Le chant du rossignol

Le chant du rossignol, commonly referred to as The Song of the Nightingale, is a symphonic poem written by Igor Stravinsky in 1917. The score is adapted from his earlier work, Le rossignol (The Nightingale), an opera from 1914. The opera, based on Hans Christian Andersen's tale The Nightingale, is set in three acts, told from the point of view of a Chinese fisherman. In the orchestral version, Stravinsky mostly uses music from acts two and three.

The opera, the first act written in 1908 and the later two in 1913-14, was the first ever to be written by Stravinsky. The delay between writing the first and the latter acts was caused by his commissions to write The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring for impresario Sergei Diaghilev's Ballets Russes. After this lapse of time, during which Stravinsky established himself as a ballet composer, he was unsure of returning to Le rossignol, and although he did finish it, he chose to also create a purely symphonic version, Le chant du rossignol.

Says Stravinsky in his autobiography, “I reached the conclusion—very regretfully, since I was the author of many works for the theatre—that a perfect rendering can be achieved only in the concert hall, because the stage presents a combination of several elements upon which the music has often to depend, so that it cannot rely upon the exclusive consideration which it receives at a concert. I was confirmed in this view when two months later, under the direction of ... Ansermet, Le Chant du Rossignol was given as a ballet by Diaghilev at the Paris Opera.”

Le chant du rossignol's symphonic debut, conducted by Ernest Ansermet at the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, was met with criticism, much like that of The Rite of Spring. Stravinsky’s nontraditional use of dissonance and instruments was unwelcome in later performances of the piece as well. It is possibly due to this public reaction that he then let Diaghilev turn it into a ballet.

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