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Tchaikovsky |
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TH 14 The NutcrackerЩелкунчикFairy-ballet in 2 acts and 3 scenes, Op. 71 (1891-92).
ContentsTchaikovsky's original score contains an Overture and 15 numbers. Act I is divided into two scenes (comprising Nos. 1-7 and Nos. 8-9). The titles of numbers in French (italic type) and Russian (Cyrillic) are taken from the published score, with English translations added in bold type.
HistoryComposed in Frolovskoe, Rouen and Maidanovo between mid-February 1891 up to the end of June the same year. Orchestrated at Maidanovo, January-March 1892. Written at the request of the Director of the Imperial Theatres, Ivan Vsevolozhskii. Preliminary talks between the composer and the Director of the Imperial Theatres took place in November and December 1890 [2]. On 22 January 1891, Tchaikovsky wrote to Anatolii Tchaikovsky: "At the end of the week I shall be going to Saint Petersburg for final discussions with the director about the opera [Iolanta] and the ballet" [3]. From the end of January up to 11 February, Tchaikovsky stayed in Saint Petersburg, where, evidently, he received the choreographer Marius Petipa's manuscript plan of the first act of the ballet, which was dated "5 February 1891" [4]. According to Modest Tchaikovsky, the composer was "very little pleased by the subject of The Nutcracker" [5], more precisely with the nature of the ballet’s scenario, since E. T. A. Hoffmann's fairy tale, upon which it was based, had long ranked high in the composer estimation, and was the reason for his agreeing to write the ballet The Nutcracker. Tchaikovsky's unfavourable attitude to the using The Nutcracker for a ballet scenario is reflected in a letter from Ivan Vsevolozhskii to Tchaikovsky of 9/21 August 1891: "I have experienced agonies of remorse for asking you to do this ballet. I know that it is unappealing to you. You are an exceptionally kind soul for not refusing me" [6]. It is not possible to establish the exact date on which work on the sketches was begun. By 12 February the composer had not begun work [7], but by 18 February some scenes had been composed - No. 1 (the decoration of the tree) and No. 2 (march - entrance of the children), after which came a number of characteristic dances: Chinese and Spanish dances, a tarantella, an English dance, and the start of a Trepak. On 18 February, Tchaikovsky went again to Saint Petersburg. Before his departure he a received a letter written by Ivan Vsevolozhskii, dated 15 February: "I hope to see you in Saint Petersburg before your departure for America. I want to pass on to you some ideas for the ballet, which do not fit in with Petipa's scheme. He is what the French call vieu jeu [8]. All the solos and variations he devised for the first act, would be of little interest to the public. You need now only to compose great dances, and not for dancers, and all those variations ... would only irritate the majority of the audience" [9]. Returning to Frolovskoe on 22 February, Tchaikovsky made notes in his sketchbook after the start of the Trepak: "Not finished, because during a visit to Saint Petersburg I learned that Vsevolozhskii did not want dances here and, probably, they will be carried over to the 2nd act". The arrangement of the sketches allows us to infer the order in which the music was written - the composer adhered to the essence Marius Petipa's plan. indicating any deviations from it in his notebook. After meeting with Vsevolozhskii, Tchaikovsky crossed out the names of the characteristic dances in Petipa's balletmaster plan, and instead wrote: "Galop pour les enfants et entrée des parents en incroyables... 16 mesures rococo (tempo menuet). Bon voyage, M. Dumolet", the latter being the title of a humorous 18th century French song, subsequently used in the music for this number. But the composer did not write the music for this scene straight away, noting down only a few sketches eventually used for the gallop, beside the note: "This is the start of the coda, composed during a stroll in Piter [Petersburg]". Next he continued with Petipa's plan and on 22 February set about the music for Drosselmeyer's entrance. The author’s sketch book includes two dates - 23 and 27 February - which allows us to establish that on these days he finished the scene with Drosselmeyer. and wrote the scene with the children and the Nutcracker (No. 5), except for the Grossvater [10]. Omitting the Grossvater, Tchaikovsky wrote in his sketch book: "Talk to Petipa regarding the Grossvater, how many times it should be repeated. and whether it should be varied, and have Jurgenson obtain the [musical] notes". There is a second note, apparently made later: "Grossvater - see the end of the copybook after everything else". Beside one of the sketches for No. 5 (the scene described as "Lullaby, twice interrupted by the noise of Fritz and his friends on drums and pipes"), Tchaikovsky noted: "Le vacarme" [11] "... (child's trumpet), cuckoo (sol, mi), rattle, drums, cymbals as in Haydn's symphony (or three of these, depending on whatever children’s instruments will be available)". On 19 February, Tchaikovsky wrote from Saint Petersburg to Petr Jurgenson: "I require children's instruments (from the symphonies of Haydn and Romberg), because I want to make use of them in my forthcoming ballet. Send them, if you please, to Frolovskoe without delay. And also send notes, explaining how the children's instruments should be played" [12]. On 23 February, Jurgenson responded: "I am sending you a box of instruments by train" [13]. On 25 February, the composer wrote to Modest Tchaikovsky: "I am working with all my strength and reconciling myself to the subject of the ballet. I think that by the time leave a considerable part of the first act will have been done" [14]. On 27 February, after sketching the night scene (Clara’s vision", Tchaikovsky wrote: "Here I am leaving out a lot, up to the Waltz of the Snowflakes". Indeed, he omitted the battle scene between the mice and toys, and start of the second scene of Act I - depicting the forest at night - and instead the composer went on to the Waltz of the Snowflakes. After this he wrote: "Return to No. 22" (on Marius Petipa’s plan No. 22 was the start of the battle scene), and sketches for the battle of the mice and toys followed. This concluded Tchaikovsky’s work on the ballet before his departure abroad on 6 March. On the day of his departure from Saint Petersburg. the composer discussed the ballet with Marius Petipa [15]. It seems that at this meeting the outline scenario for Act II was finalised. In any case, the balletmaster’s plan of this act was sent to Tchaikovsky only while he was abroad. On the copy of the manuscript of the plan is Petipa’s note: "This was sent on 9 March 1891 to Mr. P. Tchaikovsky in Paris" [16]. Work on the ballet continued during his journey: "I will try to work on the boat. Even on the way here I composed a little of the ballet", Tchaikovsky wrote from Berlin on 8/20 March 1891 [17]. It has not been established whether Tchaikovsky composed anything on his way to Berlin. In Paris, where Tchaikovsky arrived on 10/22 March, work on the ballet did not come easily. On 15/27 March, he wrote to Vladimir Davydov, "On 6 April - 25 March, I shall leave Paris for an unknown destination, in order to work on the ballet" [18], and on 30 March/11 April) he reported to Praskov'ia Tchaikovskaia from Rouen: "I came here yesterday for a few days’ rest and solitude from Parisian life" [19]. Evidently, in Rouen Tchaikovsky resumed work on 31 March/12 April. This date, together with the note "Rouen" was made by the composer on the inside front cover of his notebook, which on its first pages contains sketches for the opening of the second scene of Act I [20]. The date "Rouen, 12 April" was also written by Tchaikovsky on the choreographer's manuscript plan of Act II. Tchaikovsky stayed in Rouen until 5/17 April. During this time he wrote the opening of the second scene, and the numbers he had previously omitted from the first scene of Act 1: Petit galop des enfants, Entrée des parents, "Bon voyage, M-r Dumolet"; then there followed sketches for the Grossvater dance and some additions to the dance of the Incroyables [21]. On 3/15 April, Tchaikovsky wrote from Rouen to Ivan Vsevolozhskii: "As I expected, during my three weeks in Paris, it goes without saying that I could not write a single note. I came to Rouen in order to work a little. And I have been here nearly a week, working all hours; two days remain before I sail for America. In this time I will have prepared the sketches for the first two scenes of the ballet. But the question is, when will I be able to do the rest?". Tchaikovsky then asked Vsevolozhskii whether the productions of the ballet and opera could be postponed until the next season: "I could complete my voyage to America without the torments, the doubts, and the fears; return home calm and rested from any conceivable traumas experienced in Paris and America, and enjoy working little by little, confident that I will be writing two masterpieces (pardon my immodesty)" [22]. On the same day, Tchaikovsky wrote of this to his brother Modest [23]. The next day, in a deep depression caused by the unexpected news of his sister's death, he wrote: "Even more than yesterday and the day before, I feel absolutely incapable of depicting Confitüremburg in music" [24]. On 20 April/2 May the composer wrote from New York to Eduard Nápravník: "I cannot start working again before June at the earliest... otherwise whatever I tried to write would turn out wretchedly" [25]. Ivan Vsevolozhskii agreed to postpone the ballet and the opera, and further work on the ballet was only resumed after Tchaikovsky’s return from America, in Maidanovo at the end of May 1891. "On 9th May I floated away from America ... on 20th May I arrived in Petersburg, and this morning here. Now I have started to work" [26]. On 3 June 1891, the composer told Petr Jurgenson that he was writing Act II of the ballet; he also asked him to send to Paris for a new orchestral instrument ("Celesta-Mustel"), "with a divinely unusual sound", which he wanted to use in the symphonic poem The Voevoda and in the ballet [27]. Letters to various correspondents during June refer to work on the ballet On 2 June the composer wrote to A. P. Merkling: "At this moment my work is coming along very successfully" [28]. On the same day he wrote to Praskov'ia Tchaikovskaia: "Work is proceeding intensively, and I’m glad that my travels are over" [29]. On 17 June, Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother Modest: "It is also good for me here, but work isn't going as quickly now as at first. There are unexpected distractions" [30]. On 25 June in a letter to Vladimir Davydov, Tchaikovsky wrote: "As promised, I can inform you that last evening I finished the rough sketches of the ballet. You remember when you were here that I boasted that I had something like five days’ work remaining to finish the ballet. It turned out that I hardly managed it in two weeks. No! Old age is obviously taking its toll... The ballet is immeasurably worse than The Sleeping Beauty - of this I am certain. Now let’s turn to the opera" [31]. On the same day, the composer told Modest Tchaikovsky and Aleksandra Hubert that he had finished the sketches, complaining that he was greatly tired, and "it seems the old man starting to take his last breaths" [32]. In a letter to Sergei Taneev of 27 June 1891, Tchaikovsky also reported that he had finished the ballet "with a feverish haste and the constant doubts that I would muster the energy to finish the ballet in rough" [33]. The sequence of sketches in Act II indicates that the composer adhered to Marius Petipa’s plan. In the divertissement, Tchaikovsky used dances that were originally written for Act I. And so, where the plan called for "Dances", under the title Le chocolat, Tchaikovsky noted: "Spanish dance, see 1st copybook"; the same applied for the dance Tea - "See 1st copybook" (the Chinese dance was used). Near to sketches for the dance Polichinella, Tchaikovsky wrote: "No. 3 - Giroflé-Giroflá, popular French song", i.e. here he employed an authentic folk song [34]. In the Pas de deux, Tchaikovsky omitted the male variation, and on a blank page he wrote: "Transfer from the 1st act (formerly the tarantella) but ½ tone lower", and wrote out the first two bars. After finishing the sketches of the ballet, Tchaikovsky left to spend some days in Saint Petersburg, and on his return he began to compose the opera Iolanta, and also to correct the full score of the opera Evgenii Onegin. It was considerably later that Tchaikovsky set about the instrumentation of the ballet, in January 1892, after he had already orchestrated the opera. He began by orchestrating the few numbers which were to be performed as a Suite from the ballet. In a letter to Petr Jurgenson of 25 January 1892 from Saint Petersburg, the composer reported: "I want to find the time to orchestrate some numbers from the new ballet, which I promised to play in the local Musical Society concert on 29 February" [35]. On 28 January he wrote to Petr Jurgenson: "I have started the instrumentation of those numbers from the ballet which are to go into the suite, and then I will do the remainder. I think it will be finished by the summer" [36]. The date at the start of the fair copy of the suite reads: "8 Feb. 1892, Maidanovo". On 17 March, Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother Modest: "My work is in full swing, and soon only the final markings will remain, and I hope to completely finish the score by Passion Week" [37]. On 23 March the instrumentation was completed (according to the date on the manuscript score). On 25 March he wrote to Jurgenson: "I have finished the ballet, all that remains is to add the final markings and put everything in order" [38]. Tchaikovsky was occupied from 15 July up to the end of August 1892 with proof-reading the score of the ballet, being published by Petr Jurgenson, while at the same time preparing the opera Iolanta for publication [39]. The Nutcracker was arranged for piano by Sergei Taneev, but in view of the difficulty of this arrangement, Tchaikovsky made a simplified one of his own. This work was carried out at the end of August [40]. The premiere of the ballet, and the opera Iolanta, took place on 6 December 1892 in Saint Petersburg, at the Mariinskii Theatre, conducted by Riccardo Drigo, and produced by the balletmaster Lev Ivanov. In Moscow the first production of The Nutcracker did not take place until 21 May 1919, in a production by the balletmaster A. A. Gorskii. The full score was published by Petr Jurgenson in 1892. The piano arrangements by Sergei Taneev and the author were also brought out in 1892 by the same publisher. From: Музыкальное наследие Чайковского (1958),
pp. 175-182 Notes:
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