We'll Go Mad in a Sorrowful Spring

A heartrending, free setting of a Gulag prisoner's poetry.

3 min • Composed 2023 • Free download: Solo soprano & piano

Composer’s notes

Irina Ratushinskaya was a Russian poet, physicist, and dissident. She was arrested in 1982 for criticizing the Soviet Union’s human rights violations and was sentenced to hard labor in the gulag. During her imprisonment, Ratushinskaya wrote poetry onto bars of soap so that it could be memorized and quickly washed away if she was caught. International outrage and glasnost policy led to her release in 1986. She went on to write the bestselling Grey is the Color of Hope, an autobiographical account of her time in prison, in addition to memoirs, novels, and large collections of poetry.

I shudder to comprehend Ratushinskaya’s seven years of imprisonment. She didn’t know if she would ever be free. The picture I had in my mind when composing was a solitary prison cell with a small barred window. The high-register piano intro is meant to represent the falling snow outside, gradually building into a blizzard as the thoughts of uncertainty and hopelessness creep in.

This piece was commissioned by Macy Grace Vinther.

Lyrics

Text from Irina Ratushinskaya’s poem, “We’ll Go Mad in a Sorrowful Spring.”

We’ll go mad in a sorrowful spring,
When the snows long for April,
When loss already teethes the bottom of snowdrifts;
And stoves have burned low.
When Orion stands above us,
But strange constellations rise to the surface.

Сойдём с ума печальною весной,
Когда снега вздыхают об апреле,

Когда уже грозит подрыв основ сугробам;
и камины догорели.
Когда стоит над нами Орион,
Но наплывают странные созвездья.