Stavinsky's Psalms and Stories

CWU Performing Arts Series Two of Igor Stravinsky's acclaimed masterpieces form the basis for this program. L'histoire du soldat (A Soldier's Tale), Stravinsky's surreal response to the misery of World War I, is a theater piece that blends narration, dance, music and characters in changing disguises to tell the story of an ordinary solider who loses his soul to the devil, trading his fiddle for a book that predicts the future. This work will be presented fully staged and will feature the music department faculty of CWU and guest artists. The second, Symphony of Psalms for chorus and orchestra, is one of Stravinsky's best-known and most beautiful works. It was commissioned by the Boston Symphony in celebration of its fiftieth anniversary and first performed in 1930. A relatively short work, written in three movements that use the Latin texts from Psalms 38, 39, and 150, it is, as Stravinsky himself said, a ''...singing of the Psalms that I am symphonizing.''