Igor Stravinsky, Russian Composer

Igor Stravinsky, Russian Composer

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky (June 17, 1882 - April 6, 1971) was a Russian (and later, a naturalized French and American) composer, pianist and conductor. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century. His compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev. These ballets transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary who pushed the boundaries of musical design. In the 1920s he turned to neoclassical music. The works from this period tended to make use of traditional musical forms and often paid tribute to the music of earlier masters, such as Bach and Tchaikovsky. In the 1950s, Stravinsky adopted serial procedures, a technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Stravinsky has been called "one of music's truly epochal innovators". The most important aspect of his work, was the ability to explore new compositional styles while always retaining a distinctive Stravinsky sound. He died in 1971, at the age of 88, of heart failure. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and in 1987 he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Award for Lifetime Achievement. Photographed by Harris & Ewing, 1937.

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