Tschaikowsky, Peter

Preface

Peter Ilych Tchaikovsky – Symphony in E-flat major

(b. Votkinsk, 7 May 1840 – d. St. Petersburg, 7 November 1893)

(1892) Reconstructed by Semyon Bogatyryev (1951-5)

Preface
“Lately I have been swallowing my pride and grappling with second thoughts. With careful consideration, I have been looking through my new symphony which, fortunately, I did not manage to orchestrate. The impression it makes is not at all flattering, i.e. the symphony was written merely for the sake of having something to write – there’s nothing at all interesting or sympathetic in it. I have decided to discard it and forget about it. This decision is irreversible and absolutely my last word.”

Thus Tchaikovsky, writing about his recently completed E-flat major Symphony to his beloved twenty-year-old nephew Vladimir “Bob” Davydov in December 1892. Two months later, in another letter to Davydov (11 February 1893), he was more explicit: “You know that I destroyed the symphony I had composed and partly orchestrated in the autumn. And a good thing, too! There was nothing of interest in it – an empty play of sounds, without inspiration.” Tchaikovsky, it seems, had been as good as his word and done the unthinkable: he had destroyed a complete four-movement symphony that had occupied him for the better part of a year.

But had he? In fact, in Tchaikovsky’s language, “destroyed” meant in this case “carefully preserved.” The composition draft in short score exists intact with only a few gaps, as does an orchestrated version of the bulk of the opening movement. Moreover, huge swaths of the other three movements were reworked into various pieces by the composer himself and issued in print. In short, the abortive symphony survived Tchaikovsky’s untimely death in metamorphosed form and needed only to be reassembled and orchestrated in order to spring into life as his “Symphony in E-flat major.” This was the task essayed sixty years later by Semyon Bogatyryev, the editor of the volume here reissued in miniature score.

The origins of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony in E-flat major began on the return journey from his American tour in 1891, when he whiled away his time on the ocean liner by dreaming up and jotting down ideas for a “programmatic symphony” intended to depict stages in a human life. His actual work on the composition had to wait, however, until he had moved into his new summer residence in Klin (now the Tchaikovsky Museum) on 17 May 1892. Thereafter he quickly sketched out the first and last movements by 8 June 1892, discarding many of his original ideas and adding new ones. The entire work was set down in short score by 4 November, and three days later the first movement was orchestrated up to the beginning of the recapitulation. The date of the première had even been set: February 1893, at a charity concert in Moscow. Then the composer’s attention was distracted, and when he returned to the work in December 1892 he discovered to his surprise that he was completely estranged from it. In its stead, he embarked on what would become the Symphony No. 6 – the famous “Pathétique“ and the crowning achievement of his orchestral output. The new symphony, unlike its discarded predecessor, would be, he said, “completely saturated with myself.” It was perhaps this lack of an autobiographical element that caused the eternally tormented and impulsive composer to look askance on a major composition that already lay fully formed on his desk. …

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