Igor Stravinsky - composer

Igor Stravinsky (b. 17 June 1882, Oranienbaum, Russia – d. 6 April 1971, New York, NY) was a Russian composer and conductor with French and U.S. citizenship. He is widely considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century and a pivotal figure in modernist music.

Born into a musical family in Oranienbaum, Russia, near Saint Petersburg, Stravinsky grew up taking piano and music theory lessons. While studying law at the University of Saint Petersburg, he met Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and studied music under him until the latter's death in 1908. Soon after, Stravinsky met impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who commissioned him to write three ballets for the Ballets Russes's Paris seasons: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913), the last of which caused a near-riot at the premiere due to its avant-garde nature and later changed the way composers understood rhythmic structure.

Stravinsky's career is often divided into three main periods: his Russian period (1913–1920), his neoclassical period (1920–1951), and his serial period (1954–1968). During his Russian period, Stravinsky was heavily influenced by Russian styles and folklore. Works such as Renard (1916) and Les noces (1923) drew upon Russian folk poetry, while compositions like L'Histoire du soldat (1918) integrated these folk elements with popular musical forms, including the tango, waltz, ragtime, and chorale. His neoclassical period exhibited themes and techniques from the classical period, like the use of the sonata form in his Octet (1923) and use of Greek mythological themes in works including Apollon musagète (1927), Oedipus rex (1927), and Persephone (1935). In his serial period, Stravinsky turned towards compositional techniques from the Second Viennese School like Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique. In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954) was the first of his compositions to be fully based on the technique, and Canticum Sacrum (1956) was his first to be based on a tone row. Stravinsky's last major work was the Requiem Canticles (1966), which was performed at his funeral.

The Symphonies of Wind Instruments (French title: Symphonies d'instruments à vent) is a concert work written in 1920, for an ensemble of woodwind and brass instruments. The piece is in one movement, lasting about 9 minutes. It is dedicated to the memory of Claude Debussy, who died in 1918, and was premiered in London on 10 June 1921, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky.

Serenade in A (Serenade en La) is a work for solo piano by Russian composer Igor Stravinsky. Completed on September 9, 1925, in Vienna and published by Boosey & Hawkes, it resulted from his signing his first gramophone recording contract, for Brunswick, and was written so that each movement could fit on one side of a 78 rpm record. The dedicatee was Stravinsky's wife Yekaterina.