Elegy for String Orchestra

Composer: TCHAIKOVSKY, Peter Ilyich
  • Tchaikovsky composed his orchestral Elegy in Honor of Ivan Samarin in 1884, and it premiered in Moscow in December of that year.1
  • This work was originally entitled A Grateful Greeting. Tchaikovsky composed it for a celebration of the fifty-year career of actor and director Ivan Samarin in 1884. However, when Samarin died that very year, Tchaikovsky changed the title to Elegy.2
  • Tchaikovsky eventually reused this piece as an Entr’acte in his Incidental Music for Hamlet, Op.67a.3

Sources

  1. Roland John Wiley, “Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il′yich,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed November 9, 2021,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000051766.
  2. “Elegy for String Orchestra (Tchaikovsky, Pyotr),” IMSLP, accessed November 9, 2021, https://imslp.org/wiki/Elegy_for_String_Orchestra_(Tchaikovsky%2C_Pyotr).
  3. Wiley, “Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il′yich,” Grove Music Online.

Cut IDs

41046 49096