stravinsky came from russia. he was inspired by russian culture. he wrote some music for a ballet called rite of spring. this music was very new. it had very irregular rhythms which the dancers found very difficult to dance to at first. it also used polytonality (being in more than one key at once). later on stravinsky was inspired by music from the 18th century. he used it, but made changes to it, adding dissonant notes and strange chords. this is called neoclassicism (“neo” means “new”). stravinsky's music seemed to many people to be the opposite of serialism, but in his last years stravinsky started to use serialism as well.