Igor Stravinsky
Russia, 1908–1971
Russian composer. The Rite of Spring (1913) introduced a rhythmic complexity and dissonance that influenced concert music, jazz and later popular music, and he continued to change idiom across a long career.
MusicRoots documents 3 artists who influenced Igor Stravinsky and 18 artists Igor Stravinsky influenced in turn. Every connection cites a published source.
Who influenced Igor Stravinsky?
- Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov — Rimsky-Korsakov was Stravinsky's teacher — the art of orchestration passed directly from him.
- Claude Debussy — Debussy was the decisive influence on the harmonic language of early Stravinsky.
- Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky — Stravinsky was a lifelong admirer of Tchaikovsky from childhood ballet visits to the Mariinsky — his 1928 Le Baiser de la fée is built entirely on Tchaikovsky's music in loving tribute.
Which artists did Igor Stravinsky influence?
- Cecil Taylor — At the conservatory Taylor immersed himself in 20th-century composers, Stravinsky above all, whose rhythmic violence and dense harmony he carried into jazz.
- Paul Hindemith — Stravinsky's neoclassical turn and rhythmic edge are audible in Hindemith's early chamber music.
- Edgard Varèse — Stravinsky's rhythmic innovations in The Rite of Spring were a crucial influence on Varèse's percussive approach.
- Robert Fripp — The Rite of Spring, and the idea that a metre can be a weapon. Most of what King Crimson does with 5/4 and 7/8 starts here.
- Burt Bacharach — Stravinsky's rhythmic irregularity is audible in Bacharach's famously shifting meters and bar lengths.
- Astor Piazzolla — Stravinsky's rhythmic drive is part of the concert-music apparatus Piazzolla brought to bear on tango.
- Carlos Chávez — Stravinsky was the rhythmic and orchestral model that directly shaped Chávez's indigenista orchestration.
- Krzysztof Penderecki — Stravinsky's rhythmic violence and sonic daring were the acknowledged foundation of the young Polish avant-garde Penderecki led.
- Yes — For decades every Yes concert has opened with a tape of Stravinsky's Firebird finale — the band's declared classical banner.
- Aaron Copland — Stravinsky was the model Copland absorbed in Paris — rhythm, orchestration and neoclassical clarity, a debt he acknowledged all his life.
- Isao Tomita — Stravinsky was among the modern composers Tomita reimagined electronically, and the rhythmic bite carried into his own writing.
- Les Baxter — Baxter's exotica orchestration draws its rhythmic drive and 'primitive' colour from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring — the model behind Ritual of the Savage.
- Frank Zappa — Stravinsky's rhythmic and orchestral daring was among the modern-classical influences Zappa absorbed alongside R&B.
- Ennio Morricone — The modernism and rhythmic wit of Stravinsky was a key ingredient Morricone absorbed into his adventurous, genre-crossing scores.
- Goffredo Petrassi — Stravinsky's neoclassicism and rhythmic vitality were a decisive influence on Petrassi's rigorous modern style.
- Clare Fischer — Named among Fischer's classical sources.
- Carl Ruggles — Another of them.
- Mikael Tariverdiev — One of the contemporary composers whose technique and expressiveness Tariverdiev took as a model.