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Writing about Tchaikovsky's ballet The Sleeping Beauty in an open letter to impresario Sergei Diaghilev that was printed in the Times of London, composer Igor Stravinsky contended that Tchaikovsky's music was as Russian as Pushkin's verse or Glinka's song, since Tchaikovsky "drew unconsciously from the true, popular sources" of the Russian race ...
Here Tchaikovsky harnessed the harmonic, melodic and rhythmic quirks of Ukrainian folk music to produce an opening movement massive in scale, intricate in structure and complex in texture—what Brown calls "one of the most solid structures Tchaikovsky ever fashioned" [47] —and a finale that, with the folk song "The Crane" offered in an ever ...
Hamlet, Op. 67b (1891), incidental music for Shakespeare's play. The score uses music borrowed from Tchaikovsky's overture of the same name, as well as from his Symphony No. 3, and from The Snow Maiden, in addition to original music that he wrote specifically for a stage production of Hamlet.
What endeared the Little Russian to the kuchka was not simply that Tchaikovsky had used Ukrainian folk songs as melodic material. It was how, especially in the outer movements, he allowed the unique characteristics of Russian folk song to dictate symphonic form. This was a goal toward which the kuchka strived, both collectively and individually.
Tchaikovsky's complete range of melodic styles was as wide as that of his compositions. Sometimes he used Western-style melodies, sometimes original melodies written in the style of Russian folk song; sometimes he used actual folk songs. [142] According to The New Grove, Tchaikovsky's melodic gift could also become his worst enemy in two ways.
Because Tchaikovsky used three Ukrainian folk songs to great effect in this symphony, it was nicknamed the "Little Russian" (Russian: Малороссийская, Malorossiyskaya) by Nikolay Kashkin, a friend of the composer as well as a well-known musical critic in Moscow. [1]
Tchaikovsky had borrowed the folk-song motive into the prelude and the finale of his Cantata for the Opening of the Polytechnic Exhibition in Moscow 1872 (commemorating the bicentenary of the birth of Peter the Great). [5] Tchaikovsky, in the recapitulation, restates the movement's introduction, instead of the secondary theme.
In the vigorous finale, Tchaikovsky incorporates a famous Russian folk song, "In the Field Stood a Birch Tree", as the secondary theme — firstly in A minor, the second time in B ♭ minor and then in D minor, which leads to the A ♭ phrase of the first movement, with the 'lightning bolts', with cymbals added, being much louder. The coda is ...