Tchaikovsky
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The Little Rifleman

Стрелочек

Two-part canon on the theme of the Russian folk-song (1882)

History

The origin of this composition is described in a letter from Sergei Taneev to Anton Arenskii of 14 December 1882: "After dinner, we occupied ourselves with writing a canon on a theme, given to us by Laroche: "The Little Rifleman" [«Стрелочек»—a well-known folk-song]. He was sure that it would be hard to come up with a canon in any interval other than the octave [...] I responded that it was not so difficult, and straight away wrote a canon within a few seconds [...] This prompted Petr Il´ich to join the contest, and for his part he offered up a remarkable canon in no time at all [...] The whole canon was immediately performed by Laroche and Tchaikovsky. Laroche couldn’t think of anything; on his bit of paper he had only written a clef and 2 flats" [1].

From: The Tchaikovsky Handbook, vol. 1 (2002), p. 390
Copyright © 2002 Alexander Poznansky and Brett Langston

Notes:

1. Letter from Sergei Taneev to Anton Arenskii of 14/26 December 1882, quoted in Музыкальное наследие Чайковского (1958), p. 471 [back]