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TH 89

My Genius, My Angel, My Friend

Мой гений, мой ангел, мой друг

Song with piano accompaniment, C minor (late 1850s).

  • Text by Afanasii Fet, from the first of four untitled poems in the cycle To Ophelia [К Офелий] (1842)
  • Composed sometime during the 1850s.
  • Scored for low or medium voice with piano.
  • Dedicated to '**' [Sergei Kireev]
  • Average duration: 1m 40s.

History

This romance was composed, apparently, in the late 1850s, at the time when, in the composer's own words, he had begun to write music "like a true amateur" [1]. On the manuscript score, Modest Tchaikovsky wrote: "1854". In the manuscript Tchaikovsky's romance has no title, but it was named by Modest Tchaikovsky when a facsimile of the first page of the manuscript was published in his biography of the composer [2].

Published for the first time in 1940 [3].

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


Text

Не здесь ли ты легкою тенью,
Мой гений, мой ангел, мой друг,
Беседуешь тихо со мною
И тихо летаешь вокруг?

 

И робким даришь вдохновеньем,
И сладкий крачуешь недуг,
И тихим даришь сновиденьем,
Мой гений, мой ангел, мой друг!

 

А. А. Фет

 

Notes:
  1. H. A. Laroche, Собрание музыкально-критических статей. Том 2, часть 1 (1924), p. 41 [back]
  2. M. I. Tchaikovsky, Жизнь Петра Ильича Чайковского, том 1 (1900), p. 128 [back].
  3. P. I. Tchaikovsky, Полное собрание сочинений, том 44 (1940) and in the journal Советская музыка [Soviet Music] (1940), Nos. 5-6 [back].