Scheherazade, Op. 35

• Rimsky-Korsakov composed his symphonic suite Scheherazade in 1888.¹

Movements

1. The Sea and Sinbad’s Ship 
2. The Legend of the Kalendar Prince 
3. The Young Prince and The Young Princess 
4. Festival at Baghdad. The Sea. Ship Breaks upon a Cliff Surmounted by a Bronze Horseman²

“All I desired was that the hearer, if he liked my piece as symphonic music, should carry away the impression that it is beyond a doubt an Oriental narrative of some numerous and varied fairy-tale wonders and not merely four pieces played one after the other and composed on the basis of themes common to all the four movements.”

From My Musical Life by Rimsky-Korsakov³

“Why then…does my suite bear the name, precisely, of Scheherazada? Because this name and the title The Arabian Nights connote in everybody’s mind the East and fairy-tale wonders; besides, certain details of the musical exposition hint at the fact that all of these are various tales of some one person (who happens to be Scheherazada) entertaining therewith her stern husband.”

From My Musical Life by Rimsky-Korsakov⁴

1. Marina Frolova-Walker, Mark Humphreys, Lyle Neff, Rita McAllister, Iosif Genrikhovich Rayskin, and Detlef Gojowy, “Rimsky-Korsakov family,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed April 2, 2021, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000052074.
2. “Scheherazade, Op.35 https://imslp.org/wiki/Scheherazade%2C_Op.35_(Rimsky-Korsakov%2C_Nikolay).
3. Quoted in Nasser Al-Taee, “The Oriental Tale in Rimsky-Korsakov’s Sheherazade,” in The Arabian Nights in Historical Context: Between East and West, ed. Saree Makdisi and Felicity Nussbaum (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 279.
4. Ibid.