Stravinsky composed his Two Poems of Balmont in 1911 at the Stravinsky family estate of Ustilug in the Ukraine. Konstantin Balmont (1867 - 1943) was a Russian Symbolist poet whose euphonic poetry, replete with musical images and symbols, served as text for Stravinsky's Zvezdoliki (The King of the Stars). "The Flower" and "The Dove," the poems which Stravinsky chose to set for high voice and piano are however, straightforward love poetry. Composed the summer after Petrouchka, the Two Poems of Balmont are much more harmonically adventurous than the Two Poems of Verlaine from the previous year. Stravinsky's settings are both subtler and more surprising. The music moves from whole-tone to octatonic harmonic groups while remaining not only singable but also memorable. In 1954, Stravinsky re-scored the Balmont Songs for high voice plus a chamber ensemble consisting of pairs of flutes and clarinets, plus piano and string quartet.

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