Essay on Igor Stravinsky

I know this was not the case for his entire lifetime, but for the beginning of it up to a certain point that is how it was even though that wasn’t his choice. I found it very interesting that he grew up with parents that were fully supportive of his musical passions because there are a lot of people who did not have that luxury. There are a ton of musicians who had to convince their parents that music was a passion worth supporting, some of which never succeeded. Mussorgsky seemed like a really nice guy to be around. I found it very interesting that he started learning piano at such a young age from his mother who was a piano teacher. I found it interesting that he wasn’t always into music from the beginning it wasn’t the only thing he ever did. He joined a regiment for the military and served in it for quite some time. I like how important his family was to him for example as soon as his mother began to get sick he went straight to live with her and was by her bedside until she passed

The music was composed by Igor Stravinsky, who considered himself an inventor of music. He was also known for many controversial works reminiscent of Nijinsky. He created many works that blasted the whole realm of music into other possibilities, in which it would never return from. He started his career writing music for other ballets like Firebird and Petrouchka, which were grand and familiar like traditional ballet, but had a small hint of a more modern tone. It was not until The Rite of Spring that Stravinsky’s work was truly inspirational. This work tested the future of the 20th century classical music, and in many ways it paved the path to a modernized view. There are still many who do not understand how he

Although it was The Firebird ballet, first performed in Paris in 1910, that began his international career, and although the orchestral suite has remained his most popular work, he was still a little embarrassed by it years afterwards. The original "wastefully large" instrumentation he revised in 1919, when he wrote a second suite, and again in 1945, when he put together a third and longer orchestral suite. Such critical actions, he said, "are stronger than words."

To begin, The Rite of Spring was composed by Igor Stravinsky. Stravinsky was born in 1882 near St. Petersburg, Russia. As a Russian-born composer, his music had “a revolutionary impact on musical thought and sensibility just before and after World War I, and his compositions remained a touchstone of modernism for much of his long working life” (Taruskin; White). According to Wikipedia, he is considered one of the most important and

On 17 December 1770, Ludwig van Beethoven was born. He was an amazing and great classical musical composer. He is known for being the most famous composer of the classical and romantic periods of music. According to the “Enjoyment of Music” manual, Beethoven was born in Bohn, Germany. His father, with his grandfather, was the two singers at the court of a local prince, Friedrich Max. (Forney and Machlis 197).

While with the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo, Balanchine choreographed three ballets, Cotillon, La Concurrence, and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, all of which were centered around principal dancer Tamara Toumanova (“Biography” 2002). He later created the company Les Ballets in 1933 with Boris Kochno, a former private secretary of Diaghilev’s, as artistic director (“George Balanchine Biography” 2014). For the troupe’s opening season, Balanchine choreographed six works, collaborating with Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill for The Seven Deadly Sins, Pavel Tchelitchew for Errante, and composers Darius Milhaud for Les Songes and Henri Sauget for Fastes. Unfortunately, the company dissolved within a few months of its inception. As devastating as this was for Balanchine, the company’s sudden collapse would result in one of the most revolutionary meetings in the history of 20th-century dance (“Biography”

He aspired to create “something entirely new” and he succeeded. Although he was initially forced to compose for Adolph Bolm, who not only choreographed but also danced the role of Apollo, he was really writing for Serge Lifar, who was to dance Apollo at the Paris premiere. Stravinsky made a special effort to compose “simple music for Lifar to do flourishes.” With only a four-dancer allowance and just a string orchestra, Stravinsky was able to write the pure, simple score he craved and apply it magnificently to the Greek theme. His music was not immediately appreciated by those who heard it though. Hans Kindler, conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra, was so put off by Stravinsky’s dissonances that he “replaced them with blander harmonies” when he conducted the premiere at the Library of Congress. Stravinsky received a multitude of negative reviews from Prokofiev who called Apollo “uninteresting” and “creatively feeble” as well as ballet composer Boris Asaf’yev who claimed Stravinsky was attempting to “make new cloth out of old thread.” There was additional criticism by those who attended the Apollo premiere, hoping to be shocked as they were by the virgin sacrificing in Rite of Spring and leaving disappointed at such a peaceful plot. As with all new genres in the history of music, people are resistant to change and it inevitably takes time for a novel idea to be met with acceptance and

He remained a clerk for three years. He hated his job but he worked feverishly at it for he worked hard at every task he was given. He continued to be drawn into the music world and he took piano and theory lessons. Finally, in 1862, he quit his job and devoted the rest of his life to music which he began by entering the St. Petersburg Conservatory. He graduated with a silver medal in 1865. After graduation he was unsure of what to do until 1866 when Nicholas Rubenstein offered him the job of professor of harmony at the newly formed Moscow Conservatory. It was here that he wrote his first serious works which included AA Festival Overture on the Danish National Hymn,@ his First Symphony in G AWinter Daydreams,@ and his first opera AThe Voyevode.@ Showing his desire for perfection he tore up the opera because he was dissatisfied with it and it wasn=t until 1949 that it was revived.5

The reason why I have chosen to write about The Firebird is because it was Stravinsky’s first ballet and a milestone in modernist culture. Because of its modernist attributes, The Firebird became very famous within ballet circles.

Shostakovich was born in St. Petersburg, Russia on September 12, 1906. He was a very talented young man and entered the Petrograd Conservatory, a famous music school, at the age of thirteen (McBurney). In his youth, he created three ballets and two famous operas. He produced The Nose (1928) and Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District (1932), both were satirical operas. One of his first works, and one of the most famous, was Symphony

Beethoven's talents were discovered at an early age, and he was sent to Vienna to study under different teachers including Mozart and Hayden. There, Beethoven quickly adopted a reputation of a great piano player, a child prodigy. He gave his first public performance at the age of eight and published his first

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, the Viatka District in Russia on May 7, 1840 to a Russian miner and a mother of French origin. During his early life, Tchaikovsky did receive some musical training from a French governess in the form of piano lessons, but the training did not continue. As a young child, Tchaikovsky's family moved to St. Petersburg because

“The Rite of Spring” (Le Sacre du Printemps) Part I: The Adoration of the Earth by Igor Stravinsky was written was written in 1913 for the Paris dance troupe, the Ballets Russes company; the productions of Serge Diaghilev. The ballet was considered controversial and caused a small riot during the performance between the two groups; supporters and detractors.

At 1889, he attended the Paris International Exposition, where he discovered the wondrous colours of Asian music that picked up his interest. He was also fascinated by the pieces composed by the Russian composers Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Alexander Borodin, therefore he was lured in to the folk music of Russia soon after.

'It seems to me, my dear friend, that the music of this ballet will be one of my best creations. The subject is so poetic, so grateful for music, that 1 have worked on it with enthusiasm and written it with the warmth and enthusiasm upon which the worth of a composition always depends." - Tchaikovsky, to Nadia von Meck.