User:Jonyungk/Sandbox4

Armament

In "The Seapower of the Nations" section of Army & Navy Illustrated, columnist John Leyland cites Admiral O'Neill's annual ordinance report to Congress that the aim of the US Navy "has always been ... to build vessels of all classes with great gun-power ... that they should be superior to foreign vessels of like classes in that respect." To illustrate this point, Leyland supplies a table comparing firepower and broadside weight of comparative foreign cruisers. Broadside weight includes main and secondary weapons

Name	Country	Displacement (tons)	Armament	Weight of discharge	Speed (knots)
Good Hope	Britain	14,100	2 x 9.2-inch (234 mm), 16 x 6-inch (152 mm)	2560	23
Tennessee	US	14,500	4 x 10-inch (254 mm), 16 x 6-inch (152 mm)	3900	22
Jules Ferry	France	12,550	4 x 7.6-inch (193 mm), 16 x 6.4-inch (163 mm)	2260	21
Furst Bismarck	Germany	10,650	4 x 9.2-inch (234 mm), 12 x 5.9-inch (150 mm)	3200	19

Main guns

The Tennessees' main armament consisted of four 10-inch (254 mm) 40-cal Mark 3 guns, which had a maximum elevation of 14.5 degrees. 60 rounds per gun were carried in peacetime, 72 rounds in wartime. They fired a 510-pound (231 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,700 feet per second (820 m/s) to a range of 20,000 yards (18,288 m) at maximum elevation at a rate of 2 - 3 rounds per minute. These guns were mounted in twin turrets fore and aft.

Secondary guns

The secondary armament was comprised of 16 6-inch (152 mm) 40-cal Mark 6 or 8 guns. 200 rounds per gun were carried. They fired a 105-pound (48 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,800 feet per second (850 m/s) at a rate of about 6 rounds per minute. They were mounted singly in casemates on either side of the hull.

The Mark 6 and 8 6-inch guns were originally used to arm American pre-dreadnoughts in the late 1880s. Many of these guns were reassigned as coastal artillery when the vessels to which they had been previously assigned had been scrapped as a result of the Washington Naval Limitation Treaty, the guns were then used as coastal artillery. Some were also mounted on older auxiliary vessels during World War II. Built entirely of nickel steel, these guns deviate from standard Navy practice in that their nominal caliber length was their actual overall length.

Anti-torpedo boat weapons

22 3-inch (76 mm) Marks 2, 3, 5, 6 or 8 50 cal guns in single mountings to a maximum elevation of 43 degrees. They fired a 24-pound (11 kg) shell at a muzzle velocity of 2,700 feet per second (820 m/s) to a range of 14,600 yards (13,350 m) at maximum elevation at a rate of 15 - 20 rounds per minute. This series of built-up guns, which fired fixed ammunition, dated to the 1890s and were the standard anti-torpedo boat gun used in late pre-dreadnoughts, armored cruisers, destroyers and submarines.

Music

See also: List of compositions by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Symphonies by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Original cast of Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, Saint Petersburg, 1890

Tchaikovsky wrote many works which are popular with the classical music public, including his Romeo and Juliet, the 1812 Overture, his three ballets (The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty) and Marche Slave. These, along with two of his four concertos, the last three of his six numbered symphonies and, of his eight extant operas, The Queen of Spades and Eugene Onegin, are among his most familiar works. Almost as popular are the Manfred Symphony, Francesca da Rimini, the Capriccio Italien and the Serenade for Strings.

Compositional style

Ideally, Tchaikovsky's training at the St. Petersburg Conservatory would have allowed him to compose in flawless European style. In real life, Tchaikovsky was still drawn strongly to and inspired to write music in the style he had heard all his life—that is to say, Russian music—which in several ways worked in opposition to Western ones. In short, Tchaikovsky's Russianness could work as much against him as it did for him. [ADD FROM HERE ON HIS RECONCILING THESE TWO SEEMINGLY OPPOSITE TYPES OF MUSIC IN HIS STYLE]

Creative range

Tchaikovsky displayed an unusually wide stylistic and emotional range, from salon works of innocuous charm to symphonies of tremendous depth, power and grandeur. Some of his works, such as the Variations on a Rococo Theme, employ a poised "Classical" form reminiscent of 18th century composers such as Mozart (the composer whose work was his favorite). Others, such as his Little Russian symphony and his opera Vakula the Smith, flirt with musical practices more akin to those of the Five, especially in their use of folk song. Others, such as the last three symphonies, employ a personal musical idiom that facilitated intense emotional expression.

Melody

Tchaikovsky's melodies are as wide-ranging as the styles of his compositions. Sometimes he used Western-style melodies. At other times he used original melodies written in the style of Russian folk song. Sometimes he used actual folk songs. Musicologist John Warrack notes that "the obsessive thirds of Russian folk-song permeate Tchaikovsky's tunes; and he must also at some time been haunted by the interval of the falling fourth, so strongly does it colour the invention in the early symphonies, always prominently placed in the melodies and acting as emotional coloration rather than implying a harmonic progression."

Harmony

Harmony was a potential trap for Tchaikovsky, according to Brown. Russian creativity revolved around inertia, he explains, with plays, novels and operas that were essentially a series of self-enclosed tableau strung together.. Western harmony, conversely, was a study in motion. It propelled the music and, on a larger scale, gave it shape. Modulation, the shifting from one key to another, was a key factor. In sonata form, it maintained harmonic interest over an extended time-scale, provided a clear contrast between musical themes and showed how those themes were related to each other, all important factors in determining large-scale structure. These principles were part of Tchaikovsky's studies at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. How he put them into practice without sacrificing his individuality, Brown states, was a potentially great challenge. A factor that may have helped was "a flair for harmony" that "astonished" Rudolph Kündinger, Tchaikovsky's music tutor during his time at the School of Jurisprudence. That flare, added to his Conservatory studies, may have aided Tchaikovsky in employing a varied range of harmony in his music, from the Western harmonic and textural practices of his first two string quartets to the use of the whole tone scale in the center of the finale of the Second Symphony, a practice more typically used by The Five.

Tchaikovsky often follows European practice of harmonic progression, according to Brown, such as using the circle of fifths to undergird the love theme of Romeo and Juliet. Occasionally, though, he falls back on Russian practice, in Romeo oscillating at times "between passages of almost static harmony and others where the fundamental bass movement is solidly, sometimes swiftly, in fifths." In the development section of Romeo, he lets the harmony rock between two chords with only one held note in common. This was a practice taken from Glinka's opera Ruslan and Lyudmila, Brown says, and would become "a minor fingerprint of Russian harmony." Other Russian features include the liberal use of pedal points and chromaticism for decorative counterpoint and as an abrasive counterfoil to a melody.

Tchaikovsky's use of chromaticism is sometimes, like Glinka, for what Brown calls "decorative counterpoint" and ranges from single notes used in passing or as dissonance or "extended scales that may be set quite abrasively against the melody. Tchaikovsky usually favors "the major triad [a chord in the major scale having just three notes—a root, a major third, and a perfect fifth.] on the flattened submediant [sixth degree of the scale, such as A-flat in the C-major scale, for example] in a major key context , an elevation to the harmonic status of a note which had been, since Glinka, the favored chromatic degree of the scale for Russian composers."

[ALSO SEE GLINKA IN 1980 NEW GROVE RE. CHANGING BACKGROUND TECHNIQUE]

"Tchaikovsky, too, used the changing background technique in parts of his Second Symphony, notably in the first subject of the finale; later in this same movement he used the whole tone scale in the bass, following the examphe of Glinka in Chermonor's music in Ruslan and Lyudmila.... In the development section of Romeo and Juliet there also occurs another feature of Chernomor's music, the alteration around a single held note of two chords which are unrelated except they have this note in common. This particular harmonic trick was to become a minor fingerprint of Russian harmony."

Harmony, according to Brown, could have potentially caused Tchaikovsky "a real conflict," not simply from having to reconcile Russian and Western practices but because of a possible creative conflict. Russian creativity revolved around inertia, Brown explains, with plays, novels and operas that were essentially a series of self-enclosed tableau strung together. Harmony in Western music, conversely, was a study in motion. It "gave the music its propulsive power, and [its] wider structures gave [the music] shape." A key component is modulation, the shifting from one key to another, which could have structural significance. For instance, a modulation in sonata form separates the first theme from the second. Tchaikovsky learned to do this at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. How he would have employed this principle in his music without sacrificing his individuality, Brown states, was another matter entirely.

Tchaikovsky was apparently adept at Western harmony before entering the Conservatory. Rudolph Kündinger, the composer's music tutor during his years at the School of Jurisprudence, noted that Tchaikovsky displayed a "flair for harmony" that at times "astonished" him and that sometimes, when Kündinger would show Tchaikovsky some of his compositions, "several times he gave me advice about harmony."

According to Brown, Tchaikovsky practiced a wide range of harmony, from the Western harmonic and textural practices of his first two string quartets to the use of the whole tone scale in the center of the finale of the Second Symphony, a practice more typically used by The Five. Brown says Tchaikovsky usually relies on conventional harmonic progressions (for example, relying on the circle of fifths for the harmonic underpinnings of the love theme of Romeo and Juliet), though he could frequently be liberal in the use of pedal points, a typical feature of Russian composers.

Tchaikovsky's use of chromaticism is sometimes, like Glinka, for what Brown calls "decorative counterpoint" and ranges from single notes used in passing or as dissonance or "extended scales that may be set quite abrasively against the melody. Tchaikovsky usually favors "the major triad [a chord in the major scale having just three notes—a root, a major third, and a perfect fifth.] on the flattened submediant [sixth degree of the scale, such as A-flat in the C-major scale, for example] in a major key context , an elevation to the harmonic status of a note which had been, since Glinka, the favored chromatic degree of the scale for Russian composers."

Rhythm

Rhythmcally, Tchaikovsky sometimes experimented with unusual meters. More often, he used in a firm, regular meter, a practice that served him well in writing dance music. At times, his rhythms become pronounced enough to become the main expressive agent of the music. They also became a means of synthetic propulsion in large-scale symphonic movements, taking the place of organic progression that would take place in strict sonata form as contrasting themes combined and interacted. Rhythmic displacement and fragmentation, along with overlays of duple and triple meter, become important keys in Tchaikovsky’s use of repetition. Botstein uses the Fourth Symphony as example. There, "the 9/8 meter of the main body of the first movement provided the composer with a myriad of subtle transformations that never mask the repetition but provide each statement or partial statement with renewed interest and dramatic function."

Structure

Tchaikovsky struggled with sonata form, the primary Western principle for building large-scale musical structures since the middle of the 18th century. It was alien to Russian compositional practices and did not take into account the heightened emotional statements that many Romantic-era composers were inclined to make. The solution Tchaikovsky hit upon while composing the Fourth Symphony, which he would refine in his remaining two numbered symphonies and other works, was the integration of new and violent contrasts, not only between the first subject in the tonic key and the contrasting second subject in the dominant but also between thematic and harmonic contrasts. This juxtaposition of thematic and tonal blocks added both contrast and intense drama to Tchaikovsky's music.

My reworking of paragraph below

Tchaikovsky struggled with sonata form. Its principle of organic growth through the interplay of musical themes was alien to Russian practice, which placed themes into a series of self-contained sections with no interaction or clear transition from one section to the next. Without organic growth, building a large-scale, evolving musical structure would be daunting, if not impossible. Nor did sonata form take into account the heightened emotional statements that many Romantic-era composers were inclined to make since it was designed to operate on a logical, intellectual level, not an emotive one.

According to Brown and musicologist Hans Keller, Tchaikovksy found his solution to large-scale structure, while composing the Fourth Symphony, by sidestepping thematic interaction and focusing on juxtaposition. Instead of offering "a rich and well-ordered argument," he integrates "new and violent contrasts" between musical themes, keys and harmonies by placing blocks of dissimilar tonal and thematic material alongside one another. An important part of this process, Keller states, is that "thematic and harmonic contrasts" are "not allowed to coincide." Mozart, Keller writes, evidently preceded Tchaikovsky in this tactic of modulatory delay and may have helped give Tchaikovsky the impetus in attempting it himself, although Tchaikovsky develops this form of contrast "on an unprecedented scale."

Keller offers the second theme in the first movement of the Fourth Symphony as an example of how this process works. In sonata form, he writes, the first subject enters in the tonic and the second subject follows in a contrasting but related key harmonically. Tension occurs when the music (and the listener with it) is pulled away from the tonic. Tchaikovsky "not only increases the contrasts between the themes on the one hand and the keys on the other," but ups the ante by introducing his second theme in a key unrelated to the first theme and delaying the transition to the expected key. In the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, Tchaikovsky introduces the second theme in A-flat minor. Since the symphony is written in the key of F minor, sonata form dictates that the second theme should go either to the relative major (A flat major) or the dominant (C minor). By the time Tchaikovsky establishes the relative major, this theme has finished playing. Thus, Keller says, "the thematic second subject precedes the harmonic second subject" (italics Keller).

This process, according to Brown and Kelle, builds momentum and adds intense drama. While the result, Warrack charges, is still "an ingenious episodic treatment of two tunes rather than a symphonic development of them" in the Germanic sense, Brown counters that it took the listener of the period "through a succession of often highly charged sections which added up to a radically new kind of symphonic experience," one that functioned not on the basis of summation, as Austro-German symphonies did, but on one of accumulation.

Keller's analysis

I removed this from the article:

According to musicologist Hans Keller, the solution Tchaikovsky hit upon while composing the Fourth Symphony, which he refined in his remaining two numbered symphonies, was the integration of new and violent contrasts—between musical themes, keys and "thematic and harmonic contrasts, which are therefore not allowed to coincide." Citing Mozart as an influence in Tchaikovsky's use of thematic and harmonic contrast, Keller uses the second theme in the first movement of the Fourth Symphony as an example. This movement is written in the key of F minor. Keller states that, according to Western European rules of harmony and the circle of fifths that then prevailed in it, the second theme should be in the dominant key of B major. Instead, it is in A-flat minor. By the time B major has finally established itself, this theme has finished playing. Thus, Keller says, "the thematic second subject precedes the harmonic second subject" (italics Keller). While this juxtaposition of thematic and tonal blocks could still be seen as an episodic treatment of large-scale form, rather than an "organic, evolutionary" one, it provided needed contrast and added intense drama.

It seems garbled, and I don't have the symphony's score to hand or access to the reference, so I brought it here for clarification. B major is not the dominant of F minor. Sonata form in the minor is surely usually expected to go the the relative major (F minor -> A flat major) or the dominant (F minor -> C minor). Expectations of 2nd key are not totally ingrained - think of Beethoven's sonata form movements like the Waldstein's first movement which has the second subject in the mediant. Has something been lost in the translation? I am trying to tease out the meaning of the paragraph, because I think it is getting at something worth saying. --RobertG ♬ talk 08:52, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

These points could have been addressed without removing the paragraph. The comment "[it is actually A flat major] could have been inserted in brackets as an ed./WP parenthetical comment. The main point Keller seems to make (and this took a couple of days for me to ponder through as, despite his apparent reputation and inclusion by Simpson in his anthology, he is frustratingly unclear and fragmentary at times) is that Tchaikovksy's approach to large-scale structure was not by the interaction of themes dictated by strict sonata form but by the juxtaposition of contrasting tonal and thematic blocks. This juxtaposition was actually closer to the mechanics in many Russian folk songs, which operate, according to Brown, as a series of self-contained melodic units without any transition from one to the next. According to Keller, the fact that a contrasting block does not settle into its normally expected tonality, or the passage itself does not settle into that tonality until well after that block has appeared, either prolongs or adds tension to the music. Mozart, Keller writes, evidently preceded Tchaikovsky in this apparent modulatory delay (some help on the exact phrasing or better way of describing what I'm trying to say here?) and may have helped give Tchaikovsky the impetus in attempting it himself. Could we possibly tweak this paragraph and insert it into the article in place of the other one? At least it's that much clearer—I think. Jonyungk (talk) 13:19, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Just found this corroboration in Brown's Final Years while looking for something unrelated: "For Tchaikovsky himself the symphony was 'the most lyrical of forms', but shot through with drama; its momentum stemmed not so much from continuity of thought as from striking juxtapositions, and its effect upon the listener came less from a rich and well ordered argument than from taking him through a succession of often highly charged sections which added up to a radically new kind of symphonic experience." (p. 426, italics Brown) Jonyungk (talk) 14:38, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for that. I see why you had to ponder it for a while. Your explanation does make it clearer, so perhaps we could add something of it as you suggest, but are we getting close to synthesis? Perhaps I need to ponder it for a bit myself, and listen to the symphony again. I'd be happy for you to put the para back since it obviously isn't as garbled as I thought. I share your opinion of Keller, though. --RobertG ♬ talk 22:36, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

You're welcome and thanks for the green light on putting back the paragraph. That, in think in the light of discussion here, though, is only a start. It could probably use a bit of "unpacking" and clarification with some of the material here added. After all, if you had problems with it, and you're a trained musician, what are lay people reading this aritcle going to think? As for "synthesis" (someone else accused me of that regarding the Sexuality section—how I hate that term), I don't think we're there yet. Brown and Keller basically complement each other on the concept of juxtaposition, so we don't seem to be force-fitting decidedly separate pieces into a questionable composite. Maybe once I've worked everything over in my sandbox and stripped it in place of the current paragraph, everything will be clear. Jonyungk (talk) 23:07, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Repetition

Repetition is a natural part of Russian music—many folk songs are essentially a series of variations on one basic shape or pattern of a few notes. It is also a natural part of Tchaikovsky's music. His use of sequences within melodies—repeating that tune at a higher or lower pitch in the same voice—could go on for extreme length. The problem with repetition is that, over a length of time, everything remain static. Nothing really moves or goes anywhere. Sonata form, on the other hand, operates by movement and progression. Two contrasting themes interact like people in a conversation or an argument. They discuss an issue, agree, disagree, but the conversation is always going somewhere, growing and building toward some conclusion. If a conversation, and by extension a musical work in sonata form, becomes static, everything stalls.

The key Tchaikovsky found to keep the conversation flowing while essentially repeating himself was to integrate melody, tonality, rhythm and sound color as an indivisible whole, rather than as separate elements. By making subtle but noticeable changes in the rhythm or phrasing of a tune, modulating to another key, changing the melody itself or varying the instruments playing it, Tchaikovsky could keep a listener's interest from flagging. By extending the number of repetitions, he could increase the musical and dramatic tension of a passage, building "into an emotional experience of almost unbearable intensity," as Brown phrases it, controlling when the peak and release of that tension would take place.

Orchestration

Like other late Romantic composers, Tchaikovsky relied heavily on orchestration for musical effects. Tchaikovsky, however, became noted for the "sensual opulence" and "voluptuous timbrel virtuosity" of his scoring. Like Glinka, Tchaikovsky tended toward bright primary colors and sharply delineated contrasts of texture. However, beginning with the Third Symphony, Tchaikovsky began experimenting with an increased variety and range of timbres He continued further along this path with the Fourth Symphony and the orchestral suites, especially the Second. By the time he scored the scherzo of the Manfred symphony, Tchaikovsky was able to conjure "a kaleidoscopic web of delicate sound of remarkable virtuosity." Tchaikovsky tends to balance timbrel extremes, matching high, delicate tones with darker, sometimes gloomier ones. The most familiar example of his extreme range of sound is in The Nutcracker.

Self-expression

Musicologist Francis Maes writes that self-expression "was not as central to [Tchaikovsky's] aesthetic as is generally believed." Nevertheless, the intensity of personal emotion Tchaikovsky displayed in pieces such as the Fourth Symphony was entirely new to Russian music, prompting some Russian commentators to place his name alongside that of novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The critic Osoovski wrote of Tchaikovsky and Dostoyevsky: "With a hidden passion they both stop at moments of horror, total spiritual collapse, and finding acute sweetness in the cold trepidation of the heart before the abyss, they both force the reader to experience those feelings, too."

Antecedents and influences

Of his Western contemporaries, Schumann stands out as an influence in formal structure, harmonic practices and piano writing. The late-Romantic trend for writing orchestral suites, begun by Franz Lachner, Jules Massenet and Joachim Raff after the rediscovery of Bach's orchestral suites, may have influenced Tchaikovsky to try his own hand at them. His teacher Anton Rubinstein's opera The Demon became a model for the final tableau of Eugene Onegin, as did Bizet's Carmen (a work be admired tremendously) for The Queen of Spades. Otherwise, it was to composers of the past that Tchaikovsky turned—Beethoven, whose music he respected, and Mozart, whose music he loved. Beethoven's string quartets may have influenced Tchaikovsky's attempts in that medium and he emulated Mozart ... On a practical level, Tchaikovsky was drawn to past styles because he felt he might find the solution to certain structural problems within them. His Rococo pastiches also may have offered escape into a musical world purer than his own, into which he felt himself irresistibly drawn. (In this sense, Tchaikovsky operated in opposite manner to Igor Stravinsky, who turned to Neoclasicism partly as a form of compositional self-discovery.) Tchaikovsky's attraction to ballet might have allowed a similar refuge into a fairy-tale world, where he could freely exercise his talent for writing memorable dance music within a tradition of French elegance.

Aesthetic impact

Regardless of what he was writing, Tchaikovsky's main concern was how his music impacted his listeners on an aesthetic level, at specific moments in the piece and on a cumulative level once the music had finished. This meant that, instead of the intellectual working-out of themes in the manner of Beethoven or Brahms, Tchaikovsky focused on how his listeners would respond to a beautiful melody, how captivated they would be with the instrument or instruments playing it or how moved they would be with the emotional build-up and release in a musical passage. What his listeners experienced on an emotional or visceral level became an end in itself. Tchaikovsky's focus on pleasing his audience might be considered closer to that of Mendelssohn or Mozart. Considering he lived and worked in what was probably the last 18th feudal naton, the statement is not actually that surprising.

Tchaikovsky saw no conflict in making his music accessible to his listeners or playing to their tastes. He remained highly sensitive to their concerns and expectations and searched constantly for new ways to meet them. His use of stylized 18th-century melodies and patriotic themes was geared toward the values of Russian aristocracy. He was aided in this by Ivan Vsevolozhsky, who commissioned The Sleeping Beauty from Tchaikovsky and the libretto for The Queen of Spades from Modest with their use of 18th century settings stipulated firmly. He also used the polonaise frequently, which was a code for the Romonov dynasty and a musical symbol of Russian patriotism. Using it in the finale of a work could assure its success with Russian listeners.

Genres

Ballets

Original cast in the Imperial Ballet's original production of Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker, December 1892

Tchaikovsky's three ballets forced an aesthetic re-evaluation of music for that genre. Before them, ballet music was written by specialists, such as Ludwig Minkus and Cesare Pugni, "who wrote nothing else and knew all the tricks of the trade." Tchaikovsky's talents may have equipped him ideally for ballet. He was gifted melodically, able to write memorable dance music with great fluency, responsive to a theatrical atmosphere and proved a highly gifted orchestrator. Despite initial complaints that Swan Lake was "too learned" and The Sleeping Beauty unusually complicated for ballet dancing, both works have become popular. The Nutcracker, conceived as a ballet where children would play the leading roles, balances "a calculated naviete with concern for detail and characterization." It too came under criticism, for the "nonsense" of the story as well as the ballet's structure, which was exceedingly free and original for its day. Paradoxically, both these perceived weaknesses ultimately worked to its advantage.

Operas

Most of Tchaikovsky's operas failed for three reasons. First, the composer could not get good librettos, despite continued requests to some of Russia's leading playwrights and his brother Modest. Second, he was no Verdi, Puccini or Leoncavalo. While he could write music that was often beautiful and sometimes very moving, it was generally not as arresting dramatically as anything those three provided. Third, and perhaps most sadly, Tchaikovsky's enthusiasm for opera writing did not match his theatrical sense. This need to plan or compose an opera was a constant preoccupation. Apparently either unaware of this deficiency or unable to curb his excitement long enough to take a cold, hard look at the true stage-worthiness of a libretto, he seemed destined to repeat his failures.

Tchaikovsky broke this pattern twice. Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades were both strong stories, worthy of setting to music. Their author, Alexander Pushkin, was, if nothing else, a master storyteller. He was also a keep observer of human nature and his wry, penetrating observations of the human condition could be chilling and heart-breaking in the extreme. Moreover, both stories were a perfect match for the composer's talents. Tchaikovsky matched Pushkin's irony and detachment in Eugene Onegin, falling back on a series of musical conventions that, in turn, echoed the literary codes the author used in his "novel in verse." More traditional writers, such as musicologist David Brown, also suggest that a passion and sympathy by the composer for the heroine, Tatiyana, heightened by parallels in the story to events in his own life, may have influenced the quality of music he supplied for Onegin.

With The Queen of Spades, Modest's transposition of the story's timeline in the libretto to the 18th century was a boon for Tchaikovsky, whose favorite composer (and the one he most liked to emulate) was Mozart. The change allowed him to compose, in addition to impassioned love music, a number of 18th century pastiches depicting various social milieus. Also, as the supernatural gradually takes possession of the characters, Tchaikovsky matches it with equally ghostly music. He had already experimented in this vein in the transformation scene of The Sleeping Beauty showing an adeptness for orchestrating a strange, even unnerving sound world of dark fantasy. He would do so again in Act One of The Nutcracker, capturing what Alexandre Benois would call a "world of captivating nightmares" and "a mixture of strange truth and convincing invention."

Symphonies

Tchaikovsky's first three symphonies, while seemingly optimistic and nationalistic, are also chronicles of his attempts to reconcile his training from the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Russian folk music and his own innate penchant for melody. Both worked against sonata form, the paramount architectural concept in Western classical music, not with it. The First nearly drove him to a nervous breakdown. It is innocently charming and, on hearing it, is easy to see why it remained close to his heart, even with its flaws. In the outer movements of the Second, Tchaikovsky came closest to harnessing the harmonic, melodic and rhythmic quirks of Russian folk music to form a symphonic structure. Even so, the composer was not satisfied and eventually rewrote the opening movement along very different lines. The Third Symphony, written in the five-movement pattern of Schumann's Rhenish Symphony, functions more along the lines of his later orchestral suites, with its movements widely contrasting between those written in a more orthodox symphonic manner and others in a highter, dance-like vein. The composer's penchant for light and varied orchestral textures also begins asserting itself in this work.

With the Fourth Symphony, Tchaikovsky hit upon a solution, which he would refine in his remaining two numbered symphonies—the integration of new and violent contrasts, not only between the first subject in the tonic key and the contrasting second subject in the dominant but also between thematic and harmonic contrasts. As a result, the later symphonies became intensely dramatic. The Fourth, particularly in its very large opening movement, was a breakthrough work in emotional depth and complexity. The Fifth, while still not conventional, proved more regular, while the Sixth, the Pathetique, is a work of prodigious originality and power. Generally considered a declaration of despair, it is perhaps one of the composer's most consistent and perfectly composed works..

Concertos and concertante works

Main theme of the First Piano Concerto, (piano part)

Tchaikovsky wrote four concertos (three for piano, one for violin), two concertante works for soloist and orchestra (one each for piano and cello) and a couple of short works. The First Piano Concerto, while faulted traditionally for having its opening melody in the wrong key and never restating that tune in the rest of the piece, shows an expert use of tonal instability to enhance tension and increase the tone of restlessness and high drama. The Violin Concerto, one of Tchaikovsky's freshest-sounding and least pretentious works, is filled with melodies that could have easily come from one of his ballets. The Second Piano Concerto, more formal in tone and less extroverted than the First, has never equaled it in popularity. The second movement contains prominent solos for violin and cello, giving the impression of a concerto grosso for piano trio and orchestra. The Third Piano Concerto, initially the opening movement of a symphony in E flat, was left on Tchaikovsky's death as a single-movement composition. It is unclear whether he would have added two more movements or left it as is. Tchaikovsky also promised a concerto for cello to Anatoliy Brandukov and one for flute to Claude-Paul Taffanel but died before he could work on either project in earnest.

Of the concertante works, the Variations on a Rococo Theme for cello and orchestra was inspired by Mozart and shows Tchaikovsky's affinity for Classical style in its tastefulness and refined poise. The Concert Fantasia for piano and orchestra is related in its light tone and unorthodox formal structure to the orchestral suites. (The opening movement, in fact, had originally been intended for the Third Suite.) Written as a display piece for the soloist, it hearkens back to a time when audiences concentrated more on the virtuosity of the performer than on the musical content of the piece being played. The Andante and Finale for piano and orchestra was completed and orchestrated posthumously by Taneyev. Originally the second and fourth movements of the E-flat symphony, it is unclear whether Tchaikovsky would have used them to expand the Third Piano Concerto into a full-length work.

Other orchestral works

Program music

Tchaikovsky wrote programmatic music throughout his career. While he complained to von Meck that doing so seemed like offering the public "paper money" as opposed to the "gold coin" of absolute music, he displayed a definite flair for the genre. The fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet remains one of Tchaikovsky's best known works and its love theme among his most successful melodies. The piece, however, is actually one of three he wrote after works by Shakespeare. The Tempest, while not as successful overall as Romeo, contains a love theme that is extremely effective. Hamlet differs from Romeo in depicting different emotional or psychological states of the title character rather than portraying specific events, an approach more akin to Liszt in his symphonic poems.

Among the other works, Capriccio Italien is a travelogue of the composer's time there during his years of wandering and a conscious emulation of the Mediterranean episodes in Glinka's Spanish Overtures. Francesca da Rimini contains a love theme in its central section that is one of Tchaikovsky's best examples of "unending melody." The composer was particularly fond of this work and conducted it often, most notably at Cambridge when he received his honorary doctorate in 1892. He was more ambivalent about his program symphony Manfred, inspired by Byron's poem of the same name and written to a program supplied by Balakirev. Written in four movements and for the largest orchestra Tchaikovsky employed, the piece remains a rarity in the concert hall but is being recorded with increasing frequency. The Storm and Fatum are early works; The Voyevoda dates from the same period as the Pathetique symphony.

Orchestral suites and Serenade

Tchaikovsky wrote four orchestral suites in the period between his Fourth and Fifth Symphonies. The first three are original music, while the fourth, subtitled Mozartiana, is comprised of arrangements of music by Mozart. He valued the freedom the suites gave him to experiment and saw them as a genre for unrestricted musical fantasy. They contain music in a number of styles—scholarly counterpoint, salon style, folk music, bizarre scherzos, character pieces—in an overall vein that Russians call prelest, which means "charming" or "pleasing".

Like Capriccio Italien, the Serenade for Strings was inspired by Tchaikovsky's time in Italy and shares that work's relaxed buoyancy and melodic richenss. The first movement, "Pezzo in forma di Sonatina" ("In the form of a sonatina"), was an homage to Mozart. It shares some formal features with that composer's Overture to Le Nozze di Figaro but otherwise emulates his music only in wit and lightness, not in style.

Commissioned works

The 1812 Overture is known for its traditional Russian themes (such as the old Tsarist National Anthem) as well as its 16 cannon shots and chorus of church bells in the coda. Though he did not value the piece highly, it has become perhaps his most widely known composition. Marche Slave (otherwise known as the Slavonic March) is a patriotic piece commissioned for a Red Cross benefit concert to support Russian troops in the Balkans. Other commissioned works include a Festival Overture on the Danish National Anthem, written to commemorate the wedding of Crown Prince Alexander (who would become Alexander III), and a Festival Coronation March, ordered by the city of Moscow for the coronation of Alexander III.

Incidental music

• Dmitri the Pretender and Vassily Shuisky (1867), incidental music to Alexander Ostrovsky's play Dmitri the Pretender
• The Snow Maiden (Snegurochka), Op. 12 (1873), incidental music for Ostrovsky's play of the same name. Ostrovsky adapted and dramatized a popular Russian fairy tale, and the score that Tchaikovsky wrote for it was always one of his own favorite works. It contains much vocal music, but it is not a cantata or an opera.
• Montenegrins Receiving News of Russia's Declaration of War on Turkey (1880), music for a tableau.
• The Voyevoda (1886), incidental music for the Domovoy scene from Ostrovsky's A Dream on the Volga
• Hamlet, Op. 67b (1891), incidental music for Shakespeare's play. The score uses music borrowed from Tchaikovsky's overture of the same name, as well as from his Symphony No. 3, and from The Snow Maiden, in addition to original music that he wrote specifically for a stage production of Hamlet. The two vocal selections are a song that Ophelia sings in the throes of her madness, and a song for the First Gravedigger to sing as he goes about his work.

Chamber music

Ironically, Tchaikovsky's best-known piece of chamber music has probably never been heard in its original form by many listeners. The Andante Cantabile from his First String Quartet became widely popular and has been arranged for a number of forces. Critical opinion on Tchaikovsky's three string quartets, all written in early years of his career, has been divided. One view is that Tchaikovsky may have felt hindered by the quartet medium, as it did not allow for the dramatic contrasts or grand rhetorical statements possible in an orchestra. Another is that he found the form natural and wrote for it accordingly. The quartets were popular in Tchaikovsky but have since been heard less often, with the exception of the Andante Cantabile. The other movements of the First Quartet show a freshness of invention but comes across as self-conscious and lacking individuality. The Second String Quartet shows a greater fluency but lacks the freshness of its predecessor and is bland. The Third String Quartet, written in memory of the composer's friend, violinist Ferdinand Laub, is most noted for its intensely elegiac slow movement. Overall, the quartet is an improvement over the Second.

Souvenir d'un lieu cher, for violin and piano, was dedicated to Iosef Kotek in lieu of his not having the Violin Concerto dedicated to him, though he was instrumental in helping Tchaikovsky compose the latter. The Piano Trio contains an elaborate piano part and is structured in two movements. The second is a long set of variations based on a tune Tchaikovsky associated with Nikolai Rubinstein. Likewise, each variation referred to a different incident in Rubinstein's life. The relaxed, pleasantly urbane Souvenir de Florence (Recollections of Florence) for string sextet is another of Tchaikovsky's Neoclassical pieces, in much teh same vein as the Serenade for Strings.

Piano music and songs

Tchaikovsky wrote over a hundred piano works, covering the entire span of his creative life, the most famous of which is the 12-piece set known as The Seasons. The piano works, while in many cases salon works targeted for amateurs, can challenge a player occasionally. Despite their reputation for being second rate in inspiration, they can be more attractive in their melodies and resourceful in what Tchaikovsky does with those tunes than what might be expected.

Recitalists continue to perform some of Tchaikovsky's 106 songs. The song "None but the Lonely Heart" from Tchaikovsky's Op. 6 set became another popular piece.

Choral music

A considerable quantity of choral music (about 25 items), including:

• Cantata (Hymn) on the Occasion of the Celebration of the 50th Jubilee of the Singer Osip Afanasievich Petrov, tenor, chorus and orchestra, words by Nikolay Nekrasov (1875; performed at the St Petersburg Conservatory on 6 May 1876, under the conductor Karl Davydov)
• Liturgy of St John Chrysostom, Op. 41 (1878)
• Russian Vesper Service, Op. 52 (1881)

Reception

Dedicatees and collaborators

Tchaikovsky received a mixed reception from the people for whom he wrote was mixed. Like Nikolai Rubinstein with the First Piano Concerto, virtuoso and pedagogue Leopold Auer rejected the Violin Concerto initially but accepted the work eventually, played it to great public success and taught it to his students, which included Jascha Heifitz and Nathan Milstein. More disturbing was Wilhelm Fitzenhagen's treatment of the Variations on a Rococo Theme. "Fitzenhagen intervened considerably in shaping what he considered 'his' piece," music critic Michael Steinberg writes. Fitzenhangen dropped one variation, reshuffled the order of the others (which necessitated further cuts and splices) and added notes to the solo part in the autograph copy of the score, all to increase the showiness of the piece. This time Tchaikovsky did nothing, though he was angered by Fitzenhagen's license, and the Rococo Variations were published with the cellist's amendments. The composer's original has since been published but most cellists still perform Fitzenhagen's version.

Tchaikovsky's collaborations on his three ballets proved more consistently positive and in Marius Petipa, who worked with him on the last two, the composer may have had a true advocate. Petipa and Tchaikovsky accorded each other the utmost respect and civility. When The Sleeping Beauty was seen by its dancers as needlessly complicated, Pepita went out of his way to convince them that the music was worth the extra effort. For his part, Tchaikovsky understood he had to compromise to make his music as practical as possible for the dancers and otherwise had more creative freedom than ballet composers were usually accorded. He responded with scores that minimized the rhythmic subtleties normally present in his work but were inventive and rich in melody, with more refined and imaginative orchestration than in the average ballet score.

Critics

Tchaikovsky's reception with critics inside and outside Russian was mixed but has improved. Inside Russia, even after Dostoyevsky's address, many considered Tchaikovsky suspect for two reasons—that his music was not Russian enough and that Western European critics appreciated it because it was more like theirs than that of the nationalists. At least in the latter, there may have been a grain of truth as critics, especially in the Germanic countries, lauded him for the "indeterminacy of his artistic character" and for "being truly at home in the non-Russian. Of the naysayers, Viennese music critic Eduard Hanslick lambasted the Violin Concerto as a musical composition "whose stink one can hear" and Boston music critic William Forster Abtrop wrote of the Fifth Symphony, "The furious peroration sounds like nothing so much as a hoard of demons struggling in a torrent of brandy, the music growing drunker and drunker. Pandemonium, delerium tremens, raving, and above all, noise were confounded!

In his notes for a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance of the Fifth Symphony, William Forster Abtrop wrote of the work's "originally and the genuineness of its fire and sentiment." When he reviewed the same work for the Boston Evening Transcript, however, he wrote, "The furious peroration sounds like nothing so much as a hoard of demons struggling in a torrent of brandy, the music growing drunker and drunker. Pandemonium, delerium tremens, raving, and above all, noise were confounded! George Bernard Shaw, in reviewing the Fourth Symphony when the composer conducted it in London in 1893, was less pictorial than Abtrop but likewise found fault, noting that "Tschaikowsky [sic] often sticks to the same key rather longer than the freshness of his melodic resources warrants. He also insists upon some of his conceits—for instance, that Kentish Fire interlude in the slow movement—more than they sound worth to me, but perhaps fresh young listeners with healthy appetites would not agree with me.

To many critics, the same qualities in Tchaikovsky's music that appealed to audiences—its strong emotions, directness and eloquence and colorful orchestration—added up to compositional shallowness. Its use in popular and film music lowered its esteem in their eyes still further. The fact that the composer did not follow sonata form strictly, relying instead on juxtaposing blocks of tonalities and thematic groups, has been seen at times as a weakness rather than a sign of originality. Even with what Schonberg termed "a professional reevaluaton" of Tchaikovsky's work, the practice of faulting Tchaikovsky for not following in the steps of the Viennese masters has not gone away entirely, while his intent of writing music that would please his audiences is also sometimes taken to task. In a 1992 article, New York Times critic Allan Kozinn writes, "It is Tchaikovsky's flexibility, after all, that has given us a sense of his variability.... Tchaikovsky was capable of turning out music—entertaining and widely beloved though it is—that seems superficial, manipulative and trivial when regarded in the context of the whole literature. The First Piano Concerto is a case in point. It makes a joyful noise, it swims in pretty tunes and its dramatic rhetoric allows (or even requires) a soloist to make a grand, swashbuckling impression. But it is entirely hollow."

More often than in the past, however, critics are reacting positively to Tchaikovsky's tunefulness and craftsmanship. "Tchaikovsky is being viewed again as a composer of the first rank, writing music of depth, innovation and influence," according to cultural historian and author Joseph Horowitz. Important in this reevaluation is a shift in attitude away from the disdain for overt emotionalism that marked the middle-third of the 20th century. "We have acquired a different view of Romantic 'excess.' Tchaikovsky is today more admired than deplored for his emotional frankness; if his music seems harried and insecure, so are we all."

Public

Horowitz maintains that, while the standing of Tchaikovsky's music has fluctuated among critics, for the public, "it never went out of style, and his most popular works have yielded iconic sound-bytes, such as the love theme from Romeo and Juliet." Tchaikovsky's melodies, stated with eloquence and emotional directness and matched his inventive use of harmony and orchestration, have always insured audience appeal. His popularity is secure. His following in many countries, including Great Britain and the United States, rates second only to Beethoven.

Legacy

Tchaikovsky was a pioneer in several ways. Thanks in large part to Nadezhda von Meck, he became the first full-time professional Russian composer. This allowed him the time and freedom to consolidate the Western compositional practices he had learned at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Russian folk song and other native musical elements to fulfill his own expressive goals and forge an original, deeply personal style. He made an impact not only in absolute works such as the symphony but also in program music and "transformed Liszt's and Berlioz's achievements ... into matters of Shakespearean elevation and psychological import." Tchaikovsky did all this without a native school of composition upon which to fall back. Only Glinka had preceded him in combining Russian and Western practices and his teachers in Saint Petersburg had been thoroughly Germanic in their musical outlook. He was, for all intents and purposes, alone in his artistic quest.

Tchaikovsky believed that his professionalism in combining skill and high standards in his musical works separated him from his contemporaries in The Five. Like them, he wanted to produce music that reflected Russian national character but which did so to the highest European standards of quality. He came along at a time when the nation itself was deeply divided as to what that character truly was. Like his country, it took him time to discover how to express his Russianness in a way that was true to himself and what he had learned. Because of his professionalism, he worked hard at this goal and succeeded. The composer's friend Hermann Laroche wrote of The Sleeping Beauty that the music contained "an element deeper and more general than color, in the internal structure of the music, above all in the foundation of the element of melody. This basic element is undoubtedly Russian."

Tchaikovsky also encouraged himself to reach beyond Russia with his music. His exposure to Western music encouraged him to think it belonged not just to Russia but to the world at large. This mindset made him think seriously about Russia's place in European musical culture—the first Russian composer to do so. It steeled him to became the first Russian composer to personally acquaint foreign audiences with his own works, as well as those of other Russian composers. In his biography of Tchaikovsky, Anthony Holden recalls the dearth of Russian classical music before Tchaikovsky's birth, then places the composer's achievements into historical perspective: "Twenty years after Tchaikovsky's death, in 1913, Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring erupted onto the musical scene, signalling Russia's arrival into 20th century music. Between these two very different worlds Tchaikovsky's music became the sole bridge."

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Notes

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