Dmitri Shostakovich

Six Poems by Marina Tsvetayeva

The Six Poems by Marina Tsvetayeva: Suite for Contralto and Piano (Russian: Шесть стихотворений
Марины Цветаевой: Сюита для контральто и фортепиано, romanized: Shest stikhotvoreniy Mariny
Tsvetayevoy: Syuita dlya kontralto i fortepiano),[1] Op. 143 is a song cycle by Dmitri Shostakovich. It
was composed in 1973 and originally scored for contralto and piano. In 1974, the composer
produced an arrangement for contralto and chamber orchestra which he designated as Op. 143a.

In the late 1960s, Dmitri Shostakovich developed an interest in setting Anna Akhmatova's
Requiem to music. However, when his student Boris Tishchenko made his own setting of
those verses, Shostakovich declined to further pursue his as he believed that doing so would
be seen as an encroachment into his student's work.[2]

A few years later, the interests of Shostakovich and Tishchenko crossed again. In 1970,
Shostakovich became acquainted with the poetry of Marina Tsvetayeva through Tishchenko's
Three Songs to Verses by Marina Tsvetaeva, which the latter had composed earlier that year.
Both music and poetry elicited Shostakovich's approval. He wrote to Tishchenko that he had
become very fond of the work and requested a copy of the score.[3] After receiving it, he wrote
to the younger composer that he was playing and singing the work every day.[4] Shostakovich
soon acquired a collection of Tsvetayeva's poetry, which became part of his daily reading.[3]
Sofia Khentova, Shostakovich's official biographer, speculated that Tsvetayeva's character
and outlook may have attracted the composer's attention.[5]

The next year, while working on the Fifteenth Symphony and notated among its sketches,
Shostakovich composed "Yelabuga Nail", an incomplete and unpublished setting for bass and
piano of a poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko about Tsvetayeva's suicide.