Four Russian Songs - for voice and piano
Written by Igor Stravinsky in 1918


Thanks to Thomas Van Dun for the preparation of this score video. [ Ссылка ]


'Stravinsky composed his Four Russian Songs for voice and piano for Mme. Maja de Strozzi-Pecic, a Croat singer with a beautiful soprano voice whom Stravinsky met early in the winter of 1919. In his Chronicle of My Life, Stravinsky writes, "She asked me to write something for her, and I composed Four Russian Songs on folk poems which Ramuz [C.F. Ramuz, the librettist of L'histoire du soldat] translated for me." According to the manuscript, however, the first of the songs, "Canard" (The Drake), was written in on December 28, 1918, while the second, "Chanson pour compter" (Counting Song), and fourth, "Chant dissident" (Song of the Sectarian), were composed in March 1919, and the third, "Le Moineau est assis" (Dish-Divination Song), was composed on October 23, 1919. The Four Russian Songs indeed sound like they were composed over ten months. "Canard" could be one of the Three Tales for Children of 1916 - 1917. "Chanson pour compter" is a pribaoutka, a children's nonsense song, like the Pribaoutki of 1914. And both "Le moineau est assis" and "Chant dissident" might have originally been intended to be songs from the a cappella Russian Peasant Songs called "Saucers" from 1914 - 1917. Written during Stravinsky's years of involuntary exile from Russia, three of the Four Russian Songs are metrically and rhythmically complex but harmonically and melodically fundamentally diatonic. The final song, however, is much more adventurous melodically, with a more expressively arched melodic line, as befits its more extraordinary religious orientation. In 1953 and 1954, Stravinsky took the first and the last of the Four Russian Songs and set them as the first and second of his Four Songs for soprano, flute, harp, and guitar.' - James Leonard

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