Orchestral Suite No. 3 (Tchaikovsky) - Composition

Composition

"I meant to write a symphony, but the title is of no importance", Tchaikovsky wrote Sergei Taneyev. When he had gone to the Davidov family estate at Kamenka in the Ukraine, he had contemplated ideas for a piano concerto and a symphony. Neither plan really materialized the way the composer intended. He quickly recognized his ideas for the symphony were better suited for an orchestral suite like the two he had previously written. The problem lay with the opening movement. Titled Contrastes, it was to be a fantasia of contrasting musical sounds and patterns, not unlike the Jeu de sons movement that opened the Second Orchestral Suite. The more he worked with the music, the more recalcitrant the music became and the more he hated it. Contrastes finally found its way into the Concert Fantasia.

Tchaikovsky's original layout for the Third Suite was similar to that of his Second—a fairly large opening movement as in his first two orchestral suites, then three smaller ones and a theme–and–variations finale. The developments that Contrastes underwent, while good for the Concert Fantasia, left the suite unbalanced, with three small-scale movements followed by a theme-and-variations movement as large as all three previous movements placed together. Even without Contrastes, the suite remains a long work.

Wiley writes that Tchaikovsky composed the scherzo first. The theme-and-variation finale came last, beginning with the concluding polonaise. This, he says, might have helped the composer clarify his strategy in pacing the movement and guiding its overall momentum. He also links the theme of the finale to the other movements: "its opening chord is presented as a triad with added sixth, and, like the Elegie, the movement is resolutely melodic."

Wiley also says the quality of Prelest' (meaning "charming" or "pleasing") in the Third Suite "is too prominent for a symphony, while at the same time the suite's coherence advances well beyond the casual miscellency of the Second." This continuity, he suggests, "casts doubt on the freedom he so cherished when writing the First Suite six years earlier." The Third Suite, Wiley adds, is also much darker music in tone than in the two suites that preceded it.

In the fourth variation (pochissimo meno animato, B minor) of the fourth movement, a quotation of the Dies Irae theme is distinctly heard.