Part 2

The four movements comprise an _Allegro con spirito_ (D minor, 4-4), an _Adagio cantabile e con moto_ (D major, 3-4), an _Allegretto moderato_ (A minor, 2-4), and an _Allegro vivace_ (D minor-D major, 2-4). The form is largely that of the classical string quartet, though characteristically bold and novel devices of color and structure abound. Often the strings are ingeniously treated to suggest wind instruments, and one senses Tschaikowsky’s frequent striving for orchestral effects.

Research has failed to unearth the “opprobrious epithets” Tschaikowsky is alleged to have heaped upon this slight but appealing work.

OVERTURE-FANTASY, _Romeo and Juliet_

Shortly before the overture-fantasy on Shakespeare’s tragedy took shape in Tschaikowsky’s mind, he had been jilted by the French soprano Désirée Artôt, then enjoying a prodigious vogue as opera singer in St. Petersburg. The twenty-eight-year-old composer and Mlle. Artôt had become engaged in 1868, but the lady promptly left him and married the Spanish baritone Padilla y Ramos. The theory is that Tschaikowsky’s composition grew out of the resulting emotional upset, or at least that his frame of mind conduced to tragic expression on a romantic theme.

The Artôt episode acted as stimulus, but the concrete suggestion for using Shakespeare’s tragedy in a symphonic work came from Balakireff during a walk with Tschaikowsky and their friend Kashkin “on a lovely day in May.” Balakireff, head of the group of five young Russian composers (Tschaikowsky was not one of them) bent on achieving a pure national idiom, went so far as to outline the scheme to Tschaikowsky, unfolding the possibilities of dramatic and musical co-ordination so vividly that the young composer took eagerly to the project. Balakireff even furnished the keys and hints for themes and development.

However, four months went by before Tschaikowsky plunged into the actual composition of the overture-fantasy. Balakireff kept in close touch with him and virtually supervised the process. His dogmatism and narrowness often bored and irritated the young composer. Balakireff accepted this and rejected that, was pitilessly graphic in his comments, and yet somehow egged on the hypersensitive Tschaikowsky to completion of a taxing assignment. Finally, in January of the following year, Balakireff and Rimsky-Korsakoff came to visit him and he could write: “My overture pleased them very much and it also pleases me.” Still, the Moscow public responded coolly, and Tschaikowsky felt obliged to revise much of the score that summer. Further rewriting was done for the definitive edition brought out in 1881.

The thematic scheme is easy to follow. Friar Laurence takes his bow in a solemn andante introduction for clarinets and bassoons in F-sharp minor. The feud of the Montagues and Capulets rages in a B minor allegro. Romeo and Juliet enter via muted violins and English horn in a famous theme in D-flat major suggesting Tschaikowsky’s song _Wer nur die Sehnsucht kennt_ (“None But the Lonely Heart”). The strife-torn Montagues and Capulets return for another bout. Chords of muted violins and violas hinting at mystery and secrecy bring back the love music. The themes of Romeo and Juliet, the embattled families, and Friar Laurence are heard in succession, followed by a fierce orchestral crash, and the storm subsides to a roll of kettledrums.

_Francesca da Rimini_, FANTASIA FOR ORCHESTRA (AFTER DANTE), OPUS 32

Written in 1876, Tschaikowsky’s symphonic treatment of the celebrated love story of Paolo and Francesca grew out of an original project for an opera on the same subject. He abandoned the idea of an opera when the libretto submitted to him proved impossible. Later Tschaikowsky again read through the fifth canto of Dante’s _Inferno_, in which the tragedy is related. Stirred by the verses and also by Gustave Doré’s illustrations, he resolved to write an orchestral fantasy on the subject.

Prefacing the score are the following lines from Dante’s great poem:

“Dante arrives in the second circle of hell. He sees that here the incontinent are punished, and their punishment is to be continually tormented by the crudest winds under a dark and gloomy air. Among these tortured ones he recognizes Francesca da Rimini, who tells her story.

“‘ ... There is no greater pain than to recall a happy time in wretchedness; and this thy teacher knows. But if thou hast such desire to learn the first root of our love, I will do like one who weeps and tells.

“‘One day, for pastime, we read of Lancelot, how love constrained him. We were alone, and without all suspicion. Several times reading urged our eyes to meet, and changed the color of our faces. But one moment alone it was that overcame us. When we read of how the fond smile was kissed by such a lover, he, who shall never be divided from me, kissed my mouth all trembling. The book, and he who wrote it, was a Galeotto. That day we read in it no farther.’

“While the one spirit thus spake, the other wept so that I fainted with pity, as if I had been dying; and fell, as a dead body falls.”

Tschaikowsky used to insist that the following titles be given in the program-book at performances of his fantasia:

I. Introduction: The gateway to the Inferno (“Leave all hope behind, all ye who enter here”) Tortures and agonies of the condemned. II. Francesca tells the story of her tragic love for Paolo. III. The turmoil of Hades. Conclusion.

The composition starts with a descriptive setting, in which a sinister, gruesome picture is painted of the second circle of Dante’s _Inferno_. The awesome scene, with its haunting, driving winds, desolate moans, and dread terror, is repeated at the end. In the middle occurs a section featuring a clarinet in a plaintive and tender melody heard against string pizzicati. This instantly evokes the image of Francesca telling her tragic tale, which mounts in fervor and reaches its shattering crisis, before the wailing winds of Dante’s netherworld close in again.

BALLET SUITES

SUITE FROM THE BALLET, _Swan Lake_ (_Le Lac des Cygnes_)

All told, Tschaikowsky wrote three ballets, plus a scattering of incidental dances for operas, beginning with the surviving “Voyevode” fragments. The composition of _Swan Lake_, first of the trio—the others being _The Sleeping Beauty_ and _The Nutcracker_—originated in a twofold impulse, the need for ready cash and a fondness for French ballet music, especially the works of Delibes and the _Giselle_ of Adolphe Adam, which Tschaikowsky regarded as archetype.

He evidently thought little of his initial effort, for shortly after the Moscow production of _Swan Lake_ he recorded in his diary: “Lately I have heard Delibes’ very clever music. ‘Swan Lake’ is poor stuff compared to it. Nothing during the last few years has charmed me so greatly as this ballet of Delibes and ‘Carmen’.” Per contra, the same entry bemoans the “deterioration” of German music, the immediate offender being the “cold, obscure and pretentious” C minor symphony of Brahms!

Tschaikowsky was probably sincere when he described his own ballet as “poor stuff” compared with Delibes’. That was in 1877. Performances of _Swan Lake_ at the Bolshoi Theater had been flat, shabby, and badly costumed. A conductor inexperienced with elaborate ballet scores had directed. Modeste Tschaikowsky, in the biography of his brother, testifies to this. Numbers were omitted as “undanceable,” and pieces from other ballets substituted. At length only a third of the original remained, and not the best. The ballet dropped out of the Moscow repertory, and it was not until 1894 that the enterprising Marius Petipa wrote to Moscow for the full score and produced _Swan Lake_ with brilliant success at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, on January 15, 1895. It has since remained a repertory staple, both the current Ballets Russes and the Ballet Theatre having staged it successfully. Pavlova, Karsavina, and Markova, among others, have interpreted the heroine Odette, and Prince Siegfried has been embodied by Nijinsky, Lifar, Mordkin, and Dolin. _Swan Lake_ was one of the first ballets witnessed in his youth by Serge Diaghileff, founder of the famous Ballets Russes.

Tschaikowsky first refers to _Swan Lake_ in a letter to Rimsky-Korsakoff, dated September 10, 1875: “I accepted the work partly because I need the money and because I have long cherished a desire to try my hand at this type of music.” V. P. Begitche, stage manager of the Bolshoi, offered 800 roubles (less than $500) and in turn granted Tschaikowsky’s request for a story from the Age of Chivalry, making the sketch himself. Tschaikowsky set to work in August, 1875, and had the first two acts planned out in a fortnight, but the score was not completed till the following March and for some reason held up for performance until February, 1877.

The story, possibly of Rhenish origin, tells how Prince Siegfried woos and wins Odette, the Swan Queen. At a celebration the prince is told he must soon choose a bride. A flight of swans overhead distracts him and a hunt is proposed. Siegfried and the hunters are at the lake-side. It is evening. Odette appears surrounded by a bevy of swan-maidens. She begs the hunters to spare the swans. They are maidens under the spell of the enchanter Rotbart. Swans by day, they return briefly to human form at midnight. The prince and Odette fall in love. Siegfried swears she will be his wife. Odette cautions him about Rotbart’s evil power. Breach of promise will mean her death. Rotbart brings his own daughter to the court ball, disguised as Odette. Siegfried makes the false choice of bride, and the pledge is broken. Discovering Rotbart’s ruse, he hastens to Odette, who at first rebuffs him. Siegfried blames Rotbart and Odette relents. At length Rotbart whips up a storm which floods the forest. When Siegfried vows he will die with Odette, Rotbart’s spell is shattered and all ends happily.

Tschaikowsky’s close friend and collaborator Kashkin is authority for the statement that an adagio section in _Swan Lake_ was a love-duet in the opera _Undine_ before it found new lodgings. Conversely, a Danse Russe in the group of piano pieces, Op. 40, was written for _Swan Lake_, thus balancing matters. Like _The Sleeping Beauty_ and _The Nutcracker_, _Swan Lake_ is famed for its waltz. The score brims with typical Tschaikowskyan melody, and probably for the first time in ballet music a scheme of leitmotifs is used, two of the principal subjects being the tremulous theme of the swans in flight and the hauntingly wistful theme of Odette herself, assigned to the oboe against soft strings and harp arpeggios. The music adjusts itself snugly to the technic of pure classical ballet and solos and ensembles are contrasted adroitly.

SUITE FROM THE BALLET, _The Sleeping Beauty_, OPUS 66

Based on Perrault’s famous fairy tale, Tschaikowsky’s _Sleeping Beauty_ ballet dates from the summer of 1889. Its music is generally regarded as superior to that of the _Swan Lake_ ballet and inferior to that of the _Nutcracker_ suite. Few ballet scores are so suitable in mood and style for the action they accompany. The music is truly melodious in Tschaikowsky’s lighter vein. The fantasy is conveyed in bright, glittering colors, and, as Mrs. Newmarch pointed out, the music “never descends to the commonplace level of the ordinary ballet music.” There are thirty numbers in all, many of them, especially the waltz, endearing in their lilting and haunting grace. The work was first produced in St. Petersburg on January 2, 1890. In the early twenties, Diaghileff, the great ballet producer, revived the work in London and elsewhere with immense artistic _éclat_. Fragments of the ballet have been gathered in the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe’s production of _Aurora’s Wedding_.

SUITE FROM THE BALLET, _The Nutcracker_, OPUS 71-A

The usual fit of depression assailed Tschaikowsky while composing the music for his _Nutcracker_ ballet, based on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s story _Nussknacker und Mausekönig_ (“Nutcracker and Mouse King”). Commissioned by the St. Petersburg Opera early in 1891, the work was slow in taking shape. At length, on June 25, Tschaikowsky completed the sketches for the projected ballet. What had taken him weeks should have been finished in five days, he lamented. “No, the old man is breaking up,” he wrote. “Not only does his hair drop out, or turn as white as snow; not only does he lose his teeth, which refuse their service; not only do his eyes weaken and tire easily; not only do his feet walk badly, or drag themselves along, but, bit by bit, he loses the capacity to do anything at all. The ballet is infinitely worse than ‘The Sleeping Beauty’—so much is certain.”

Apparently the first night audience agreed with him, for at the première in the Imperial Opera House, the response was chilling. Yet an earlier concert performance of the music had drawn plaudits from both public and press. The ballet’s failure, however, was easy to explain. The producer, Marius Petipa, fell ill, and the work of staging the new ballet was entrusted to a man of inadequate skill and experience. Then, the audience found it hard to thrill to the spectacle of children dashing coyly about in the first act. And balletomanes, accustomed to beauty and glamor in their favorite ballerinas, found the girl dancing the part of the Sugarplum Fairy anything but appetizing to look at.

Act I of the ballet is concerned with a Christmas Tree party. The scene is overrun with children and mechanical dolls. Little Marie is drawn to a German Nutcracker, which is made to resemble an old man with huge jaws. During a game, some boys accidentally break the Nutcracker. Marie is saddened by the tragedy. That night she lies awake in bed, sleepless with grief over the broken utensil. Finally, she jumps out of bed and goes to take one more look at the beloved Nutcracker. Suddenly strange sounds reach her ears. Mice! The Tree now seems to come to life and grow massive. Toys begin to stir into action, followed by cakes and candies. Even the Nutcracker creaks into life. Presently a battle arises between the mice and the toys. The Nutcracker challenges the Mouse King to a duel. Just as the Nutcracker is about to be felled, Marie hurls a shoe and kills the royal rodent. And of course, the Nutcracker promptly is transformed into a handsome prince. Arm in arm, they leave for his magic kingdom.

The scene now changes to a mountain of jam for the second act. This is the land ruled by the Sugarplum Fairy, who is awaiting the arrival of Marie and her princely escort. The court cheers jubilantly when the happy pair appears on the scene. What follows is the series of dances usually heard in the concert hall. The sequence runs as follows:

_Miniature Overture_ (_Allegro giusto_, B-flat, 4-4), featuring two sharply differentiated themes, scored largely for the higher instruments.

_March_ (_Tempo di marcia vivo_, G major, 4-4), in which the main theme is chanted by clarinets, horns and trumpets, as the children make their measured entrance.

_Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy_ (_Andante con moto_, E minor, 2-4). Here the celesta gives out the entrancing melody, with pizzicato strings accompanying.

_Russian Dance: Trepak_ (_Tempo di trepak, molto vivace_, G major, 2-4), which grows out of a brisk rhythmic figure heard at the beginning.

_Arabian Dance_ (_Allegretto_, G minor, 3-8). Intended to convey the idea of “Coffee.” A melody in Oriental mood is announced by the clarinet, later picked up by the violins.

_Chinese Dance_ (_Allegretto moderato_, B-flat major, 4-4). Intended to convey the idea of “Tea.” The melody is given to the flute against a pizzicato figure sustained by bassoons and double basses.

_Dance of the Mirlitons_ (_Moderato assai_, D major, 2-4). For the main theme three flutes join forces. Then comes a different melody given out by the trumpets in F-sharp minor before the chief subject is back.

_Waltz of the Flowers_ (_Tempo di valse_, D major, 3-4). Woodwinds and horns, aided by a harp-cadenza, offer some introductory phrases. Then the horns give out the fetching main melody. Soon the clarinets take it up. Flute, oboe, and strings bring in other themes, and the waltz comes to a brilliant close.

CONCERTOS

CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA, IN D MAJOR, OPUS 35

Before occupying its permanent niche in the repertory, Tschaikowsky’s violin concerto had to run a fierce gantlet of fault-finding. Friend and foe alike took pokes at it. The wonder is that it survived at all. Even Mme. von Meck, Tschaikowsky’s patroness-saint, picked serious flaws in the work, and the lady was known for her unwavering faith in Tschaikowsky’s genius.

As a matter of fact, Tschaikowsky, often an unsparing critic of his own music, started the trend by finding objection with the Andante and rewriting it whole. That was in April, 1878. He was spending the spring at Clarens, Switzerland. Joseph Kotek, a Russian violinist and composer, was staying with him. Tschaikowsky and Kotek went over the work several times, and evidently saw eye-to-eye on its merits.

Then came the first outside rebuff. Mme. von Meck was frankly dissatisfied and showed why in detail. Tschaikowsky meekly wrote back pleading guilty on some counts but advancing the hope that in time his Lady Bountiful might come to like the concerto. He stood pat on the first movement, which Mme. von Meck particularly assailed.

“Your frank judgment on my violin concerto pleased me very much,” he writes. “It would have been very disagreeable to me if you, from any fear of wounding the petty pride of a composer, had kept back your opinion. However, I must defend a little the first movement of the concerto.

“Of course, it houses, as does every piece that serves virtuoso purposes, much that appeals chiefly to the mind; nevertheless, the themes are not painfully evolved: the plan of this movement sprang suddenly in my head and quickly ran into its mould. I shall not give up the hope that in time the piece will give you greater pleasure.”

Next came a more serious setback from Leopold Auer, the widely respected Petersburg virtuoso. Auer was then professor of violin at the Imperial Conservatory and the Czar’s court violinist. Tschaikowsky, hoping to induce Auer to launch the concerto on its career, originally dedicated the work to him. But Auer glanced through the score and promptly decided against it. It was “impossible to play.”

Tschaikowsky later made a quaintly worded entry in his diary to the effect that Auer’s pronouncement cast “this unfortunate child of my imagination for many years to come into the limbo of hopelessly forgotten things.” Justly or unjustly, he even suspected Auer of having prevailed on the violinist Emile Sauret to abstain from playing it in St. Petersburg.

The ice finally broke when Adolf Brodsky, after two years of admitted laziness and indecision, took it up and succeeded in performing it with the Vienna Philharmonic on December 4, 1881. Yet, even Brodsky, despite his wholehearted espousal of the work, complained to Tschaikowsky that he had “crammed too many difficulties into it.” Previously, in Paris, Brodsky had experimented with the concerto by playing it to Laroche, who, whether because of Brodsky’s rendering or the concerto’s inherent character, confessed “he could gain no true idea of the work.”

Even the première went against the new concerto. In the first place Brodsky had to do some strong propagandizing to get Hans Richter to include the work on a Philharmonic program. Then, only one rehearsal was granted. The orchestral parts, according to Brodsky, “swarmed with errors.” At the rehearsal nobody liked the new work. Besides, Richter wanted to make cuts, but Brodsky promptly scotched the idea. Finally, during the performance, the musicians, still far from having mastered the music, accompanied everything pianissimo, “not to go smash.”

Of course, Brodsky outlines the chain of contretemps in a letter to Tschaikowsky partly to assuage the composer’s pained feelings on receiving news of the Vienna fiasco. For the première ended with a broadside of hisses, completely obliterating the polite applause coming from some friendly quarters. As the _coup de grâce_ Eduard Hanslick, Europe’s uncrowned ruler of musical destinies, wrote a scathing notice, which Philip Hale rendered as follows:

“For a while the concerto has proportion, is musical, and is not without genius, but soon savagery gains the upper hand and lords it to the end of the first movement.

“The violin is no longer played. It is yanked about. It is torn asunder. It is beaten black and blue. I do not know whether it is possible for any one to conquer these hair-raising difficulties, but I do know that Mr. Brodsky martyrized his hearers as well as himself.

“The Adagio, with its tender national melody, almost conciliates, almost wins us. But it breaks off abruptly to make way for a finale that puts us in the midst of the brutal and wretched jollity of a Russian kermess. We see wild and vulgar faces, we hear curses, we smell bad brandy.

“Friedrich Vischer once asserted in reference to lascivious paintings that there are pictures which ‘stink in the eye.’ Tschaikowsky’s violin concerto brings to us for the first time the horrid idea that there may be music that stinks in the ear.”

The pestiferous odors of the Hanslick blast further embittered Tschaikowsky’s already gloomy disposition, and it is not surprising to learn that the review haunted him till the day he died. But Brodsky’s unflagging devotion to the concerto, together with his practical missionary zeal in acquainting the European public with it, finally started the concerto on its path of glory.

“Nor was that the end of time’s revenges,” wrote Pitts Sanborn. “Hanslick was to write glowingly of the ‘Pathétique’ symphony, and in due course Leopold Auer not only played the unplayable concerto himself, but made a specialty of teaching it to his pupils, who have carried its gospel the world over. But while the belated triumphs were accruing Tschaikowsky died.”

The dedication is to Brodsky, who certainly earned it.

The first movement (_Allegro moderato_, D major, 4-4), opens with a melody for strings and woodwind. Then the solo violin is heard in a cadenza-like sequence followed by the first theme (_Moderato assai_). A second theme, _Molto espressivo_, is next discoursed by the violin in A major. Instead of the usual development there is an intricate cadenza without accompaniment. A long and brilliant coda concludes the movement.

The second movement (_Canzonetta: Andante_, 3-4) starts with the muted solo violin chanting, after a brief preface, a nostalgic theme in G minor. The flute and clarinet then offer the first phrase of this theme, and later the solo violin unreels a Chopinesque second subject, in E-flat major, _con anima_. The clarinet offers an obbligato of arpeggios when the first theme returns. The rousing finale is an _Allegro vivacissimo_ in D major, 2-4.

The Rondo-like last movement, typically Russian in theme and rhythm, develops from two folk-like melodies. Listeners will be reminded of the well-known Russian dance, the Trepak, in this movement. The music builds up at a brisk pace to a crashing climax.

CONCERTO FOR PIANO AND ORCHESTRA, IN B-FLAT MINOR, NO. 1, OPUS 23