Portal:The arts/Featured article/June, 2006

Igor Stravinsky was a Russian-born composer of modern classical music. He composed in the primitivist, neo-classical and serialist styles, but he is best known for three works from his earlier, Russian period: Le sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring), Petrushka and L'Oiseau de feu (The Firebird). For some, these daring and innovative ballets practically reinvented the genre. Stravinsky also wrote in a broad spectrum of ensemble combinations and classical forms. His oeuvre included everything from symphonies to piano miniatures.

Stravinsky also achieved fame as a pianist and conductor, often at the premières of his own works. He was also a writer. With the help of Alexis Roland-Manuel, Stravinsky composed a theoretical work entitled Poetics of Music. In it, he famously claimed that music was incapable of "expressing anything but itself". Robert Craft transcribed several interviews with the composer, which were published as Conversations with Stravinsky.

A quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian, Stravinsky was one of the most influential composers and artists of 20th century music, both in the West and in his native land. He was named by Time magazine as one of the most influential people of the century.