Evening

Tchaikovsky Research

Evening (Вечер) is a choral work (TH 74; ČW 68a), probably written by Tchaikovsky in the spring of 1871. It was published in two versions — one in the key of C major, and the other in G major.

Instrumentation

The version in G major is scored for unaccompanied male voices (TTB). No scoring was specified for the version in C major, which may have been intended either for male or children's voices.

Movements and Duration

There is one movement: Andante con moto (95 bars), lasting around 3 minutes in performance.

Text

The words were written by the composer himself, and attributed in the score to "N.N.".

Composition

Evening appears to have been commissioned by Karl Albrecht for publication in one of his compilations of choral works that was first published in 1872, and approved for publication by the state censor on 3/15 June 1871.

Publication

Evening appeared in Karl Albrecht's A Handbook of Choral Singing after the numerical method by Chevé, part 2 [1] (1872) [2]. The chorus was untitled, and was printed using the Galin-Paris-Chevé sight-singing notation system, in the key of C major. This edition also included Tchaikovsky's chorus Spring.

In 1882, a second version of the chorus, now entitled Evening, appeared in another collection by Karl Albrecht [3], which the censor had approved for publication by Jurgenson on 13/25 December 1881. This was now written in conventional notation for 3-part male choir, in the key of G major, and had some differences of tempo and dynamic markings compared with the earlier edition.

It is uncertain whether Albrecht transposed and made alterations to the chorus for either instance of its publication, or if the revisions were made by Tchaikovsky himself between 1876 and 1880.

The G-major version for male voices was included in volume 43 of Tchaikovsky's Complete Collected Works (1941), edited by Ivan Shishov and Nikolay Shemanin.

Autographs

No manuscript scores for Evening have been traced.

Recordings

See: Discography

External Links

Notes and References

  1. Руководство к хоровому пению по цифирной методе Шеве, преимущество для народных школ, вып. 2 (Moscow, 1872).
  2. So far no copies of the first edition (1871) have come to light, but a second edition from 1876 was discovered in 1993 by K. N. Nikitin in the library of the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. See П. И. Чайковский. Забытое и новое (1993), p. 136–141.
  3. No. 4 in Сборник хоров для мужских голосов, отд. 2, вып.1. (Moscow: P. Jurgenson, 1881).