During the summer of 1888, Rimsky-Korsakov was hard at work on a symphonic suite titled Scheherazade, after A Thousand and One Nights. “I had in mind,” he said, “the creation of an orchestral suite in four movements closely knit by the community of its themes and motives, yet presenting as it were a kaleidoscope of fairy-tale images and designs of Oriental character…Originally I had intended to label the first movement ‘Prelude,’ the second ‘Ballade,’ the third ‘Adagio’ and the fourth ‘Finale;’ but on the advice of Liadov and others, I did not do so.”
Apparently Anatol Liadov and others had advised more specific titles for the movements. When Rimsky-Korsakov conducted the Russian Symphony Concerts the next winter in St. Petersburg, the movements bore the titles we know today.
The score is prefaced with the following note: “The Sultan Schahriar, convinced of the falsity and infidelity of all women, swore to have each of his wives put to death after the first night. But the Sultana Scheherazade saved her life by arousing his interest in the tales which she told him for a thousand and one nights. His curiosity compelled him to put off the execution of his wife from one day to the next, and finally he rescinded his cruel resolution altogether.”
For the second edition of Scheherazade, Rimsky-Korsakov deleted the movement titles. “I meant these hints to direct but slightly the hearer’s imagination on the route my own fancy had traveled,” he said. “I only desired that the hearer, if he liked my piece as ‘symphonic music,’ should be left with the impression that it is certainly an oriental narrative of several varied fairy-tale wonders, and not merely four pieces played one after the other and based upon themes common to all four movements.” Nevertheless, the composer admitted that the opening theme of the first movement was meant to depict the Sultan and the solo violin theme was Scheherazade herself.
With Scheherazade, Capriccio Espagnol and the Russian Easter Overture, Rimsky-Korsakov wrote, “my orchestration had reached a considerable degree of virtuosity and bright sonority without Wagner’s influence, within the limits of the usual make-up of Glinka’s orchestra.”