Tchaikovsky
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My Genius, My Angel, My Friend

Мой гений, мой ангел, мой друг

Song with piano accompaniment (late 1850s).

Catalogue References:	TH 89 ; ČW 208.
Date:	late 1850s
Text:	Afanasii Afanas'evich Fet (1820–1892), from the first untitled poem in his cycle To Ophelia (К Офелии) (1842).
Language:	Russian.
Key:	C minor.
Tempo/Section Listing:	Larghetto (C minor, 47 bars).
Instrumentation:	Low or Medium voice + Piano.
Autograph Location:	Klin: Tchaikovsky House-Museum Archive.
First Publication:	Moscow: Muzgiz, 1940.
Average Duration:	2 minutes.
Dedication:	"To . . . . . . . . . . . . ." (=  Sergei Aleksandrovich Kireev, 1845–1888).
External Links:	Internet Music Score Library Project (downloadable score). The Lied and Art Song Texts Page (text and translations).

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

Notes:

1. Herman Laroche, Собрание музвкально-критических статей, том 2, часть 1 (1924), p. 41 [back]
2. Modest Tchaikovsky, Жизнь Петра Ильича Чайковского, том 1 (1900), p. 128 [back]
3. П. И. Чайкоаский. Полное собрание сочинений, том 44 (1940) and «Два неопубликованных романса П. И. Чайковского», Советская музыка (1940), Nos. 5–6 [back]