Igor Stravinsky Essentials

Many are the punk rockers who would flatter themselves that their music was potent enough to cause a riot. Russian revolutionary Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring achieved that very thing by challenging an unwary Parisian audience to consider musical rhythm in an entirely new way. His staccato repetitions, daring stabs and sudden melodic melts have proven to be enormously influential over the development of 20th-century music, and his later experiments with serial composition continued to innovate and challenge even in an era of equally stern modernism.