He evidently thought little of his initial effort, for shortly after the Moscow production of Swan Lake he recorded in his diary: “Lately I have heard Delibes’ very clever music. ‘Swan Lake’ is poor stuff compared to it. Nothing during the last few years has charmed me so greatly as this ballet of Delibes and ‘Carmen’.” Per contra, the same entry bemoans the “deterioration” of German music, the immediate offender being the “cold, obscure and pretentious” C minor symphony of Brahms!
Tschaikowsky was probably sincere when he described his own ballet as “poor stuff” compared with Delibes’. That was in 1877. Performances of Swan Lake at the Bolshoi Theater had been flat, shabby, and badly costumed. A conductor inexperienced with elaborate ballet scores had directed. Modeste Tschaikowsky, in the biography of his brother, testifies to this. Numbers were omitted as “undanceable,” and pieces from other ballets substituted. At length only a third of the original remained, and not the best. The ballet dropped out of the Moscow repertory, and it was not until 1894 that the enterprising Marius Petipa wrote to Moscow for the full score and produced Swan Lake with brilliant success at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, on January 15, 1895. It has since remained a repertory staple, both the current Ballets Russes and the Ballet Theatre having staged it successfully. Pavlova, Karsavina, and Markova, among others, have interpreted the heroine Odette, and Prince Siegfried has been embodied by Nijinsky, Lifar, Mordkin, and Dolin. Swan Lake was one of the first ballets witnessed in his youth by Serge Diaghileff, founder of the famous Ballets Russes.
Tschaikowsky first refers to Swan Lake in a letter to Rimsky-Korsakoff, dated September 10, 1875: “I accepted the work partly because I need the money and because I have long cherished a desire to try my hand at this type of music.” V. P. Begitche, stage manager of the Bolshoi, offered 800 roubles (less than $500) and in turn granted Tschaikowsky’s request for a story from the Age of Chivalry, making the sketch himself. Tschaikowsky set to work in August, 1875, and had the first two acts planned out in a fortnight, but the score was not completed till the following March and for some reason held up for performance until February, 1877.
The story, possibly of Rhenish origin, tells how Prince Siegfried woos and wins Odette, the Swan Queen. At a celebration the prince is told he must soon choose a bride. A flight of swans overhead distracts him and a hunt is proposed. Siegfried and the hunters are at the lake-side. It is evening. Odette appears surrounded by a bevy of swan-maidens. She begs the hunters to spare the swans. They are maidens under the spell of the enchanter Rotbart. Swans by day, they return briefly to human form at midnight. The prince and Odette fall in love. Siegfried swears she will be his wife. Odette cautions him about Rotbart’s evil power. Breach of promise will mean her death. Rotbart brings his own daughter to the court ball, disguised as Odette. Siegfried makes the false choice of bride, and the pledge is broken. Discovering Rotbart’s ruse, he hastens to Odette, who at first rebuffs him. Siegfried blames Rotbart and Odette relents. At length Rotbart whips up a storm which floods the forest. When Siegfried vows he will die with Odette, Rotbart’s spell is shattered and all ends happily.
Tschaikowsky’s close friend and collaborator Kashkin is authority for the statement that an adagio section in Swan Lake was a love-duet in the opera Undine before it found new lodgings. Conversely, a Danse Russe in the group of piano pieces, Op. 40, was written for Swan Lake, thus balancing matters. Like The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, Swan Lake is famed for its waltz. The score brims with typical Tschaikowskyan melody, and probably for the first time in ballet music a scheme of leitmotifs is used, two of the principal subjects being the tremulous theme of the swans in flight and the hauntingly wistful theme of Odette herself, assigned to the oboe against soft strings and harp arpeggios. The music adjusts itself snugly to the technic of pure classical ballet and solos and ensembles are contrasted adroitly.
Suite from the Ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, Opus 66
Based on Perrault’s famous fairy tale, Tschaikowsky’s Sleeping Beauty ballet dates from the summer of 1889. Its music is generally regarded as superior to that of the Swan Lake ballet and inferior to that of the Nutcracker suite. Few ballet scores are so suitable in mood and style for the action they accompany. The music is truly melodious in Tschaikowsky’s lighter vein. The fantasy is conveyed in bright, glittering colors, and, as Mrs. Newmarch pointed out, the music “never descends to the commonplace level of the ordinary ballet music.” There are thirty numbers in all, many of them, especially the waltz, endearing in their lilting and haunting grace. The work was first produced in St. Petersburg on January 2, 1890. In the early twenties, Diaghileff, the great ballet producer, revived the work in London and elsewhere with immense artistic éclat. Fragments of the ballet have been gathered in the Monte Carlo Ballet Russe’s production of Aurora’s Wedding.
Suite from the Ballet, The Nutcracker, Opus 71-a
The usual fit of depression assailed Tschaikowsky while composing the music for his Nutcracker ballet, based on E. T. A. Hoffmann’s story Nussknacker und Mausekönig (“Nutcracker and Mouse King”). Commissioned by the St. Petersburg Opera early in 1891, the work was slow in taking shape. At length, on June 25, Tschaikowsky completed the sketches for the projected ballet. What had taken him weeks should have been finished in five days, he lamented. “No, the old man is breaking up,” he wrote. “Not only does his hair drop out, or turn as white as snow; not only does he lose his teeth, which refuse their service; not only do his eyes weaken and tire easily; not only do his feet walk badly, or drag themselves along, but, bit by bit, he loses the capacity to do anything at all. The ballet is infinitely worse than ‘The Sleeping Beauty’—so much is certain.”