Igor Fedorovich Stravinsky is one of the most famous composers in the culture of the 20th century, an avant-garde musician, “a man of a thousand and one style,” as his contemporaries called him. Despite all his experiments, one thing in the composer's work has always remained unchanged - Russian traditions.
Biography
The future musician was born in the small town of the Russian Empire Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov) in June 1882 in the family of an opera singer and pianist. Famous creative people were close friends of the parents: Rimsky-Korsakov, Dostoevsky, Cui. All the flowers of the cultural capital of Russia, St. Petersburg, gathered in the Stravinsky house.
Of course, the atmosphere of endless creative music-making, improvisation, readings, discussions and philosophical conversations, in which the future genius grew up, left a serious mark on Igor's soul. However, his parents insisted that he go to law university.
Igor studied carelessly and made every effort to study music with Rimsky-Korsakov, who gave him the basics of orchestration, at the same time several small pieces were written.
Musical career
The suite “Faun and Shepherdess” was heard by the then famous impresario Sergei Diaghilev, who immediately suggested that the young composer try to write a ballet for his theater and take part in his Parisian “Russian Seasons”. Diaghilev dreamed of something new, avant-garde, fresh for his new ballet The Firebird, and Stravinsky fully justified his hopes.
As a result, in three years Diaghilev's group staged three ballets created by Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky. These performances brought him worldwide fame, and the last, "The Rite of Spring", caused an unprecedented excitement after the premiere, at which a grandiose scandal erupted over "barbaric music".
In 1911, Stravinsky met the great reformer of classical music, Eric Satie, who influenced the later work of the Russian composer. On the eve of the First World War, Igor Fedorovich, along with his family, leaves for Shevizaria, from where he is no longer destined to return to Russia. Because of the revolution, the Stravinsky remained in Europe, moving to Paris. In 1915 he made his debut as a conductor, and in 1920 as a pianist, performing his own works.
The next 20 years of creativity of the genius become a real shock for the world music community - he boldly experiments with various styles, mixing antiquity with baroque, classicism with ethnic sketches, and in 1934 he became a citizen of France and published his autobiographical book Chronicles of My Life.
Personal life and death
The brilliant composer married in 1906 to his cousin Ekaterina Nosenko. The family had four children, daughter Lyudmila (future wife of the poet Mandelstam), sons Fyodor, who became an artist, and Svyatoslav, who chose the path of his father - a career as a composer. A daughter, Milena, was born in Switzerland. And in 1938-39, Igor lost three close people at once: mother, wife and daughter Lyudmila.
With the outbreak of World War II, he falls into a deep depression, from which Vera Sudeikina, who was his mistress and until the death of his wife, helped him to get out. Igor moves to the USA, in 1040 he registers his marriage with Vera and until the composer's death they are together. In 1971, the "destroyer of musical stereotypes" died due to heart disease. Vera survived him for 11 years and is buried nearby in a small cemetery in Venice.
