Stravinsky's Four Songs from 1953 and 1954 are transcriptions of the first and fourth of his Four Russian Songs (1918 - 1919) for voice and piano, and of the first and second of Three Tales for Children (1915 - 1917), also for voice and piano. The first song, "The Drake," is the first of the Four Russian Songs, and the second song, "A Russian Spiritual," is the fourth of the Four Russian Songs. The third song, "Geese and Swans," is the second of the Three Tales for Children, and the fourth song, "Tilimbom," is the first of the Three Tales for Children. In either version, the songs are marked by the ideas of Stravinsky's post-Sacre Russian period, the same period that saw the composition of Rénard and Les noces.

The adaptation of the piano part for the unusual ensemble of flute, harp, and guitar is not, in the view of some commentators, altogether successful: they find the harp and guitar an inadequate substitution for the keyboard and an unacceptable impersonation of the cimbalom that would have been featured in musical settings of these texts in Stravinsky's native Russia. In addition to arranging the piano part for flute, harp, and guitar, Stravinsky worked out a new phonetic transcription of the Russian text for English-speaking singers.

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