Letter 2999a

Tchaikovsky Research
Date 8/20 July 1886
Addressed to Jacques Dusautoy [1]
Where written Maydanovo
Language French
Autograph Location unknown [2]
Publication Tchaikovsky Research Bulletin No. 1 (February 2011), p. 51 (incomplete; addressee unidentified)
Tschaikowsky-Gesellschaft Mitteilungen, Heft 22 (2015), p. 109 (incomplete)

Text and Translation

This incomplete text is based on the extracts published in Sotheby's 1989 auction catalogue [3], and may contain differences in formatting and content from Tchaikovsky's original letter.

French text
(original)
English translation
By Luis Sundkvist
[...] Je les trouve très bien faites et Vous remercie de tout cœur pour l'attention simpathique que Vous voulez bien témoigner pour mes œuvres. Jurgenson veut bien les faire graver, mais ces morceaux étant faits pour des amateurs très forts et possédant une grande virtuosité, — il dit qu'ils ne pourront jamais avoir beaucoup de succès d'argent et que par conséquent il ne peut rétribuer l'auteur des transcriptions comme il le mériterait [...] [...] I think they [4] have been done very well and thank you with all my heart for the nice attention which you are so kind as to bestow upon my works. Jurgenson would very much like to engrave them, but because these pieces have been made for amateurs who are very advanced and endowed with great virtuosity, he says that they can never have a lot of commercial success, and that consequently he cannot remunerate the author of the transcriptions as he deserves [...]

Notes and References

  1. We are most grateful to Lucinde Braun for establishing the identity of the addressee of this letter.
  2. The autograph was auctioned in 1989 by Sotheby's, London, and previously in 1974 by J. A. Stargardt, Marburg (see Autographen aus allen Gebieten. Katalog Nr. 603 (Marburg, 1974), Lot 554).
  3. See Sotheby's, Fine Printed and Manuscript Music. London, Wednesday 22nd November 1989 (London, 1989), Lot 241.
  4. Jacques Dusautoy had made piano transcriptions of some of Tchaikovsky's romances — see Tschaikowsky-Gesellschaft Mitteilungen, Heft 22 (2015), p. 110.