Igor Stravinsky

Born near Saint Petersburg, Igor Stravinsky studied privately with Rimsky-Korsakov rather than at a conservatoire, and his international career developed after Diaghilev commissioned The Firebird for the Ballets Russes; Petrushka and The Rite of Spring followed within three years. The Revolution kept him out of Russia. He lived in Switzerland and then France, and in the 1920s turned to the pared-back neoclassicism of Pulcinella, the Octet, Oedipus rex, the Symphony of Psalms and eventually The Rake's Progress, reworking older European forms. Settled in the United States from 1939 and working closely with Robert Craft, he adopted serial procedures, in Agon, Canticum Sacrum and the Requiem Canticles. He conducted and recorded his own music extensively. He died in New York in 1971 and is buried in Venice. With Robert Craft he also co-wrote the volume of conversations published as Dialogues.