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PETER ILICH TCHAIKOVSKY
Composer
(See main biographical entry under Swan Lake)Tchaikovsky was not a very happy composer. He was extremely distressed over the early closing of his opera Pique Dame. He was not charmed by the prospect of being told how and what to compose by Marius Petipa (although he did allow that the old gentleman was very likeable). And, he did not like the way that Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolozhsky had written the libretto for the new ballet, to be presented as a double-bill with his new opera Iolanthe. But, workmanlike, he labored on over his score, taking it with him on tour and composing parts of it in Rouen, France.
The composer was looking for new effects to try on the ballet audience, still used to the dansant style of composition of many separate numbers unified
sometimes only by being present all in the same score. He did recycle some styles of materials from earlier works, perhaps fearing that an all-out assault on the audience with a full-blown "dance symphony" would be too much of a stretch for them. For example, some sections of the transformation scenes are highly reminiscent of his Fourth Symphony, but reach power and majesty that the composer had not yet tapped in that earlier work. Functionally, all the "loud music" had to do was cover the sound of stage machinery working to change the set; Tchaikovsky made it a presentation in itself, matching the magic onstage. Likewise, the battle with the mice was contains many similar figures to those used in his famous "Overture 1812", relying on the audience's familiarity with a piece of Russian history to add to both the drama and the humor of the situation (after all, these are toys fighting with mice!).But the symphonism of the score is not its only attractive feature for musicians. He sought effects not commonly used to make auditory points either
underscoring action or creating their own atmosphere. He uses, from the outset, higher-pitched instruments to suggest the clamor of children's voices, and at the end of Act I, even tips in a boychoir to the Waltz of the Snowflakes. At the beginning of Act II, he makes use of a flutter-tongue effect on the flutes called frulato to suggest the swelling of the rose-oil river before the shell-boat of Clara and the Prince. He also found a new improvement on the old keyed glockenspeil called a "celesta" while he was on tour, and couldn't wait to try it out. This novel instrument was ideal for
the Sugar Plum Fairy, who was to be represented, his instructions from Petipa said, by music "with the sound of falling drops of water, as from a fountain".As of this writing, the conductor Valery Gergiev has "rediscovered" the symphonic qualities of the last of Tchaikovsky's ballet scores, and is meeting with critical acclaim, demonstrating that sometimes an old classic has hidden or forgotten glories which need to be refreshed in an audience's consciousness from time to time.