the most-recorded piece of orchestral music. Igor Stravinsky is one of the most celebrated and influential composers of the twentieth century, particularly with regard to his innovative approach to harmony, rhythm and orchestration.