Letter 2451

Tchaikovsky Research
Date 29 February/12 March 1884
Addressed to Pyotr Jurgenson
Where written Paris
Language French
Autograph Location Klin (Russia): Tchaikovsky State Memorial Musical Museum-Reserve (a3, No. 2483)
Publication П. И. Чайковский. Полное собрание сочинений, том XII (1970), p. 333
Čajkovskijs Homosexualität und sein Tod. Legenden und Wirklichkeit (1998), p.199 (with German translation)
Notes Telegram

Text and Translation

French text
(original)
English translation
By Luis Sundkvist
Expédie tout de suite à mes frais Paris 6 Boulevard Clichy parties et partitions «Capriccio Italien» et «Suite caractéristique». Il faut 10 part[ies] de violons, 6 part[ies] de altos, violoncelles, basses. Adresse Benjamin Godard.
Tchaikovsky

Send immediately, at my expense, to Paris, 6 Boulevard Clichy, the parts and scores of the "Italian Capriccio" and "Suite caractéristique". They require 10 parts for violins, 6 parts for violas, cellos, double-basses. Address to Benjamin Godard [1].
Tchaikovsky

Notes and References

  1. While in Berlin Tchaikovsky received a letter from the French composer Benjamin Godard, a founding member of the Union Internationale des Compositeurs. In this letter, dated 22 February 1884 [N.S.], Godard asked Tchaikovsky to send all the necessary orchestral parts for the Italian Capriccio, so that it could be performed at one of the newly-founded Union's series of concerts in the Palais du Trocadéro between April and June 1884. (For more details see the notes for Letter 2453a to Alfred Bruneau, 11/23 March 1884.) As this telegram shows, Tchaikovsky was keen for Parisian audiences to hear not just the Italian Capriccio, but also the Suite No. 2, which he had completed just a few months earlier.