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Igor Stravinsky : Influences on him

Every person has influences in his life. These influences make one better and make us strive harder. Igor Stravinsky too had influences during his musical career. Not all of them were from other composers, a few of his influences were also a result of his family, the society and the time. Stravinsky came from a musical family. His father was a leading bass singer with the Imperial Opera in Saint Petersburg. So one can say that Stravinsky had music in his blood but he did not get really into music till his was nine when his parents enrolled him with a piano mistress. Yong Stravinsky quickly learnt the basics of the piano and also mastered the art of reading music. Since he could now read music, he took the next step forward, which was to improvise on the music of the composers of that time. Stravinsky absolutely loved to work on the music of others and also enhance it with this own variations (Stravinsky 5). It was this improvisational quality that helped Stravinsky reach greater heights in the coming years of his career.

As a student at the university in St. Petersburg, he spent eight terms studying law as per his parents’ wishes. It was during this time that he made the acquaintance of a

From 1920 to 1939 apart from spending time helping the Ballet Russes, Stravinsky took a great interest in recording his works on piano, and supervised the production of some of his earlier piano pieces. Rolling off the production line as well was several more chamber works by him, such as the Symphony for Wind Instruments, the Violin Concerto in D, and other works for Violin and Piano. Some of the works were specially composed for Dushkin, a violinist that he became really good friends with in 1931 (Griffiths 107). He spent most of the time on-tour. Hence there was very limited output for him as a composer, in comparison to Bach or Mozart. Stravinsky made sure that every piece of his was much more different from his previous piece.

young man named Vladimir. Vladimir was the son of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a famous Russian composer. Stravinsky was greatly awed by Rimsky-Korsakov and started to study under his tutorage (Griffiths 3). Rimsky-Korsakov realized very early on that Stravinsky had great potential within him. He was the one who insisted that he continue his theory lessons, and agreed to oversee his composition work in due course himself. Significantly, he advised him against entering the Conservatory, sensing that in such an environment the 20-year-old composer would merely be discouraged by his own lack of training (Stravinsky 15). During the early years of his career, Stravinsky often discussed his works with Rimsky-Korsakov and sought advise on his own ideas. Rimsky-Korsakov gave him instruction in sonata writing, and set him orchestration exercises based on his own opera. It was all this hard work that eventually led to one of Stravinsky’s first public performance of his first work, a Piano Sonata in F#, at Rimsky-Korsakov's house (Stravinsky 21).

In 1939 Stravinsky moved to the United States of America with his mistress Vera Sudeikina and settled in Hollywood in 1940. This was an obvious move for him since he had some wealthy admirers in the USA. Se

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