NAQT You Gotta Know: Music — Flashcards

(1882 - 1971) He studied under Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and completed two grand ballets for Sergei Diaghilev: The Firebird and Petrushka. His Paris premiere of The Rite of Spring (1913), however, is what inaugurated music's Modern era. A pagan story featuring polytonal music, The Rite of Spring shocked the audience so much that riots ensued, leading a stunned Stravinsky to pursue rational, 'neoclassical' music, such as his Symphony of Psalms. In 1940 he moved to Hollywood, where he composed his one full-length opera, The Rake's Progress, with libretto by W. H. Auden. Late in life, he adopted the serialist, twelve-tone style of Anton Webern, producing the abstract ballet Agon (1957).