Stravinsky

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· Symphony in Three Movements (1945)
· Mass (1944-48)
· Orpheus (1947)
· Rakes Progress (1950)
Last Period -- starting after World War II
· Several works were greatly influenced by Renaissance music. In the mid-to-late fifties Stravinsky became increasingly interested in twelve-tone music.



Interest in serial techniques
· In Memoriam Dylan Thomas (1954)
· Canticum Sacrum (1956)
· Agon (1953-57) ballet
· Threni (1958) -- 3 Lamentations of Jeremiah for large orchestra
· Movements for Piano and Orchestra (1959)
· Monument for Gesualdo (1960)
· A Sermon, A Narrative and A Prayer (1960-61)
· The Dove Descending (1961) Unaccompanied Voices -- Anthem on T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets
· The Flood (1961-62) dance-drama for television
· Fanfare for Two Trumpets (1964)
· Variations for Orchestra (1964)
· Requiem Canticles (1966)
In His Own Words
· "I consider that music is by its very nature essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, a state of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, and the like. Expression has never been an inherent property of music. This is by no means the purpose of its existence."
· "Music to me is a power which justifies things."
The son of a leading bass at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg, he studied with Rimsky-Korsakov, who was an influence on his early music, though so were Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Glazunov and Debussy and Dukas. This colorful mixture of sources lies behind The Firebird commissioned by Dyagilev for his Ballets Russes. Stravinsky went with the company to Paris in 1910 and spent much of his time in France from then onwards, continuing his association with Dyagilev in Petrushka and The Rite of Spring.
These scores show an extraordinary development. Both use folk tunes, but not in any symphonic manner: Stravinsky's forms are additive rather than symphonic, created from placing blocks of material to...