Date	19/31 May 1889
Addressed to	Ethel Smyth
Where written	Frolovskoe
Language	French
Autograph Location	unknown ; auctioned by J. A. Stargardt, Berlin, 16–17 March 1995
Publication	Čajkovskijs Homosexualität und sein Tod. Legenden und Wirklichkeit (1998), p. 187
Notes	Photocopy in Klin (Russia): Tchaikovsky House-Museum Archive

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French text (original)		English translation Copyright © 2010 by Luis Sundkvist
Kline, près [de] Moscou 19/31 Mai 1889		Klin, near Moscow 19/31 May 1889
Chère Mademoiselle:		Dear Mademoiselle:
Je viens de recevoir Votre lettre qui m'a longtemps suivi avant de m'attrapper. je Vous recommande beaucoup Gabriel Fauré, organiste de la Madeleine. Vous pouvez trouver son adresse dans un magasin de musique par example chez Durand, Place de la Madeleine, 4.		I have just received your letter, which has been pursuing me for a long time before finally catching up with me [1]. I very much recommend to you Gabriel Fauré, organist at the [Église de la] Madeleine [2]. You can find his address in a music shop such as Durand, Place de la Madeleine, 4.
Tout à Vous P. Tschaïkowsky		All yours P. Tchaikovsky

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Notes:

1. Tchaikovsky had only recently returned to his house in Frolovskoe following his return to Russia after his second European concert tour [back]
2. Tchaikovsky seems to have met Fauré for the first time during his stay in Paris in June 1886. See the diary entry for 7/19 June 1886 translated by Wladimir Lakond in The Diaries of Tchaikovsky (1973), p. 86. They met again in Paris in March–April 1889. As Gerald Norris, Stanford, the Cambridge Jubilee and Tchaikovsky (1980), has observed, "Fauré deeply admired his Russian colleague and presented him with signed copies of his First and Second Piano Quartets, the latter being inscribed 'To my dear master and friend P. Tchaikovsky from his affectionately devoted Gabriel Fauré'" (p. 323) [back]

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This page was last updated on 26 February 2012