Histoire du Soldat [The Soldier's Tale] [Kirchmeyer 29, White 41], 1924

File — Box: 7, Folder: 1

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

Set of engraved proof sheets extensively annotated by the composer. [London]: J.W. Chester [PN J.W.C. 44], 1924.

Folio. Unbound as issued.

17, 16-58 pp. (59 pp. in total). With extensive annotations and corrections by the composer in red and black ink and pencil to virtually every page, both within the score and to margins, including significant notational changes, and additional annotations in blue crayon on tipped-in sheets and to verso of final leaf. "1st Proof" stamped to upper inner corner of first leaf.

With small rectangular overpaste to title in Stravinsky's hand: "Marche du Soldat ("Airs de Marche")".

With a note in Stravinsky's hand in blue crayon to verso of final leaf requesting another proof: "Une autre épreuve s.v.p. I Str. Paris 4/V/24." With occasional additional notes in red ink and pencil in another hand and initials (?M.E.) to lower outer corner of most leaves (presumably those of the editor or engraver).

With autograph identification in the hand of composer to upper wrapper in red crayon: "Soldat part. d'orch. Epreuves."

Dates

1924

Language of Materials

From the Collection: The materials are written in English, Russian, French, and Italian.

Conditions Governing Access

This material is open for research.

Stored onsite at the Woodson Research Center.

Biographical / Historical

The Soldier's Tale, first performed in Lausanne in 1918, is a work in two parts ‘to be read, played and danced’, to a French text by Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz based on a Russian tale. It is for three actors, female dancer, clarinet, bassoon, cornet, trombone, percussion, violin, and double bass. Stravinsky arranged a five-movement suite from it for violin, clarinet, and piano (1919) and an eight-movement one for the original instrumental ensemble (1920). The Oxford Companion to Music.

The composer spent the years 1914-1920 in exile in Switzerland. "[In Morges] Stravinsky became friendly with a group of Swiss-French writers and artists dedicated to a specifically Vaudois, locale-conscious art that would be, in Louis Lavanchy's words, ‘audaciously original and candidly unrefined’ (Essais critiques 1925–1935, Lausanne, 1939): a vision which, to some extent, reflected his own current ethnic preoccupations, though he may have been less interested in their politics, which were pro-French interventionist. Among these writers, the novelist C.F. Ramuz became a frequent guest at the Stravinsky house, the Villa Rogivue, and as Stravinsky's compositions on Russian texts began to emerge, he took on the task of translating them into French. This led naturally and logically to their collaboration on an original theatre piece, Histoire du soldat, a work which clearly reflects the politicized local aspirations of the Vaudois movement." Stephen Walsh in Grove Music Online.