The Russian-born composer's work is considered one of the foremost examples of musical modernism in the early 20th century. The political circumstances of his time caused him to move frequently and he was in Paris in 1911, then Switzerland in 1914, and in Paris again in 1920. He was in the United States after 1940, settling in New York in 1969. Serge Diaghilev commissioned works for Paris seasons of the Ballets Russes: 'L’Oiseau de feu,' 1910, 'Petrushka,' 1911, and 'Le Sacre du printemps,' 1913. These works laid the foundation of his career. 'Le Sacre du printemps,' caused outrage during its premier but remains his best-known, and most influential work, though he continued to develop beyond it stylistically.
Is generally regarded as the father of "modern" classical music; a riot ensued at the 1913 premiere of his ballet Le Sacre du Primtemps.
Recorded a number of his works with the Columbia Symphony Orchestra in the 1960s, all of which he conducted.
Settled in the United States in 1939 after having become a French citizen in 1934. Became a U. S. citizen in 1946.
Was very much opposed to 12-tone writing, or serialism, early in his career, then turned to that style of composition in the 1950s.
He is considered by many to the greatest composer of the 20th Century, largely on the strength of his ballet "The Rite of Spring". Stravinsky was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. His star, awarded for his work on radio, is located at 6340 Hollywood Blvd. He is the only classical composer to be so honored.
His 1913 ballet,"Le Sacre du Printemps" (The Rite of Spring), caused the greatest single revolution in classical music since Beethovens "Eroica" Symphony in the early 1800s. It was a complete break from the Romanticism of the nineteenth century with its strange and dissonant rhythms and sounds. It was a fiasco upon its premiere, but began to win wide acceptance as a concert piece just a year later.
Of the composers whose work was in the original Fantasia , he was the only one living at the time.
Father of Thodore Stravinsky.
I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my,mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not my exposure to founts,of wisdom and knowledge.
To listen is an effort and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught,to have too much respect for music. They should be taught to love it,instead.
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send,everyone and everything connected with it to hell.
I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm,offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
I have no use for a theoretic freedom. Let me have something finite, definite — matter that can lend itself to my operation only insofar as it is commensurate with my possibilities. And such matter presents itself to me together with limitations. I must in turn impose mine upon it. So here we are, whether we like it or not, in the realm of necessity. And yet which of us has ever heard talk of art as other than a realm of freedom? This sort of heresy is uniformly widespread because it is imagined that art is outside the bounds of ordinary activity. Well, in art as in everything else, one can build only upon a resisting foundation: whatever constantly gives way to pressure, constantly renders movement impossible. My freedom thus consists in my moving about within the narrow frame that I have assigned myself for each one of my undertakings. I shall go even further: my freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint, diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self of the chains that shackle the spirit.
I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured thought of theology, it is to religion no more than counterpoint exercises are to music.
He was a six and a half foot scowl. (on Rachmaninov),One lives by memory and not by truth.
Old age is a time of humiliations the most disagreeable of which for me is that I cannot work long at sustained high pressure with no leaks in concentration.
Childhood - a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the varieties of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.
Music is given to us specifically to make order of things to move from an anarchic individualistic state to a regulated perfectly concious one which alone insures vitality and durability.
I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve.
The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.
The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.
A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.
I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.
I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.
Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn. .
