IBDP Music Exploring creating Tchaikovsky inspired scored composition

Area of Inquiry 3

This area of inquiry focuses on music for dramatic effect, movement and entertainment, in which I will be focusing on music meant for entertainment, specifically Romantic era operas. The opera Eugene Onegin was written by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in 1879 and was inspired by the novel of the same name by Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin, published between 1825 and 1832. Tchaikovsky was a well known Russian composer and was famous for his ballets and operas, some of which include Swan Lake (1875 to 1976), and The Nutcracker (1892). Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright, and novelist of the Romantic era. An opera singer called Yelizaveta Lavrovskaya talked to Tchaikovsky about writing an opera based on the plot of Pushkin's novel Eugene Onegin. He thought it was a “curious” but risky idea, but he found himself unexplainably drawn to the plot’s innocent heroine and the novel’s straightforward themes of young life and love.

The piece I will be analyzing, Fantaisie sur un thème de l'opéra Eugene Onegin, was taken from several different key themes from the original opera by Tchaikovsky and was adapted for the harp by Ekaterina Adolfovna Walter-Küne, a lesser well-known harpist and composer. The themes that Walter-Küne included from the opera were “Act 1: Introduction” and “Act 2: Entr’acte and Waltz with Chorus. “Vot tak syurpriz!” These are the main themes of the opera, as these pieces themselves are varied within different scenes. There are also sections of the piece in which Walter-Küne has built on the original themes, creating new sections inspired by the previous ones while staying true to the original. The harp arrangement is played at several different tempos, which range from Andante, especially in the opening theme, to Tempo di valse, specifically for most parts of the waltz, due to the different themes present. The time signatures alternate between simple quadruple and simple triple time signatures, with the prominent boom-cha-cha waltz style being built on for the rest of the piece.

The opera modulates to different key signatures to reflect the tone and mood of their respective scenes. The main waltz theme was altered to reappear throughout the opera with different variations, most of the time changing the tempo and dynamics, as well as occasionally changing the key as a transition to the next theme.

In the original opera, Tchaikovsky used woodwinds such as piccolos, flute, oboes, clarinets in Ab and bassoons. In terms of brass, he used horns, trumpets and trombones. Strings make up the majority of the orchestra, with violins I and II, violas, cellos, doubles basses and a harp. The only percussion present is the timpani. This is the typical orchestra from the Romantic era, so it is appropriate that Tchaikovsky would use this kind of set-up for his work. Walter-Küne has taken all of these instruments into consideration and created cascading harmonies that compliment the melody very well while reflecting the same grand waltzing feel that Tchaikovsky composed for his opera.

Tchaikovsky was initially worried that the public would not accept his opera, which was different from other traditional operas at the time. After the premiere on March 29th, 1879, in Moscow, the opera slowly reached other European cities, including Russia and the Czech Republic. Soon, other composers started to take an interest, and Tchaikovsky's opera was greatly appreciated all across Europe. 
Section 2 - Statement on the creating exercise with reference to the score embedded in the written text and the audio excerpt

My creating exercise takes several elements from Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin and the Romantic era style opera. I wanted to incorporate several elements that make Tchaikovsky’s music unique and create my own waltz based on techniques he used in his own work, thus fitting into Area of Inquiry 3. My 32-bar waltz followed the same structure as Walter-Küne, with a simple 16 bar melody accompanied by a waltz bassline, a small half bar transition and expanding it into a variation of the original melody suitable for the harp.

Shown below is my creative exploring piece. Within this exercise, I used several common techniques, such as the waltz bassline and a repeated variation of the original motif. I also incorporated a unique descending chromatic bassline that is present in Tchaikovsky’s original work and tweaked around with it to make it unique to me (See: Upload 1 0:09 to 0:13). My piece is inspired by both Tchaikovsky and Walter-Küne, and I used a balance of their key elements to create a piece of my own. I made an exaggerated variation of the original melody line to mimic Walter-Küne’s arrangement.

If I was given the option to write more for this project, I would have followed the full structure of Walter-Küne’s work, as well as adding new sections to the piece based on the original melody to mimic introducing a new separate “theme” from the opera.