“If these lines have a good effect upon you I shall be very pleased. I have a certain right to hope for this, because your letters do me good. Your last, for instance, made me so unusually light-hearted that I rushed out into the Nevsky Prospect; I did not walk, I danced along, and composed part of my Tamara as I went.”
When Balakirev heard that Tchaikovsky was actually at work, he wrote in November:—
“I am delighted to hear that the child of your fancy has quickened. God grant it comes to a happy birth. I am very curious to know what you have put into the overture. Do send me what you have done so far, and I promise not to make any remarks—good or bad—until the thing is finished.”
After Tchaikovsky had acceded to Balakirev’s request, and sent him the chief subjects of his overture, he received the following answer, which caused him to make some modifications in the work:—
“ ... As your overture is all but finished, and will soon be played, I will tell you what I think of it quite frankly (I do not use this word in Zaremba’s sense). The first subject does not please me at all. Perhaps it improves in the working out—I cannot say—but in the crude state in which it lies before me it has neither strength nor beauty, and does not sufficiently suggest the character of Father Lawrence. Here something like one of Liszt’s chorales—in the old Catholic Church style—would be very appropriate (The Night Procession, Hunnenschlacht, and St. Elizabeth); your motive is of quite a different order, in the style of a quartet by Haydn, that genius of “burgher” music which induces a fierce thirst for beer. There is nothing of old-world Catholicism about it; it recalls rather the type of Gogol’s Comrade Kunz, who wanted to cut off his nose to save the money he spent on snuff. But possibly in its development your motive may turn out quite differently, in which case I will eat my own words.
“As to the B minor theme, it seems to me less a theme than a lovely introduction to one, and after the agitated movement in C major, something very forcible and energetic should follow. I take it for granted that it will really be so, and that you were too lazy to write out the context.
“The first theme in D flat major is very pretty, although rather colourless. The second, in the same key, is simply fascinating. I often play it, and would like to hug you for it. It has the sweetness of love, its tenderness, its longing, in a word, so much that must appeal to the heart of that immoral German, Albrecht. I have only one thing to say against this theme: it does not sufficiently express a mystic, inward, spiritual love, but rather a fantastic passionate glow which has hardly any nuance of Italian sentiment. Romeo and Juliet were not Persian lovers, but Europeans. I do not know if you will understand what I am driving at—I always feel the lack of appropriate words when I speak of music, and I am obliged to have recourse to comparison in order to explain myself. One subject in which spiritual love is well expressed—according to my ideas—is the second theme in Schumann’s overture, The Bride of Messina. The subject has its weak side too; it is morbid and somewhat sentimental at the end, but the fundamental emotion is sincere.
“I am impatient to receive the entire score, so that I may get a just impression of your clever overture, which is—so far—your best work; the fact that you have dedicated it to me affords me the greatest pleasure. It is the first of your compositions which contains so many beautiful things that one does not hesitate to pronounce it good as a whole. It cannot be compared with that old Melchisedek, who was so drunk with sorrow that he must needs dance his disgusting trepak in the Arbatsky Square. Send me the score soon; I am longing to see it.”
But even in a somewhat modified form, Balakirev was not quite satisfied with the overture. On January 22nd (February 3rd), 1871, he wrote as follows:—
“I am very pleased with the introduction, but the end is not at all to my taste. It is impossible to write of it in detail. It would be better if you came here, so that I could tell you what I think of it. In the middle section you have done something new and good; the alternating chords above the pedal-point, rather à la Russlan. The close becomes very commonplace, and the whole of the section after the end of the second subject (D major) seems to have been dragged from your brain by main force. The actual ending is not bad, but why those accentuated chords in the very last bars? This seems to contradict the meaning of the play, and is inartistic. Nadejda Nicholaevna[19] has scratched out these chords with her own fair hands, and wants to make the pianoforte arrangement end pianissimo. I do not know whether you will consent to this alteration.”