Stravinsky's long and productive musical life encompassed many different musical styles, each of which has been incredibly influential. His first important teacher was the Russian composer Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908). Stravinsky's earliest works with their exoticism and brilliant orchestral coloring reflect his teacher's style. This period culminated in the great ballet The Firebird (1910), with its shimmering atmosphere and oriental accents. But his second ballet, Petrushka, composed in the following year, is already markedly different. The melodies have a sharper edge, the harmonies are often pungent and the rhythms extremely complex and unpredictable. His third ballet, The Rite of Spring (1913), went even further, breaking almost every rule composers had followed for centuries. At the first performance, most of the public was so incensed that a demonstration almost stopped the show. Amazingly, the work still retains much of its overwhelming power.

After the First World War, Stravinsky's style abruptly changed. From the huge, violently-painted orchestral canvas of The Rite of Spring, he suddenly started writing cool, cleanly-etched music for small ensembles. In the brief Ragtime (1918), for example, Stravinsky created his own spiky, spicy take on the easy syncopations of this American popular style. Stravinsky continued this "neo-classical" phase until the early 1950s. He took whatever he could get his hands on as a model for his work, from popular styles such as the tango to Bach's Brandenburg Concertos (for his Dumbarton Oaks Concerto). Many younger composers followed in Stravinsky's neo-Classical footsteps.

Beginning in the mid-1950s, Stravinsky made another abrupt turn and took up the "twelve-tone" or "serial" technique that had been developed by Arnold Schönberg and his disciples. Although these late works are still rarely performed, Stravinsky's "conversion" to serialism led the way for many young composers of the '50s and '60s and made serialism the dominant style of the day.