Letter 2193

Tchaikovsky Research
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Date 9/21 January 1883
Addressed to Pyotr Jurgenson
Where written Paris
Language Russian
Autograph Location Saint Petersburg (Russia): National Library of Russia (ф. 834, ед. хр. 38)
Publication П. И. Чайковский. Полное собрание сочинений, том XII (1970), p. 24

Text and Translation

Russian text
(original)
English translation
By Brett Langston
Париж
9 янв[аря]

Милый друг!

Будь так добр, вложи в прилагаемое письмо пятьдесят рублей и отправь по адресу. У меня просит помощи моя первая учительница музыки, которой я очень, очень много обязан, и я решительно не могу отказать, — но и[наче] как через тебя неудобно это сделать.

Твой, П. Чайковский

Для адреса посылаю самое письмо её и прошу сохранить его.

Paris
9 January

Dear friend!

Be so good as to put fifty rubles into the enclosed letter and send it to the address. I have been asked for assistance by my first music teacher [1], to whom I am very, very much obliged, and I categorically cannot refuse — but it is inconvenient to do it otherwise than through you.

Yours, P. Tchaikovsky

I ask you to save the address from the letter I'm sending her.

Notes and References

  1. Mariya Markovna Loginova (née Palchikova; 1823-1888), daughter of the composer Mark Palchikov, who was engaged as a piano teacher for young Pyotr in Votkinsk by his parents around 1845. By 1848, as Modest informs us in his biography of the composer, the eight-year-old Pyotr could already play the piano as well as she could. In 1883, Tchaikovsky unexpectedly received a letter from her asking for financial assistance. He granted her a pension and also corresponded regularly with her during the last three years of her life (none of these letters, however, has come to light) — see Жизнь Петра Ильича Чайковского, том 1 (1997), p. 41. Modest's assertion that Mariya was a former serf has recently been disproven — see http://expositions.nlr.ru/eng/ex_manus/Chaikovsky/teacher_music.php .