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Tchaikovsky |
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TH 15 Boris GodunovБорис ГодуновMusic for the Fountain Scene in Pushkin's tragedy (?1863-65).
HistoryComposed as an assignment for Anton Rubinstein. Adelaida Spasskaia, a fellow student of Tchaikovsky at the conservatory, wrote: "I recall that we had to work with a small number of instruments. Anton Grigor'evich thought to set us the task of writing and orchestrating the scene by the fountain from Boris Godunov. Of course, no-one wrote anything that was any good, except P. I. Tchaikovsky alone, executed this assignment brilliantly" [1]. Aleksandr Rubets also wrote about this in his memoirs: "Rubinstein set Tchaikovsky the task of writing music for the 'scene by the fountain' in Pushkin’s Boris Godunov. This was quite a large composition and instrumentation... I remember it was a flight of inspiration, despite an Italian influence" [2]. The full score was taken to Saint Petersburg by Elizaveta Shobert, and was later sent by Herman Laroche to Tchaikovsky in Moscow [3]. In his letters to Tchaikovsky of 11 and 27 January 1866, Laroche considered Boris Godunov, the Characteristic Dances, the overture to The Storm and the piece The Romans in the Coliseum to be "student works, preparatory and experimental, judged particularly unfavourably because of their misuse of the brass instruments" [4]. The music to Boris Godunov was not published, and the autograph has not survived. From: Музыкальное наследие Чайковского (1958),
p. 190 Notes:
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