Shostakovich: Eight British and American Folk Songs (Sans Op)
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  • Shostakovich: Eight British and American Folk Songs (Sans Op)
  • Shostakovich: Eight British and American Folk Songs (Sans Op)
  • Shostakovich: Eight British and American Folk Songs (Sans Op)
  • Shostakovich: Eight British and American Folk Songs (Sans Op)

Shostakovich: Eight British and American Folk Songs (Sans Op)

Catalogue No: BH12230
ArrangementVoice and Orchestra
Product FormatSheet Music
£94.50
Typically dispatched in 5-7 working days

The score of Eight British and American Folk Songs Instrumented by Dmitri Shostakovich is being published for the first time.
 
The publication is based on the author's manuscript kept in the Glinka State Central Museum of Musical Culture (GSCMMC, rec. gr. 32, f. 96). 
  The editors also took into account the text of the score mimeographed by the USSR Muzfond, as well as the hand-written copies of the score kept at DSCH Publishers Hiring Department.
 

The scores of the songs were written on separate sheets that are arranged in the author's manuscript in the order they were subsequently registered in the mentioned mimeographed version of Muzfond. The songs are numbered in the author's manuscript in pencil by an unknown hand. This numeration indicated the order the songs were performed at the premiere: it was precisely in the program of the Concert of British Music held at the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow on 25 May 1943.
 

The inscriptions before the music of each instrumentation designating the name of the song, its national affiliation, the author of the text, if known, the author of the translation, and so on were done by an unknown hand or are missing altogether in the author's manuscript.
 

In all of the songs, apart from the last, there is neither an English nor Russian text.

In No. 8, the Russian text has been inserted into the vocal part, but there is no English text there either.
 
The absence of texts in the author's manuscript of the first seven songs shows without a doubt that Samuel Bolotin and Tatyana Sikorskaya did the translations after Shostakovich had completed his work. This was precisely why the composer did not include any text underlay in the score in the vocal part. The likelihood of this presumption is also confirmed by the fact that in several pieces the demand for equirhythmic translations is not observed (more on this in the comments to each individual song).

  We do not know which sheet music publications in particular Shostakovich used. This made it much more difficult to find the original English texts.
 

Derek Hulme identified all eight parts of Shostakovich's score with the English originals. He also indicated the authors of some of the texts:

No. 1. The Sailor’s Bride — “Blow the Wind Southerly” (author, William Julius Mickle).
No. 2. John Anderson, my Jo (author, Robert Burns).
No. 3. Billy Boy (Northumbrian capstan shanty).
No. 4. Oh, the Oak and the Ash (English air).
No. 5. Servants of King Arthur (version of English folk song “Three Sons of Rogues”).
No. 6. Comin’ thro’ the Rye (author, Robert Burns).
No. 7. Spring Round Dance — “Come Lasses and Lads”.
No. 8. When Johnny Comes Marching Home (author, Patrick Sarsfield Gilmore).
 
We used the authoritative anthology The Oxford Song Book (OSB) when looking for the actual texts. Elena Ivanova, Thomas Sanderling, Alison Yermolova, and Alla Varavitskaya assisted in looking for and selecting the optimal versions of the texts.
 
Repetitions of the music have been inserted in full instead of reprise signs to make use of this edition easier. The problem arising when performing the songs in English because of the difference in number of couplets in the Russian texts and the lengthier English originals is easily resolved by increasing the number of repetitions.
ISMN9790060122309 (M060122309)
DSCH
BH12230