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Tchaikovsky Research Bulletin No. 1

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Tchaikovsky Research Bulletin No. 1 "Klin, near Moscow, was the home of one of the busiest of men…" Previously unknown or unidentified letters by Tchaikovsky to correspondents from Russia, Europe and the USA Presented by Luis Sundkvist and Brett Langston Contents Introduction .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 2 I. Russia (Milii Balakirev, Adolph Brodsky, Mariia Klimentova-Muromtseva, Ekaterina Laroche, Iurii Messer, Vasilii Sapel'nikov) .. .. .. 5 II. Austria (Anton Door, Albert Gutmann) .. .. .. .. .. 15 III. Belgium (Désirée Artôt-Padilla, Joseph Dupont, Jean-Théodore Radoux, Józef Wieniawski) .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 19 IV. Czech Republic (Adolf Čech, unidentified) .. .. .. .. .. 25 V. France (Édouard Colonne, Eugénie Vergin Colonne, Louis Diémer, Louis Gallet, Lucien Guitry, Jules Massenet, Pauline Viardot-García, three unidentified) .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 29 VI. Germany (Robert Bignell, Hugo Bock, Hans von Bülow, Paul Cossmann, Mathilde Cossmann, Aline Friede, Julius Laube, Sophie Menter, Selma Rahter, Friedrich Sieger, two unidentified) .. .. .. .. 55 VII. Great Britain (George Bainton, George Henschel, Francis Arthur Jones, Ethel Smyth, unidentified) .. .. .. .. .. .. .. 69 VIII. Poland (Édouard Bergson, unidentified) .. .. .. .. .. 85 IX. United States (E. Elias, W.S.B. Mathews, Marie Reno) .. .. .. 89 New locations for previously published letters .. .. .. .. .. 95 Chronological list of the 55 letters by Tchaikovsky presented in this article .. 96 Acknowledgements .. .. .. .. ... .. .. .. 101 Introduction Apart from their authorship, the only thing that most of the letters presented in this article have in common is that they were omitted from the Soviet collected edition of Tchaikovsky's correspondence (Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. Literaturnye proizvedeniia i perepiska, 17 volumes, 1959–81; hereafter referred to as PSSL). In all, 5,136 letters were included in PSSL, but as previously unknown ones kept coming to light over the following years the total number of catalogued letters had already gone up to 5,248 by the time of The Tchaikovsky Handbook (Indiana University Press 2002), and with even more turning up at auctions and elsewhere since then this number has risen even further (to 5,335 at the time of writing). All this goes to show that Tchaikovsky was not just a highly productive composer, but also an indefatigable letter-writer. Not for nothing would one of his British correspondents covered here describe him as "one of the busiest of men". The majority of the 55 letters presented below are probably unknown to most Tchaikovsky scholars and editors of his works and writings, both in Russia and abroad. That being said, the existence of some of them—mainly those that were auctioned by J. A. Stargardt in Germany—has been known to staff at the Tchaikovsky House-Museum in Klin for a number of years, as we learn from an article by the composer's grand-niece Kseniia Iur'evna Davydova (1905–1992), who worked as curator at the museum from 1965 to 1989. In her article, which appeared in Sovetskaia muzyka in 1986, Kseniia Iur'evna discussed how she was planning to bring out a supplementary volume to PSSL containing details on several previously unknown letters auctioned outside Russia which had been brought to her and her colleagues' attention by various correspondents in the West—in particular by Peter Muck, a violist with the Berlin Philharmonic, who regularly sent to the Klin Museum photocopies from auction catalogues in which such letters were advertised.1 Among the findings which she planned to present in that supplementary volume were 'new' letters to Joseph Dupont, Frits Hartvigson, and Anton Door from 1876 to 1877, and one to Milii Balakirev from November 1868. She also pointed out that this volume would "expand considerably the list of the composer's known addressees, which would now include Lucien Guitry, Jules Massenet, Valentina Serova etc."2 Unfortunately, Kseniia Iur'evna was unable to realize this plan because of her failing health. Her younger colleagues at the Klin Museum do not seem to have used the photocopies from auction catalogues that she was collecting for this projected volume in any subsequent publications. This perhaps explains why the existence of these letters was eventually forgotten and why none of them (with the exception of the letter to Hartvigson from 1877 which was published by Thomas Kohlhase with permission of the owner in 1998 3), was recorded in the Catalogue of Letters in volume 2 of The Tchaikovsky Handbook. The other letters and correspondents mentioned explicitly by Kseniia Iur'evna are covered in our article (except for Valentina Serova), and, although in many cases we too have only had access to excerpts in auction catalogues, we are able to publish complete texts of a number of them, including Tchaikovsky's letter to Dupont from 1876, his first two letters to Guitry from 1885, and his first extant letter to Massenet from 1888. As for those that can only be partially published as yet, it is important to bring them to light anyway and to catalogue them properly so as to pave the way for future research. As always, obtaining access to old auction catalogues in which details of previously unknown autograph letters by Tchaikovsky are likely to be found, is a very difficult task. For example, the British Library has just one of the series of catalogues known as Autographen 1 See Ks. Iu. Davydova, 'Problemy epistoliarii', Sovetskaia muzyka (1986), no. 6, p. 87–88. 2 Ks. Iu. Davydova, 'Problemy epistoliarii', Sovetskaia muzyka (1986), no. 6, p. 88. 3 See Thomas Kohlhase, '"Paris vaut bien une messe!" Bisher unbekannte Briefe, Notenautographe und andere Čajkovskij-Funde', Čajkovskij-Studien 3 (1998), p. 163–298 (225–226). aus allen Gebieten published almost every year since 1885 by the firm of J. A. Stargardt in Berlin and Marburg, and in which 'new' Tchaikovsky letters and other items (signed photographs, musical autographs etc.) have periodically appeared. Fortunately, advances in technology and, in particular, the digitization work done by Google Books in recent years have meant that several of the old Stargardt catalogues can now be accessed online, though, because they can always only be viewed a snippet at a time, it is still difficult to extract and piece together the relevant portions of text. With more recent autograph auctions, the situation is considerably better because many auction-houses have published their latest catalogues online, often with helpful search facilities that allow one to find Tchaikovsky letters featured in past sales, and in some cases even to view images of all or some of the pages of those letters. Communication by e-mail has also made it much easier to contact auction-houses, and although some of them have (understandably perhaps) ignored our requests for further information on such letters, many have responded positively and helpfully, either sharing with us images of sold letters in their archives or passing on our request to the present owners. We are very grateful to the staff of a number of auction-houses for helping to bring to light several previously unknown letters, and their assistance is duly credited in the presentation of these letters, as well as in the Acknowledgements. However, it is not only auction-houses which have been publishing their catalogues online in recent years, but also many university libraries and museums. Searching through the collections of these has turned up several 'new' Tchaikovsky letters, and the response of such institutions to our enquiries has been overwhelmingly positive, with most of them making available facsimile images for publication on the Tchaikovsky Research website.4 They in turn were grateful for what we could tell them about the letters in their collections, especially those whose addressees were as yet unidentified. The increasing availability of online genealogical databases has also made it easier to find out more about Tchaikovsky's less well-known correspondents, in particular the English journalist called Francis Arthur Jones whose identity is clarified here for the first time. The use of Google Books has not only allowed us to access several (but evidently not all) of the old Stargardt catalogues, but also a number of other relatively obscure publications containing the partial or complete texts of various 'new' letters by Tchaikovsky which, understandably, escaped the attention of Tchaikovsky scholars at the time. This is the case, for example, with Tchaikovsky's first letter to the French actor Lucien Guitry in 1885—one of the most important in our article, which sheds further light on the genesis of the overture- fantasia Hamlet (1888) and the incidental music to the same play (1891). Other highlights include the already mentioned first extant letter to Massenet in 1888 which deals with the Russian Musical Society's plan to invite the Frenchman to give a concert in Moscow; a letter to Ethel Smyth, also from 1888, with sarcastic comments on their mutual friend and colleague Brahms; three letters to Marie Reno, whose family had done so much to help Tchaikovsky enjoy his stay in America in the spring of 1891; a letter to the organizers of the concert he was invited to give in Vienna in the summer of 1892; two letters from early 1893 to Francis Arthur Jones whom Tchaikovsky agreed to help with an article he was writing on 'How Composers Compose' (the title of our own article is a quotation from Jones's); and a playful letter in English to Ekaterina Laroche from August 1893 in which Tchaikovsky discusses details of a Russian Musical Society concert in Saint Petersburg on 16/28 October, which would turn out to be the last concert he ever conducted. 4 http://www.tchaikovsky-research.net/en/letters/index.html Tchaikovsky's letters are presented here according to the country of origin or residence of his correspondent, with the section for Russia coming first, followed by the other countries in alphabetical order. Within each section the correspondents appear in alphabetical order, with unidentified ones at the end (though in many cases we have attempted to suggest who the addressee might be).
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