Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)
Serenade for Strings
Souvenir de Florence
Tchaikovsky’s Serenade for Strings, Op.48, is his only large-scale work for strings. It is the most popular composition ever written for strings, and in recent years, its popularity has generated interest in another of his compositions, Souvenir de Florence, played by string orchestra. the Souvenir de Florence, originally written as a string sextet, causes numerous problems when a string orchestra performs it. But the ambitious scale of the Souvenir, aided by its superficial similarity in texture and layout to the Serenade, translates remarkably well as another large-scale composition for strings by Tchaikovsky.
In the year 1880, Tchaikovsky produced two compositions completely different in nature. One was a loud, bombastic piece that he was asked to write for the Moscow Exhibition. This work is known today as the 1812 Overture, the perennial crowd pleaser for outdoor concerts as well as the obligatory demonstration piece for stereo shops. He hated it while he was writing it, and he was sceptical of its value when finished. The other composition Tchaikovsky wrote--exactly at the same time--was the Serenade for String. Filled with his inspiration and the sheer joy of writing it, Tchaikovsky composed the Serenade as an antidote for the drudgery of cranking out the commissioned piece--the 1812 Overture. Needless to say, the Serenade was not a commissioned work. When he completed the Serenade, he immediately wrote to his publisher Jurgenson and confessed “I am violently in love with this work and cannot wait for it to be played.” The work was an instant success when the first performance was given in St. Petersburg in 1881.
For a composer known for his melancholy, Tchaikovsky’s Serenade is surprisingly bright and light-hearted. The first movement is entitled “Piece in Sonatina Form” which clearly indicated the composer’s aim in this music. Such form, as Tchaikovsky uses it, actually does not exist in classical music. He takes the sonata form, cuts out the middle development section (hence the sonatina--small sonata--form), and molds the movement in a simple, classical style à la Mozart, a composer Tchaikovsky profoundly admired. What is so original is the fact that he frames this movement by a slow and solemn introduction that returns at the end of the movement as the conclusion.
The second movement, “Valse,” is an elegant waltz that replaces his usual fast scherzo, a practice Tchaikovsky used later in his Fifth and Sixth Symphonies. In his own way, this is another tribute to Mozart, for the waltz in triple meter is the nineteenth century equivalent to Mozart’s minuet.
The third movement, in spite of the title “Elégie,” is a lightly melancholic piece in D major. It is important to point out that this is not in a minor key one would expect for music with such a title. Tchaikovsky’s expression of the dark feelings in a light manner is especially poignant and memorable.
The fourth movement immediately follows the “Elégie” with a serene introduction based on a Russian folk song. This in turn is followed by the fast and vigorous main part of the movement. Unlike the first movement, this movement has a real sonata form with two contrasting themes in the exposition, a real development in the middle based on the two themes, and a full recapitulation. This seems all too academic, but Tchaikovsky ingenuously presents his idea without being pedantic. Before the end, he brings back the introduction from the very beginning of the piece, which quickly transforms itself into a brilliant coda to conclude the Serenade.
As I mentioned earlier, Tchaikovsky wrote Souvenir de Florence as a string sextet. It was written in 1890 and revised two years later. This is his last and most ambitious chamber work. Starting in 1878, Tchaikovsky escaped from the harsh winter weather in Moscow and visited Florence to relax and to compose in that elegant city. This warm and beautiful city not only helped him complete his music that was filled with “winter” and melancholy, but also inspired him to write his Capriccio italien in 1880 and Souvenir de Florence ten years later.
However, one interesting fact must be pointed out here. While Tchaikovsky may have used melodies and motifs based on Florentine tunes he heard there, it is very difficult to find any traces of Italian music in the structure or melodic expressions in his Souvenir de Florence. In fact, this composition is as Russian as his music could be.
For chamber music, Tchaikovsky composed three string quartets and the sextet Souvenir de Florence. One element common among those compositions is that they all do not particularly sound like chamber music. Rather, they sound more like large-scale symphonic works reduced unnaturally to the chamber music scale by force. It is then understandable that the sextet is often performed by a much larger string group than the composer intended.
For almost two years, Tchaikovsky worked on the revision of the Souvenir. This was partly due to the fact that he was not satisfied with the original version since he was intent on writing a very ambitious sextet. The truth was that Tchaikovsky wanted to write a sextet as a diversion from his opera Pique Dame which he had written in the spring of 1890 in Florence, and suddenly he found himself unexpectedly in troubled water.
It must be noted that the sextet is a rare genre. Functional harmony requires at least three notes to be played simultaneously, and four notes would produce most of the chords that a composer of the eighteenth or nineteenth century wanted. Therefore, a string quartet was not only convenient but quite appropriate for composers of that period to express their musical ideas in the intimacy of a home or a small hall. If a composer wanted to increase the number of players or to bring variety to the sound to his chamber piece, he would choose another instrument such as piano, wind or brass instrument (typically the French horn). Or he would write a much bigger piece for a string orchestra to show off the rich sonorities of string instruments. The string sextet, on the other hand, does not add any new colours to the string sonority, and in terms of scale, it is neither small nor large.
When Tchaikovsky’s Andante cantabile from his String Quartet No.1 became enormously popular, he did not hesitate to arrange it for cello solo and string orchestra in 1888. Therefore, had he not committed suicide in 1893--shortly after the premiere of his Pathétique Symphony (which is only three years after composing Souvenir de Florence)--he may have considered not only revising the Souvenir but also arranging it for string orchestra. Of course, the sonority of a string sextet is vastly different from that of a string orchestra. However, string orchestras playing the Souvenir always have used the original sextet parts. This practice cannot properly translate the composer’s original concepts, especially concerning the original balance of the different parts. Here is why:
Sextet String Orchestra
Violin I (1 player) (8 players) Violin I section
Violin II (1 player) (6 players) Violin II section
Viola I (1 player) (2 players) Violas, divided
Viola II (1 player) (2 players) Violas, divided
Cello I (1 player) (2 players) Cellos, divided
Cello II (1 player) (2 players) Cellos, divided
(2 players) Bass section on
Cello II part
It is easy to see why the Souvenir de Florence, as played by a string orchestra, would always have a gross imbalance with a very heavy top on the first violins, very heavy bottom with half of the cellos joined by the basses, and very weak in the middle with the poor violas always divided to cover the original parts. And yet, all string orchestras play the Souvenir in this fashion and claim this to be an “arrangement” for string orchestra.
As a conductor and composer, I was astonished to hear such “arrangements” with such a poor balance of sonority and texture. They also distressed me because not even one conductor cared enough to realise that the Cello II part in the original is actually sometimes higher than the Cello I part. Thus, when the basses simply played the Cello II part, they managed to destroy the proper positions of chords. Especially at the very end of the piece when one expects the chords to drum out the tonic key with D solidly at the bottom, these “arrangements” have the basses playing F-sharp!
To address the problem, I began to arrange the Souvenir de Florence for full string orchestra in 1990. Soon, I realised why no one bothered to do this; it was an enormous task to redistribute all six parts to have the proper balance. This new Souvenir, in the end, was re-orchestrated bar-by-bar in the most painstaking way to create the kind of sonority Tchaikovsky would have expected from a string orchestra playing the Souvenir. Much care of put into the work to preserve the original spirit of the work, by avoiding the drastic transformation that the other famous sextet--Verkärte Nacht of Schönberg--went through when the composer arranged it for full string orchestra. Here is my version of the Souvenir for full string orchestra:
Sextet String Orchestra
Violin I (1 player) (18 players) Violin I section
Violin II (1 player) (16 players) Violin II section
Viola I (1 player) (14 players) Violas, divided
Viola II (1 player) (12 players) Violas, divided
Cello I (1 player) (10 players) Cellos, divided
Cello II (1 player)
The first performance of my arrangement of the Souvenir de Florence was presented in 1990, exactly one hundred years after Tchaikovsky wrote it, in Seoul with the Hungarian Virtuosi under my direction. For this recording, I was fortunate to have the privilege of conducting the entire string section of the Philharmonia Orchestra to create the full rich sound that Tchaikovsky would have been pleased to hear.
May 1994