“We have been here a week. It seems more like seven months, and I look forward with horror to the fortnight which remains. I dislike Vichy as much as I did sixteen years ago, but I think the waters will do me good. In any case I feel sure Bob will benefit by them.”
To P. Jurgenson.
“Vichy, July 1st (13th), 1892.
“I only possess one short note from Liszt, which is of so little importance that it is not worth your while to send it to La Mara. Liszt was a good fellow, and ready to respond to everyone who paid court to him. But as I never toadied to him, or any other celebrity, we never got into correspondence. I think he really preferred Messrs. Cui and Co., who went on pilgrimages to Weimar, and he was more in sympathy with their music than with mine. As far as I know, Liszt was not particularly interested in my works.”
By July 9th (21st) Tchaikovsky and his nephew were back in Petersburg, from whence he travelled almost immediately to Klin, where he busied himself with the new Symphony (No. 6) which he wished to have ready in August.
At the outset of his career Tchaikovsky was somewhat indifferent as to the manner in which his works were published. He troubled very little about the quality of the pianoforte arrangements of his operas and symphonic works, and still less about printers’ errors. About the end of the seventies, however, he entirely changed his attitude, and henceforth became more and more particular and insistent in his demands respecting the pianoforte arrangements and correction of his compositions. Quite half his correspondence with Jurgenson is taken up with these matters ... His requirements constantly increased. No one could entirely satisfy him. The cleverest arrangers, such as Klindworth, Taneiev, and Siloti did not please him, because they made their arrangements too difficult for amateurs. He was also impatient at the slowness with which they worked.
Now that for a year and a half Tchaikovsky has been in his grave, it is easy to attribute to certain events in his life (which passed unnoticed at the time) a kind of prophetic significance. His special and exclusive care as to the editing and publishing of his works in 1892 may, however, be compared to the preparations which a man makes for a long journey, when he is as much occupied with what lies before him as with what he is leaving behind. He strives to finish what is unfinished, and to leave all in such a condition that he can face the unknown with a quiet conscience.
The words Tchaikovsky addressed to Jurgenson with reference to the Third Suite—“If all my best works were published in this style I might depart in peace”—offer some justification for my simile.
In the autumn of 1892 he undertook the entire correction of the orchestral parts of Iolanthe and the Nut-cracker Ballet; the improvements and corrections of the pianoforte arrangement (two hands) of Iolanthe; the corrections of the pianoforte score of the Opera and Ballet, and a simplified pianoforte arrangement of the latter.
Tchaikovsky so often speaks in his letters of his dislike to this kind of work that he must have needed extraordinary self-abnegation to take this heavy burden upon his shoulders.