- Date: 1902 -1968
- Composer: Igor Stravinsky
- Period: Modern (1910-1949)
Review
Stravinsky's songs fall into two groups: the art songs, settings of poetry, and what might be called the non-art songs -- settings of children's texts, Russian folk texts, and nonsense texts. Most of his songs are from his two earliest periods: the art songs from the period of his apprenticeship with Rimsky-Korsakov (1904) through the composition of Le sacre du printemps (1913), and the non-art songs from his Russian nationalist period, from Le sacre du printemps through Les noces (1921).Stravinsky's earliest vocal work to survive is his setting of Pushkin's poem Storm Cloud for voice and piano, dated January 25, 1902, the winter before he became Rimsky's private composition student. How the Mushrooms Prepared for War, for bass voice and piano, was written in 1904 for Rimsky's weekly gatherings of his composition students. Stravinsky's first published and publicly performed songs were the suite Faune et bergère (Faun and Shepherdess). Written in 1906, premiered in 1907, and published in 1908 as his Opus 2, Faune et Bergère was described by its composer as "Wagner in places, like Tchaikovsky's Romeo et Juliet in other places (but never like Rimsky-Korsakov)."
Stravinsky's next four sets of art songs were the Two Melodies of Gorodetzky (1907 - 1908), the Two Poems by Verlaine (1910), the Two Poems of Balmont (1911), and the three Japanese Lyrics (1912 - 1913). The Gorodetzky songs for mezzo soprano and piano were described by Rimsky as "full of mist and fog, but meager in content of ideas." The Verlaine songs for baritone and piano (orchestrated in 1951) were Stravinsky's first French settings, and were more in the style of Debussy and Ravel than Rimsky. The Balmont songs for high voice and piano (orchestrated in 1954) were in the whole tone and octatonic style of Petrushka. The slight Japanese Lyrics for soprano and piano (set simultaneously for soprano and chamber ensemble) approach the atonality of Le sacre.
After Le sacre, Stravinsky began the series of non-art song settings of his Russian period with the Three Little Songs ("Recollections of my Childhood"), for voice and piano, of 1912 - 1913. These songs for his children were followed by the Pribaoutki (Pleasant Songs) for voice and eight instruments of 1914, the Cat's Cradle Songs for alto and three clarinets of 1915 - 1916, and the Three Tales for Children for voice and piano, composed between 1915 and 1917. At the same time, Stravinsky wrote the Four Russian Peasant Songs for unaccompanied female chorus of 1914 - 1917 (re-set in 1954 for equal voices and four horns), and the Four Russian Songs for voice and piano of 1918 - 1919 (two of which were arranged as two of the Four Songs of 1953 - 1954). All were relatively simple and direct settings of Russian folk texts.
Stravinsky returned to song composition only twice more in his career. The Three Songs from William Shakespeare for mezzo soprano, flute, clarinet, and viola, of 1953, blended tonal and serial compositional techniques, and The Owl and the Pussycat for voice and piano from 1966, was a "musical sigh of relief" after the hard work of the Requiem Canticles, which was his last completed original composition. ~ All Music Guide
