Which Composer Fused Russian Orthodox Rituals with Folk Music and Gregorian Ch
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Which Composer Fused Russian Orthodox Rituals with Folk Music and Gregorian Chants?
We take a look at the life and work of Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, who often blended traditional Russian music with more modern styles.
Igor Stravinsky
Stravinsky was a 20th-century composer who is considered one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. He is known for his innovative and avant-garde style, which often integrated different styles and genres of music.
Life
Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely considered one of the most important and influential composers of the 20th century. Stravinsky’s compositional career was notable for its stylistic diversity. He first achieved international fame with threeBallets commissioned by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev and first performed in Paris by Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes: The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911), and The Rite of Spring(1913). The Rite, a ground-breaking work that caused riots at its premiere, transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythm and meter. His “Russian phase” which includes works such as Renard (1916), The Soldier’s Tale (1918), pulcinella (1920) and Les Noces (1923), was followed in the 1920s by a period in which he turned to neoclassicism.
Major Works
Igor Stravinsky was one of the most innovative and influential composers of the 20th century. He is best known for his ballets The Firebird (1910), Petrushka (1911) and The Rite of Spring (1913). These works blended Russian Orthodox rituals with folk music and Gregorian chants, and their premiere performances caused a sensation, with audiences rioting in the streets.
Stravinsky’s other major works include the opera The Rake’s Progress (1951), the orchestral pieces Fireworks (1908) and The Soldier’s Tale (1918), and the ballets Pulcinella (1920) and Apollo (1928). He also wrote a great deal of chamber music, including the piano sonata Serenata in A (1920) and the string quartet Three Pieces (1914).
Sergei Prokofiev
Sergei Prokofiev was a Russian composer who fuse Russian Orthodox rituals with folk music and Gregorian chants. He also used a variety of other musical styles in his compositions. Prokofiev was born in 1891 and died in 1953.
Life
Sergei Prokofiev was born on April 23, 1891, in the Ukrainian city of Sontsovka, in the Russian Empire. His father, a respected landowner and master of several estates, was also an amateur artist, writer, and music lover. His mother, Maria Grigoryevna Prokofieva (nee Zhitkova), came from a musical family; her cousins included Aleksandr Glazunov and Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov. From his earliest years Prokofiev was attracted to music and showed talent in piano playing.
Major Works
Sergei Prokofiev is perhaps best known for hisopera War and Peace and theKorobeiniki symphony, which was used as the music for the video gameTetris. Other well-known works by Prokofiev include his first symphony, which he completed when he was just 19 years old, as well as hisballets Romeo and Juliet,The Cinderella, andThe Sleeping Beauty.
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich was a Russian composer who was born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1906. His father, who was a pianist and music professor, taught him music from an early age. Shostakovich was a prodigy and composed his first piano piece when he was just 9 years old. He went on to study at the Petrograd Conservatory where he graduated in 1924.
Life
Dmitri Shostakovich was a Russian composer of the Soviet period. He is widely regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Soviet chief of staff Mikhail Tukhachevsky, but later had a complex and difficult relationship with the government. Nevertheless, he received accolades and state awards and served in the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR and the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
Major Works
Dmitri Shostakovich’s major works include fifteen symphonies, fifteen string quartets, a piano trio, two piano sonatas, an opera, numerous other chamber works, and a substantial body of film music. Among his best-known nonsymphonic works are the satirical opera The Nose (1930), the Piano Concerto No. 2 (1931), the “Violin Concerto No. 1” (1947), the “Cello Concerto No. 1” (1959), and Babi Yar, his Symphony No. 13 (1962) setting Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s poem about the Holocaust in Ukraine.
