Igor Stravinsky
Wednesday, 17 June 2009
Igor Stravinsky was born on this day, in 1882.
One of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of the century, he was a composer of great stylistic diversity, first gaining international acclaim with his three ballet commissions (The Firebird, Petrushka and The Rite of Spring). He also published a number of books throughout his career, almost always with the aid of a collaborator, sometimes uncredited. In his 1936 autobiography, Chronicles of My Life, written with the help of Walter Nouvel, Stravinsky included his infamous statement that “music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all.” And, of course, he was also rumoured to have had an affair with the great Coco Chanel.
Information sourced from Wikipedia.