Русская музыка

Russian Music

B2 · Upper Intermediate · non-fiction · 10 scenes · Premium story

An upper-intermediate non-fiction piece on Russian classical music. Eight centuries of village song and unaccompanied church chant, then one landowner's opera in 1836 and an entire tradition inside sixty years, built in large part by five composers who were a chemist, a naval officer, a civil servant and a military engineer by day. A Paris premiere that ended in a brawl, and a symphony played in besieged Leningrad on the day the city was supposed to have fallen.

Read Русская музыка in Russian

Characters

Mikhail Glinka (Михаил Глинка) — The founder
Alexander Borodin (Александр Бородин) — Chemist and composer
Pyotr Tchaikovsky (Пётр Чайковский) — The professional
Dmitri Shostakovich (Дмитрий Шостакович) — The one who stayed
Karl Eliasberg (Карл Элиасберг) — The conductor in Leningrad

Vocabulary from this story

музыка — music
нота — musical note
музыкант — musician
дирижёр — conductor
партитура — score
песня — song
голос — voice
хор — choir
церковь — church
инструмент — instrument
опера — opera
основатель — founder