Igor Fyodovich Stravinsky

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer, pianist, and conductor, considered by many to be one of the most important and influential composers of 20th century music. He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the century.[4] In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works.
Stravinsky's compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with three ballets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and performed by Diaghilev's Ballets Russes (Russian Ballets): L'Oiseau de feu ("The Firebird") (1910), Petrushka (1911/1947), and Le Sacre du printemps ("The Rite of Spring") (1913). The Rite, whose premiere provoked a riot, transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure, and was largely responsible for Stravinsky's enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary, pushing the boundaries of musical design. In the 1950s he adopted serial procedures, using the new techniques over his last twenty years. Stravinsky's compositions of this period share traits with all of his earlier output: rhythmic energy, the construction of extended melodic ideas out of a few two- or three-note cells, and clarity of form, of instrumentation, and of utterance. He also published a number of books throughout his career.

His contribution
For wind instruments are Stravinsky's first compositions to feature his re-examination of the classical music of Mozart and Bach and their contemporaries. For this "neo-classical" style Stravinsky abandoned the large orchestras demanded by the ballets, and turned instead largely to wind instruments, the piano, and choral and chamber works.His other works such as Oedipus Rex (1927), Apollon musagète (1928, for the Russian Ballet) and the Dumbarton Oaks Concerto (1937–38) continued this re-thinking of eighteenth-century musical styles.Works from this period include the three symphonies: the Symphonie des Psaumes (Symphony of Psalms) (1930), Symphony in C (1940) and Symphony in Three Movements (1945). Apollon, Persephone (1933) and Orpheus (1947) exemplify not only Stravinsky's return to music of the Classical period, but also his exploration of themes from the ancient Classical world such as Greek mythology. He also use a similar technique found as early as the sixteenth century, to compose the music of Cipriano de Rore, Orlandus Lassus, Carlo Gesualdo, and Giovanni de Macque.

His musical output
One of the song he composed was the “The Ballet Russes”such combination leaves the piece ambiguous as to its sacred or secular character, but Stravinsky may unintentionally and unconsciously be pushing this distinction to its breaking point if not making it almost impossible to make. The symphony is set in three movements, each connected to the three psalms used for the text: Psalm 38, verses 13 and 14; Psalm 39, verses 2,3, and 4; and the complete text of psalm 150, respectively. The first movement begins with the oboe and bassoon in a solo melody reminiscent of the opening of The Rite of Spring’s bassoon solo, which is a rearrangement of a Lithuanian folk tune. The Oboe solo at the beginning of the second movement is similar. But this only adds to the complexity of this piece. Stravinsky’s attempt to situate these movements in the “Russian folk tradition” that he in many ways seems to have established in his work with The Ballet Russes, provides a sharp contrast to the text of the psalms for all three movements, which are in Latin.