Born on May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Russian Empire; died on November 6, 1893, in Saint Petersburg.
Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture
Composed: 1869; rev. 1870 and 1880
Estimated length: 18 minutes
First performance: March 16, 1870, with Nikolai Rubinstein conducting.
The impulse to distill into music Shakespeare’s early tragedy from the mid-1590s, Romeo and Juliet, seems almost predestined for a composer with the gifts of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Indeed, it was with his Fantasy-Overture, as he styled it, that Tchaikovsky celebrated his first major breakthrough as an orchestral composer. Just a few years out of conservatory, the young, still-unknown Russian artist followed a suggestion from his mentor Mily Balakirev to translate the basic story as Shakespeare tells it into musical language. Balakirev, a composer and mathematician, played guru to a whole generation of composers seeking to establish a uniquely Russian musical identity.
It was Balakirev’s idea to organize specific episodes from Shakespeare’s tragedy of the star-crossed lovers into an independently coherent sequence of musical ideas. The piece depicts not only the young Romeo and Juliet discovering their love, but the compassionate Friar Laurence who understands their plight, as well as the ever-present background of violent enmity between the feuding Montagues and Capulets.
Balakirev even recommended how Tchaikovsky might use the harmonic relationships between distant keys to enhance the story: the music associated with the young lovers, for example, is in a key (D-flat major) far removed from the tragic B minor that he uses to illustrate the clash between their respective families.
Tchaikovsky wrote the piece over a six-week period near the end of 1869 but felt unsatisfied with the results—as he so often was—and returned to the score twice to revise it, completing the final version in 1880. In the process, he condensed the main elements of the play into a powerful emotional arc that
makes sense in purely musical terms while anticipating the sweeping emotional intensity and directness of his later symphonies.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
A somber, moody introduction that portrays Friar Laurence takes the form of a chorale reminiscent of Orthodox chant, intoned by the lower woodwinds. The pace quickens as martial themes vividly underscore the violence that threatens to break out between the feuding families. Like parting clouds, this gives way to a searingly expressive theme (English horn and viola at first) representing the yearning of the young lovers and their unbreakable bond. Tchaikovsky’s orchestration intensifies the theme’s passion, while allowing the motif of violence to break in and disrupt it.
A funereal final section signals the deaths of Romeo and Juliet, but a soaring final statement of their theme suggests that their love endures beyond the hate-scarred world—which, as the stabbing chords of the final bars remind us, is too torn by conflict to allow such beauty to survive.
Scored for 2 flutes and piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum, harp, and strings.
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
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