Russian-born composer, pianist, and conductor Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was born June 17th; or June 5th, in terms of the Old Style dates, 1882, in Oranienbaum, a suburb of Saint Petersburg, the Russian imperial capital, and was brought up in Saint Petersburg. He died April 6th, 1971, in the JW Marriott Essex House; located at 160 Central Park South in New York City, New York, where he lived until his death in 1971 at the age of 88; due to heart failure. Stravinsky’s rise to fame came into focus in the early 1900s due to his compositional works for the Ballets Russes, which included the very controversial piece entitled The Rite of Spring. Before his rise to fame, Stravinsky was a pupil of Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov; who was a …show more content…
The piece I liked most was Stravinsky’s Serenade in A; which was completed on September 9th, 1925, in Vienna, Italy. This piece was composed as a result of Stravinsky signing his first recording contract with Brunswick Records and published by Boosey & Hawkes. I actually thought it was quite romantic that he dedicated to his wife, at first. It wasn’t until I found out that his wife was also his cousin Katherine "Katya" Gavrylivna Nosenko, and that he had an affair with; and ultimately married in 1940, a Russian-born American dancer and artist named Vera de Bosset Stravinsky. Honestly, I don’t really know how to feel about this; however, the piece itself was quite pleasurable. You could really feel the love that Stravinsky felt for his wife, as it traveled through each of the four movements. I found the overall tone and melody to be quite lively, as the tempo was constantly changing from fast to slow and the dynamics from loud to soft. It goes without saying, that this is definitely a romantic classical piece that will truly last throughout the ages; as it will forever unite lovers and couples