Romeo and Juliet (Tchaikovsky)

"Romeo and Juliet" is a musical work by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, subtitled "Overture-Fantasy". Like other composers such as Berlioz and Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky was deeply inspired by Shakespeare and by Shakespeare's play of the same name.

Musical structure

Although styled an 'Overture-Fantasy' by the composer, the overall design is a symphonic poem in sonata-form with an introduction and an epilogue. The work is based on three main strands of the Shakespeare story. The first strand, written in F-sharp minor, following Balakirev’s suggestion, is the introduction representing the saintly Friar Laurence. Here there is a flavour of Russian Orthodoxy,Fact|date=May 2008 but also a foreboding of doom from the lower strings.Fact|date=May 2008

Eventually a single B minor chord with a D natural in the bass passed back and forth between strings and woodwinds grows into the second strand in B minor, the agitated theme of the warring Capulets and Montagues, including a reference to the sword fight. The forceful irregular rhythms of the street music point ahead to Stravinsky and beyond.Fact|date=May 2008 The action suddenly slows, the key dropping from B-minor to D-flat (as suggested by Balakirev) and we hear the opening bars of the love theme, the third strand, passionate and yearning in character but always with an underlying current of anxiety.Fact|date=May 2008

The battling strand returns, this time with more intensity and build-up. The strings enter with a lush, hovering melody over which the flute and oboe eventually soar with the love theme once again, this time loud and in D major, signaling the development section. A final battle theme is played, and two large orchestra hits with cymbal crashes signal the suicide of the two lovers. A soft, slow dirge in B major ensues, with timpani playing a repeated triplet pattern, and tuba holding a B natural for 16 bars. The woodwinds play a sweet homage to the lovers, and a final allusion to the love theme brings in the climax, beginning with a huge crescendo B natural roll of the timpani, and the orchestra plays homophonic shouts of a B major chord before the final bar, with full orchestra belting out a powerful B natural to close the overture.Fact|date=May 2008

History

Tense relationship

In 1869 Tchaikovsky was a 28-year-old professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Having written his first symphony and an opera, he next composed a symphonic poem entitled "Fatum". Initially pleased with the piece when Nikolai Rubinstein conducted it in Moscow, Tchaikovsky dedicated it to Balakirev and sent it to him to conduct in St. Petersburg. "Fatum" received only a lukewarm reception. Balakirev wrote a detailed letter to Tchaikovsky explaining the defects, but also giving some encouragement:

Your "Fatum" has been performed [in St. Petersburg] reasonably well ... There wasn't much applause, probably because of the appalling cacophany at the end of the piece, which I don't like at all. It is not properly gestated, and seems to have been written in a very slapdash manner. The seams show, as does all your clumsy stitching. Above all, the form itself just does not work. The whole thing is completely unco-ordinated.... I am writing to you with complete frankness, being fully convinced that you won't go back on your intention of dedicating "Fatum" to me. Your dedication is precious to me as a sign of your sympathy towards me—and I feel a great weakness for you.

M. Balakirev—who sincerely loves you. [From balakirev, 30 March 1869]

Tchaikovsky was too self-critical not to see the truth behind Balakirev's comments. He accepted Balakirev's criticism, and the two continued to correspond. (Tchaikovsky would later destroy the score of "Fatum". The score would be reconstructed posthumously by using the orchestral parts.)Brown, "Man and Music", 46.] Balakirev remained suspicious of anyone with a formal conservatory training but clearly recognized Tchaikovsky’s great talents. [Brown, "New Grove Russian Masters", 157-158.] Tchaikovsky liked and admired Balakirev. However, as he told his brother Anatoly, "I never feel quite at home with him. I particularly don't like the narrowness of his musical views and the sharpness of his tone."

Balakirev suggested Tchaikovsky to write a piece based on Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet". Tchaikovsky was having difficulties writing an opera entitled "Undine", which he would eventually destroy. Though he complained, "I'm completely burned out," Balakirev persisted, as was his manner.Balakirev wrote suggestions about the structure of "Romeo and Juliet", giving details of the type of music required in each section, and even opinions on which keys to use. [Holden, 74.]

Balakirev had suggested his own overture "King Lear" as a model for "Romeo"—a prudent move, since he had seen Tchaikovsky's weakness in writing in an unstructured musical form in "Fatum". "Lear" is not a symphonic poem in the manner of Liszt. It is a tragic overture in sonata form along the line of Beethoven's overtures, relying more on the dramatic potential of sonata form rather than on a literary program. Thus, Balakirev had transformed "Lear" into an instrumental drama and now offered it as a model to Tchaikovsky. [Maes, 64.] While basing "Romeo" on "Lear" was Balakirev's suggestion, reducing the plot of "Romeo" to one central conflict and then combining it with the binary structure of sonata form was Tchaikovsky's idea. However, executing that plot in the music we know today came only after two radical revisions. [Maes, 73-74.]

First version

The first version of "Romeo" contained basically an opening fugato and a confrontation of the two themes—exactly what an academically trained composer might be expected to produce. While Balakirev responded to the love theme by writing Tchaikovsky, "I play it often, and I want very much to hug you for it", [Quoted in Brown, David, "Tchaikovsky: The Early Years, 1840-1874", 180-181, 183-184.] he also discarded many of the early drafts Tchaikovsky sent him—the opening, for instance, sounded more like a Haydn quartet than the Liszt chorale he had suggested initially—and the piece was constantly in the mail between Moscow and St. Petersburg, going to Tchaikovsky or Balakirev.

Tchaikovsky accepted some, but not all, of Balakirev’s nagging, and completed the work, dedicating it to Balakirev. The first performance on March 16, 1870 was hindered by a sensational court case surrounding the conductor, Tchaikovsky's friend Nikolai Rubinstein, and a female student. The court had found against the eminent musician the previous day, and this incited a noisy demonstration in his favour when he appeared on the concert platform, which proved much more interesting to the audience than the new overture. The result was not encouraging as a premiere for "Romeo and Juliet". [Weinstock, 69.] Tchaikovsky said of the premiere:

: "After the concert we dined.... No one said a single word to me about the overture the whole evening. And yet I yearned so for appreciation and kindness." [Kamien 254.]

econd version

It induced Tchaikovsky to rework the piece, now fully accepting Balakirev's criticisms. It also forced Tchaikovsky to reach beyond his musical training and rewrite much of the music into the form we know it today. This included the unacademic but dramatically brilliant choice of leaving the love theme out of the development section, saving its confrontation with the first theme (the conflict of the Capulets and Montagues) for the second half of the recapitulation. In the exposition, the love theme remains shielded from the violence of the first theme. In the recapitulation the first theme strongly influences the love theme and ultimately destroys it. By following this pattern, Tchaikovsky shifts the true musical conflict from the development section to the recapitulation, where it climaxes in dramatic catastrophe. [Maes, 74.]

Meanwhile, Rubinstein had become impressed with Tchaikovsky's compositional talents in general and with "Romeo" in particular. He arranged for the publishing house Bote and Bock to publish the piece in 1870, This was considered an accomplishment since Tchaikovsky's music was virtually unknown in Germany at the time. Balakirev thought Tchaikovsky was rushing "Romeo" to press prematurely. "It is a pity that you, or rather Rubinstein, should have rushed the publication of the Overture," he wrote to the composer. "Although the new introduction is a decided improvement, there were other changes I had wanted you to make. I had hoped that for the sake of your future compositions, this one would remain in your hands somewhat longer." Balakirev closed by hoping that Jurgenson would sometime agree to bring out a "revised and improved version of the Overture." [Weinstock, 70.] The second version was premiered in St. Petersburg on 17 February 1872, under Eduard Nápravník.

Third and final version

In 1880, ten years after his first reworking of the piece, Tchaikovsky rewrote the ending and gave the piece the sub-title "Overture-Fantasia". It was completed by 10 September 1880, but did not receive its premiere until 1 May 1886, in Tbilisi, Georgia (then part of the Russian Empire), under Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov.

This third and final version is the one that is now in the repertoire. The earlier versions are performed occasionally as historical curiosities.

Reception

At first "Romeo" was not a success in Europe as well as in Russia. European listeners of the 1870s were not ready for it. First, it was by a Russian. At that time, Russian composers were considered little more than barbarians by critics and listeners alike. The work's being cast in sonata form, which should have won some approval from Teutonic critics, did not help. The work won over listeners slowly with its lush melodies, orchestration and sincerity of emotional expression.Weinstock, 70.]

One group that appreciated it at once was the "kuchka". Balakirev, now having the full score, wrote of their enthusiastic response and 'how delighted everyone is with your D flat bit [the love theme] —including Vladimir Stasov, who says: "There were five of you: now there are six!" The beginning and end are as strongly censured'—and, Balakirev added, needed rewriting. Still , such was the enthusiasm of the "kuchka" for "Romeo" that Balakirev was asked to play it every time they met. Eventually, he learned the piece to play the piece from memory as a resunt of fulfilling their requests. [Brown, "Tchaikovsky: Man and Music", 49.]

Used in movies and TV

The Overture's love theme had been used in many TV shows and movies such as "The Jazz Singer"Fact|date=August 2008, "Wayne's World", "Scrubs", "Seeing Double", "Ren & Stimpy", "South Park", "Clueless", "A Christmas Story", "Fresh Prince of Bel-Air", "Moonraker", etc.

A part of the love theme has also been used in the popular videogame "The Sims" when the sims kiss [ [http://www.kickassclassical.com/#Tchaikovsky "Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture" in popular culture] ] .

Media

Bibliography

* Brown, David, "Tchaikovsky: The Early Years, 1840-1874" (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978). ISBN 0-393-07535-2.
* Holden, Anthony, "Tchaikovsky: A Biography" (New York: Random House, 1995). ISBN 0-679-42006-1.
* Kamien, Roger. "Music : An Appreciation". Mcgraw-Hill College; 3rd edition (August 1, 1997) ISBN 0-07-036521-0
* Maes, Francis, tr. Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans, "A History of Russian Music: From "Kamarinskaya "to" Babi Yar (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of Calilfornia Press, 2002). ISBN 0-520-21815-9.
* Weinstock, Herbert, "Tchaikovsky" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944). ISBN n/a

References

External links

# Program notes from the Redwood Symphony with a more in-depth listening guide [http://www.barbwired.com/barbweb/programs/tchaikovsky_romeo.html]
*