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Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky biography

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  • PLACE OF DEATH: New York City, New York
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Igor Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer and musical revolutionary. His ballet score The Rite of Spring provoked an actual riot in a theatre.

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Igor Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer and musical revolutionary. Born in 1882, he was naturalized French and later American. Stravinsky was infamous for audacious rhythms and stylistic diversity, blending traditional and modern forms. Three ballets brought him international fame: The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring - the last of which provoked an actual riot in a Paris theatre.

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(born June 17, 1882, Oranienbaum, Russia—died April 6, 1971, New York, N.Y., U.S.) Russian-born U.S. composer. Son of an operatic bass, he decided to be a composer at age 20 and studied privately with Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov (1902–08). His Fireworks (1908) was heard by the impresario Sergey Diaghilev, who commissioned Stravinsky to write the Firebird ballet (1910); its dazzling success made him Russia's leading young composer. The great ballet score Petrushka (1911) followed. His next ballet, The Rite of Spring (1913), with its shifting and audacious rhythms and its unresolved dissonances, was a landmark in music history; its Paris premiere caused an actual riot in the theatre, and Stravinsky's international notoriety was assured. In the early 1920s he adopted a radically different style of restrained Neoclassicism—employing often ironic references to older music—in works such as his Octet (1923). His major Neoclassical works include Oedipus rex (1927) and the Symphony of Psalms (1930) and culminate in the opera The Rake's Progress (1951). From 1954 he employed serialism, a compositional technique. His later works include Agon (1957)—the last of his many ballets choreographed by George Balanchine—and Requiem Canticles (1966).

Copyright © 1994-2011 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. For more information visit Britannica.com

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