Letter 3861a

Tchaikovsky Research
Date 19/31 May 1889
Addressed to Ethel Smyth
Where written Frolovskoye
Language French
Autograph Location unknown [1]
Publication Čajkovskijs Homosexualität und sein Tod. Legenden und Wirklichkeit (1998), p. 187
Notes Photocopy in Klin (Russia): Tchaikovsky State Memorial Musical Museum-Reserve

Text and Translation

French text
(original)
English translation
By Luis Sundkvist
Kline, près [de] Moscou
19/31 Mai 1889

Chère Mademoiselle!

Je viens de recevoir Votre lettre qui m'a longtemps suivi avant de m'attrapper. je Vous recommande beaucoup Gabriel Fauré, organiste de la Madeleine. Vous pouvez trouver son adresse dans un magasin de musique par example chez Durand, Place de la Madeleine, 4.

Tout à Vous,

P. Tschaïkowsky

Klin, near Moscow
19/31 May 1889

Dear Mademoiselle!

I have just received your letter, which has been pursuing me for a long time before finally catching up with me [2]. I very much recommend to you Gabriel Fauré, organist at the Madeleine [3]. You can find his address in a music shop such as Durand, Place de la Madeleine, 4 [4].

Yours ever,

P. Tchaikovsky

Notes and References

  1. The autograph was auctioned on 16-17 March 1995 by J. A. Stargardt, Berlin.
  2. Tchaikovsky had only recently returned to his house in Frolovskoye following his return to Russia after his second European concert tour.
  3. L'église Sainte-Marie-Madeleine in Paris, a Roman Catholic church consecrated in 1842.
  4. Tchaikovsky seems to have met Fauré for the first time during his stay in Paris in June 1886. See the diary entry for 7/19 June 1886 translated by Wladimir Lakond in The Diaries of Tchaikovsky (1973), p. 86. They met again in Paris in March–April 1889. As Gerald Norris has observed in Stanford, the Cambridge Jubilee, and Tchaikovsky (1980), "Fauré deeply admired his Russian colleague and presented him with signed copies of his First and Second Piano Quartets, the latter being inscribed 'To my dear master and friend P. Tchaikovsky from his affectionately devoted Gabriel Fauré'" (p. 323).