On 17 June 1882, in a town near Saint Petersburg, Igor Stravinsky was born — a composer who would go on to redefine the boundaries of modern music.
Best known for his groundbreaking ballets The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring (1913), Stravinsky became a central figure in 20th-century composition. His work blended tradition and dissonance, structure and chaos, with a rhythmic complexity and harmonic daring that shocked audiences and critics alike.
A riot at the ballet
Stravinsky’s most infamous debut came with The Rite of Spring– a ballet inspired by pagan sacrifice. When it premiered in Paris in 1913, its jarring chords and frenetic choreography caused a riot in the theatre. Furniture was thrown, fights broke out, and police were called. Stravinsky fled backstage in fury, convinced the performance had failed. Instead, history was being made.
The riot became a symbol of how radically he had broken with tradition- and how deeply he had tapped into something primal and new.
A composer without borders
Stravinsky’s career spanned continents. He lived and worked in Russia, France, Switzerland, and the United States, eventually becoming a naturalised American citizen in 1945. His style shifted from Russian folk influences to neoclassicism, then to twelve-tone serialism, always evolving, always provocative.
He collaborated with great artists of his time- including Sergei Diaghilev, Pablo Picasso, and George Balanchine- making his name synonymous not just with music, but with the wider modernist movement in art and performance.
A legacy still felt today
Stravinsky died in 1971, but his influence echoes across classical, jazz, film, and even pop music. Composers from John Williams to Philip Glass, and artists from David Bowie to Radiohead, have cited him as a transformative figure.
More than a century after his birth, Stravinsky remains a symbol of innovation- of how boldness in the arts can provoke, scandalise, and ultimately reshape the world.
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