|
Tchaikovsky |
|
TH 243 MarchМаршOn Belorussian and Ukrainian folk-tunes (1893).
HistoryThe idea for this march was suggested to the composer by the artist Mikhail Mikeshin when the two men met in Saint Petersburg on 3 September 1893. Mikeshin wrote of this meeting a few months later [1]: "He [Tchaikovsky] was so impressed by my paintings -- illustrations to poems by T. G. Shevchenko -- that I dedicated one of them (on the subject of Katherine) to him, and I gave him another, Fantasia (a watercolour). He then asked me what would I like him to write for me. 'How about a march?'. I was delighted by this suggestion. 'But if it is to be a march, shouldn't it have a subject?', he enquired again, 'What subject do you suggest?'. I told him that my family were poor peasant-folk from the famine areas of Belorussia, and so what about one of their melancholy folk-songs: «Коло реченьки молода хадзила»? ['The maiden walked by the river'] I sang the song there and then, and he immediately noted it down, with faultless accuracy". As a secondary theme, Mikeshin suggested a Ukrainian tune: «Гей, не двуйте, добрий люды» ['Hey, don’t be amazed, good fellows’], the melody of which he later sent to Tchaikovsky via his brother Modest. Mikeshin’s article also includes a facsimile of a note from the composer, in which he promised to write a march based on the folk-song «Коло реченьки молода хадзила». However, Tchaikovsky did not fulfil his promise before his death in October 1893. From: The Tchaikovsky Handbook, vol. 1 (2002),
p. 420 Notes:
|