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TH 90 Zemfira's SongПеснь ЗемфирыSong with piano accompaniment, A minor (1860s).
HistoryOn 11 May 1901, Boris Jurgenson told Modest Tchaikovsky: "I am sending you ... the manuscript I have found of "Zemfira's aria". Father does not remember when or where it was written or how it came to be in his possession. Perhaps you know something about this from your letters?" [1]. The manuscript referred to is now preserved in the archive of the Tchaikovsky House-Museum at Klin. It appears to be an unauthorized copy of a romance on three leaves, believed to have been made by Karl Albrecht. The original manuscript was only discovered in August 1940. The romance was published for the first time from the aforementioned copy in 1940, in the composer’s collected works and in the journal Soviet Music [2]. The published copy has significant differences from the autograph. For example, the autograph omits the title "Zemfira’s Song". Furthermore, the copy changes the form of the romance: there is an additional repeat of the first couplet (after the rest) and a four-bar interlude before the final couplet. These changes were probably introduced in order to make "Zemifra’s Song" more like Pushkin's "The Gypsies". This is indicated by the fact that some of the words (without accompanying melody) have been added to the copy but do not appear in the original. The first of these insertions occurs after Aleko's opening line, while the remainder are repetitions of Aleko and Zemfira's lines, broken in the song as Pushkin. The copy also contains modifications of Pushkin's text in the third verse, and the fifth is omitted completely. The autograph uses only the first second and last verses of Pushkin's text. From: Музыкальное наследие Чайковского (1958), pp.
430-431 Text
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