The Music of Tchaikovsky [antikvár]

Pre fa ce This is a musical book planned on novel lines; it consists of chapters on various aspects of Tchaikovsky's music contributed by well-known critics. It is hoped that by careful planning and co-ordination the most common weaknesses of collabora^-tive works, looseness and difiuseness, have been avoided. Thus a real book is produced; and not merely a collection of separate essays bound together. The volume has been planned to cover the whole of the composer's output, or at any rate all of it that matters, and the omission of a long biographical section has made possible a much more thorough and detailed discussion of the music than would otherwise be possible in a book of this size. The need for a serious, large-scale study of Tchaikovslqr's music has been apparent for a good many years. As I have remarked elsewhere: "It is customary not to criticize Tchaikovsky's music but to sniff at it, or to admire the tunes. One either likes it or one doesn't. Yet an extraordinarily large proportion of his music—probably nearly two-thirds of it—is largely unknown even to intelligent musicians, while anything worth calling criticism of Tchaikovsky is practically nonexistent except in the U.S.S.R." I think it can be claimed that this book removes that reproach. The fact that so much of Tchaikovsky is so little known is reflected in the space devoted to certain aspects of his work. It is, for instance, the only excuse for what at first sight may appear to be a disproportionate number of pages allotted to his dramatic music. The same remark applies to the chapter on the songs, written by a distinguished Soviet critic whose magnum opus on Tchaikovsky is awaited with keen interest. Professor Alshvang's essay has the additional value of representing a typical contemporary Russian view of Tchaikovsky, markedly different in some respects from that generally taken in western Europe. The other contributors, even though allowed complete freedom of critical judgment, show a surprising unanimity on many general points. G. A.