The book “Songs with lyrics by Robert Rozhdestvensky” was published in 1982. It contains 90 songs, including the composition “Your window”, the history of which is closely tied with the Altai territory. It is considered to be the first ever song composed by the poet. He turned to songwriting largely because of a musician Alexander Flyarkovsky. They met in the Altai region, where Rozhdestvensky was undergoing his pre-graduation practice in 1955. The poet and his wife Alla Kireeva worked at the newspaper “Stalinskaya Smena” (later — “Youth of Altai”), and Flyarkovsky, as a member of the Union of Composers, came to the region to record local songs.

The song “Your Window, ” with which they won the competition for the best song about Moscow, became the result of their encounter. The text and notes of the composition are included in this book. Subsequently, Rozhdestvensky wrote many songs that became famous in the USSR.

The poet once said that he had a dream: he wanted to hear at least one of his songs performed on a street or a train car, or a yard, or sung by a group of strangers. By that time, compositions based on his poems often played on the radio, but Rozhdestvensky did not feel satisfied. However, one summer evening he heard his song performed by a stranger who came out of a restaurant and was singing with great emotion:

For Rozhdestvensky it was the moment of recognition. Subsequently, he gained national fame as a poet-songwriter. Many of his songs became immensely popular in the 1960s up to the 1990s.

There were many songs written by Rozhdestvensky in collaboration with other famous composers. Curiously enough, the poet never deliberately wrote lyrics for songs. He created poems, and composers then would turn them into songs. Rozhdestvensky’s poems are so musical that they can easily be turned into songs.

Many of the songs he composed were also featured in different movies. Rozhdestvensky would always undertake such tasks seriously: he would try to grasp all the details of the script, interact with the director and actors to convey the hero’s character through music. He composed famous songs such as “Farewell Waltz”, which was performed by Andrey Mironov, “In all Ages” performed by Muslim Magomayev, and “Echo of Love” (“Lingering echo of one another”), a composition that became popular thanks to Anna Herman and Lev Leshchenko.