Tchaikovsky
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Petr Jurgenson

Petr Ivanovich Jurgenson (Петр Иванович Юргенсон) was Tchaikovsky's friend and principal music publisher, born in Reval (now Tallinn, Estonia) on 5/17 July 1836.

The son of Jögen Kirs Jurgenson, the captain of a fishing vessel, and his wife Aeta, Petr Jurgenson was born and educated in Reval. In 1850 he moved to Saint Petersburg, where he first worked as a salesman for the music sellers A. Bitner (1850–1855), and then became a music engraver for F. T. Stellovskii (1855–1859), before being appointed manager of the Schildbach brothers' publishing firm (1859–1861). In 1861, he became involved with the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society (later becoming one of its directors). On 10/22 August that year Jurgenson opened his own music-publishing business on the corner of Dmitrii the Great (Большая Дмтировка) and Stoleshnikova boulevard (Столешникова переулке).

In 1867 Jurgenson acquired his own printing works, and that same year he published Tchaikovsky's "opus 1" (Scherzo á la russe and Impromptu), and so began a long-standing business relationship and close friendship.

At the start of Tchaikovsky's fledgling career, Jurgenson provided invaluable financial assistance by giving him various commissions, such as piano transcriptions and orchestral arrangements of works by other authors, and translations of musical texts. His willingness to publish all Tchaikovsky's works, sometimes running considerable financial risks in the process, earned the composer's loyalty. Although some of Tchaikovsky's compositions from the 1870s were published by other firms (such as Bessel', and Bernard), by the end of the decade Jurgenson had acquired the rights to publish Tchaikovsky's works not only in Russia, but in the rest of the world as well.

This was facilitated by a growing number of overseas agents, such as Sennewald (Warsaw), Mackar (Paris), Rahter (Hamburg) and Forberg (Leipzig). Meanwhile his older brother Osip Iurgenson (1829–1910) had taken over Stellovskii's firm in Saint Petersburg, and was acting as distributor in the Russian capital. Petr Jurgenson took over at least 17 smaller firms between 1870 and 1903, including Bernard (1885), Maikov (1889) and Sokolov (1896), and the business rapidly became the largest in Russia. In 1880 the firm moved to new premises at 14 Neglinny prospekt (Неглинний проспект), ahd the following year Jurgenson purchased a house in Khokhlovskii boulevard (Хохловский переулке), to which in 1895 a three-storey music printing factory was added.

As well as managing Tchaikovsky's business affairs, Jurgenson also acted as intermediary in the wake of the composer's failed marriage to Antonina Miliukova. Jurgenson also recognised the importance of preserving the manuscripts of Tchaikovsky's works, and continued to issue new editions after the composer's death in 1893. However, relations with the composer's brother and heir Modest Tchaikovsky were not always easy, and the latter commissioned Jurgenson's rival Beliaiev to publish those unfinished works of Tchaikovsky's that had been completed by Sergei Taneev.

After Jurgenson's death in Moscow on 20 December 1903/2 January 1904, the publishing firm was taken over by his sons, Boris (1868–1935) and Grigorii (1872–1936).  Following the revolution of 1917, Jurgenson's firm was nationalised, and the following year it became the music section of the Soviet State Publishing House (Государственное музыкальное издательство), also known as Narkompros (Наркомпрос), Muzgiz (Музгиз), or Muzika (Музыка).

Tchaikovsky's song A tear trembles (No. 4 of the Six Romances, Op. 6) is dedicated to Petr Jurgenson.