More Fascinating Folk Music: Sutartinės of Lithuania

Well, now I have Lithuania to add to the list of countries whose folk music to be obsessed with. In a discussion with my teaching colleague Arkadi Serper about what folk music traditions might have influenced Stravinsky’s ear in his youth, I brought up the amazing vocal music of the Caucasus region, particularly Georgian table songs.  Arkadi agreed, and then went on to alert me to several others from within Russia and the former Soviet Union, including Lithuanian sutartinės.

My “The Rite of Spring” Used Book Store Find

OK, this may not be on par with finding the score of an unknown Beethoven symphony sewn into the lining of an 18th-Century Tyrolian overcoat, but I think this is kind of cool.

I have on my shelf what seems to be an original copy of the first full score of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring, published in 1921 by Édition Russe de Musique.  (Prior to that, only the four-hand piano version had been published.)  I found it around 1990 in a Budapest antikvárium, a used book store.