Tchaikovsky
www.tchaikovsky-research.net

TH 92

Midnight Review

Ночной парад

Song with piano accompaniment (?1862/64).

• Composed between 1862 and 1864.
• Text by Vasilii Zhukovskii, from his poem of the same name (1836).
• Lost.

History

Interesting information is contained in the reminiscences of Tchaikovsky's colleague at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, Aleksandr Rubets. He wrote that Anton Rubinstein would "read a poem out loud and the students there and then had to come up with a musical setting for one or more voices, depending on their preference. They had to compose a draft, and the next day the work was to be submitted, already finished and written out... Among the suggested texts were Lermontov's Prayer, Dance of the Flowers, The Bells, and others... I remember once... Tchaikovsky had been given the task of writing music to Zhukovskii's Midnight Review... Tchaikovsky's piece turned out not to be a song, but rather a whole complex picture... The accompaniment to each verse was varied and intricate . Tchaikovsky had written the piece quickly in the course of two days" [1].

From: Музыкальное наследие Чайковского (1958), pp. 429–430
English text copyright © 2006 Brett Langston

References:

1. «Воспоминания проф. А. И. Рубца о первых годах Петербургской консерваторий», Новое время (27 August 1912) [back].