Yuri Gagarin sang this song by Dmitri Shostakovich
The day after the first cosmonaut in space returned to Earth, Soviet newspapers reported that Yuri Gagarin had sung his favorite song during his flight: ‘The Motherland Hears, the Motherland Knows’…
It was written in 1950 by composer Dmitri Shostakovich and poet Yevgeny Dolmatovsky and was inspired by a true story. During World War II, Dolmatovsky, then a war correspondent, was returning from behind the front lines by plane. Through the headphones the pilot had given him, he could hear music being broadcast by the airfield’s radio station. It was then that the poet came up with the idea of writing a “beacon song”, the call signs of which would guide returning planes back to the airfield.
Shostakovich and Dolmatovsky revisited this idea while working on the musical score for a play. The production never took place, but the song took on a life of its own. Its first "space journey" took place in 1957. The first bars of ‘The Motherland Hears. The Motherland Knows’ became the theme music for the All-Union Radio's ‘Latest News’ segment: for the broadcast, they were combined with signals from the first artificial satellite. A few years later, Yuri Gagarin sang this “navigation song”.
Today marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of its author, composer Dmitri Shostakovich.
