Fireworks and Song of the Nightingale in Full Score

by Igor Stravinsky

An early, brilliant orchestral piece written in 1908, Fireworks was one of the works that brought the young Stravinsky to the attention of ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev.  Song of the Nightingale (based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Emperor and the Nightingale ) is a symphonic poem for orchestra, "the last of the richly scored and 'spectacular' stage works of [Stravinsky's] first period." — Grove's Dictionary.

128 pages, Paperback

First published November 2, 2000

About the author

Igor Fyodorovich Stravinsky was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. He is widely acknowledged as one of the most important and influential composers of 20th century music.

He was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the century. He became a naturalized US citizen in 1946. In addition to the recognition he received for his compositions, he also achieved fame as a pianist and a conductor, often at the premieres of his works.

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."