Le roi des étoiles

Igor Stravinsky's cantata "Le roi des étoiles" was composed in 1911-12 to a text by the Russian poet Konstantin Bal'mont. The poem is entitled "Zvezdolikiy" in Russian. This is sometimes translated into English as "Star-face" or "The Star-Faced One", but the most common translation is "The King of the Stars".

The work is scored for a very large orchestra and six-part men's chorus. Lasting only some five minutes and encompassing only 54 measures, it is very rarely performed. Debussy (to whom the work is dedicated) praised the work in a 1913 letter to the composer; though describing it as "extraordinary", he doubted that it would soon find an audience given its complexities and its short duration. [http://www.laphil.org/resources/piece_detail.cfm?id=460] In the end, "Le roi des étoiles" was not performed in public until 1939.

When Stravinsky began writing the piece he was strongly influenced by the music of Alexander Scriabin as well as Debussy, as can be seen in the harmonic language used. Stravinsky himself claimed that he used the text not for its meaning but instead for the sound of the language.Fact|date=May 2008