Igor Stravinsky was the son of the principal basso of St Petersburg's famed imperial opera house, the Mariinsky. Although he took piano lessons from the age of nine his serious studies of composition began only when he was a 20-year-old law student. Through a friend and fellow student, the son of Rimsky-Korsakov, he met the famous composer, who became his principal teacher and whose sumptuously orchestrated music influenced his own early works. In 1910 Stravinsky had his first success with L'oiseau de feu (The Firebird), a score commissioned for the Russian Ballet in Paris by the impresario Sergei Diaghilev; the work was striking for the originality of its rhythm, harmony and instrumentation. (Debussy attended the premiere, and afterwards Stravinsky met him for the first time.)

Although L'oiseau de feu launched Stravinsky's international career, it also marked the beginning of his lifelong exile from Russia - for professional reasons at first, and later because of the First World War and the consequent installation of the Bolshevik regime. He lived in France until 1914, then in Switzerland until 1920, in France again until 1939 (he was granted French citizenship in 1934), and finally in the United States, of which he became a citizen in 1945). The 1911 premiere in Paris of Petrouchka, another ballet commissioned by Diaghilev, strengthened Stravinsky's reputation, but it was the revolutionary Le sacre du printemps (Rite of Spring) - the third of his Russian Ballet scores, first performed in 1913 - that decisively changed the course of music history. These works were followed by an amazingly varied series of masterpieces that embrace virtually all the important musical genres and idioms of the first half of this century: L'histoire du soldat (The Soldier's Tale) for chamber ensemble and narrator (1918); Les noces (The Wedding) a ballet scored for four pianos and percussion (1923); the opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex (1927); the ballet Apollon musagte (Apollo) (1928); the choral-orchestral Symphonie de psaumes (Symphony of Psalms) (1930); the "Dumbarton Oaks" Concerto (1938), for chamber ensemble; the Symphony in C (1940); the Symphony in Three Movements (1945); and the culminating work of his long neoclassical period, the opera The Rake's Progress (1951).

In the 1950s and '60s Stravinsky adopted Schoenberg's 12-tone technique, which he had formerly opposed, and he produced some of the greatest works ever written in this idiom: the Canticum Sacrum (1955) and Threni (1958) for solo voices, chorus and orchestra; the ballet Agon (1957); Monumentum pro Gesualdo (1960), three madrigals for winds and strings; and the Requiem Canticles (1966) - the last fruits of his endless curiosity and his passion for invention. He often appeared as a performer, both at the keyboard and conducting his own works, and during his later years he and his musical assistant, Robert Craft, published books of conversations that demonstrate Stravinsky's acerbic wit and wide-ranging interests. His 33-year marriage to his cousin, Katerina Nossenko, produced four children; after Katerina's death from tuberculosis, in 1939, he married his longtime companion, Vera de Bosset, and they remained together until his death at the age of nearly 89.

Harvey Sachs

Biographical notes (c) 1996, reprinted by permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg

A selection of major works:

Orchestral: Symphony in C, Symphony in Three Movements, Le chant du rossignol (The Song of the Nightingale), Circus Polka, Concerto in D, Concertino, Divertimento (from "Le baiser de la f}.e), Monumentum pro Gesualdo, Scherzo Æ. la russe, Tango, Capriccio (piano and orchestra), Movements (piano and orchestra) Violin Concerto.

Chamber: Octet, Concertino (string quartet), Concerto for 2 Pianos, Petrouchka (version for piano duet), Le sacre du printemps (version for piano duet), Sonata for 2 Pianos, Duo concertant (violin and piano), Fanfare for a New Theatre (2 trumpets), Instrumental solo: Piano-Rag Music, 3 Pieces for solo clarinet, 2 Piano Sonatas, Petrouchka (3 Movements),

Vocal: Abraham and Isaac (sacred ballad), Elegy for JFK, Songs.

Choral: Babel (cantata), Cantata on Old English Texts, Canticum sacrum, Mass, Requiem canticles, Le roi des }.toiles, Symphonie de psaumes.

Stage works:

Ballets: Agon, Apollon musagte, Le baiser de la f}.e, Jeu de cartes, L'oiseau de feu, Orpheus, Petrouchka, Pulcinella, Le sacre du printemps.

Operas: Mavra, Oedipus Rex, The Rake's Progress

Other: The Flood, L'histoire du soldat, Les noces.