César Cui’s Three Tenors: On the History of the First Performance of the Vocal Cycle to Poems by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy

The article aims to identify the connections between the musical expression of poetic images in César Cui’s chamber-vocal pieces and the addressees of their dedications. The research object chosen is 18 Poems by A. K. Tolstoy Op. 67. In the composer’s oeuvre, this is the only opus in which each piece is dedicated to a specific performer. Six songs of the cycle are associated with the names of prominent tenors of the time, namely L. V. Sobinov, L. D. Donskoy, and F. L. Senius. Despite the shared vocal range, differences are noted in the tessituras, dynamics, and textures of the vocal parts’ presentation, thus outlining the “vocal portraits” of the artists. The article provides a general overview of the cycle’s “timbre form” and compares the composer’s original creative intent with its actual realization at the cycle’s première.