Stravinsky: Symphonie de Psaumes - Pater Noster - Ave Maria - Cantata

The Symphony of Psalms is Stravinsky´s most significant sacred work to predate the war. Sergei Koussevitzky, Stravinsky’s old friend, and from 1924 onwards conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, commissioned the piece to celebrate the orchestra’s fiftieth anniversary (1930).

On the title page of the manuscript, Igor Stravinsky wrote “composed to the glory of God” – in potentially significant or maybe simply intellectual imitation of the “soli deo gloria” of Johann Sebastian Bach, one of the composers whose work had just begun to attract Stravinsky’s attention.