Marking the 175th anniversary of the birth of Pyotr Tchaikovsky
«Music… from the depths of the soul excited by artistic inspiration».

Pyotr Tchaikovsky. Hamlet

In 1980, the widow of the famous musicologist Anatoly Dmitriev (1908–1978) transferred a fragment of Tchaikovsky's work to the possession to the Manuscripts Department of our library. This piece is a draft manuscript copy, written by the composer in pencil. It contains four bars of the score for woodwinds (two oboes, two clarinets, a bassoon) and drums. At the bottom of the sheet, under the musical text, there is the word «Hamlet» written by Pyotr Tchaikovsky's hand and followed by his signature and the date 8 February 1891.

Let us remember the history of creation of the work inspired by Shakespeare's tragedy «Hamlet». Tchaikovsky was interested in this story already in 1876, but the first music outlines for the piece of music appeared much later - in 1885 and 1887. As suggested by L. Mikheev, '«…the final impetus for writing the overture-fantasy on this subject was an external factor'.

His friend, the French actor from the troupe of the Mikhailovsky Theatre, Lucien Guitry asked Tchaikovsky to write some music for production of the two scenes from the tragedy: «The Mousetrap» «Hamlet and His Mother». Work on these scenes grew into an independent symphonic compositions - the Hamlet Overture-Fantasia f-moll, op. 67. It was completed in 1888, and, in November of the same year, was first performed at the Third Symphony concert of the Russian Musical Society. The author himself conducted the overture. The score was published by the publishing house of P. Jurgenson in 1890.

However, work on Shakespeare's story was not over. In the autumn of that year, Lucien Guitry again turned to Tchaikovsky to compose music for production of «Hamlet», and not for certain scenes, but for the whole play. In January 1891, the composer finished writing, and on 9 February 1891, the premiere with Tchaikovsky's music was performed at the St. Petersburg Mikhailovsky Theater as a benefit for Lucien Guitry.

Tchaikovsky's autograph stored in the National Library of Russia, with the author's signature 'Hamlet', was dated to 8 February 1891. On the back of the sheet is a record made by hand of an unknown person in French, «fanfare a canonner 4^o tableau» (fanfares and cannons. 4th scene). Apparently, the day before the premiere of Pyotr Ilyich finished the piece of music for the 4th scene of the performance, insonifying the remark: '[A flourish of trumpets, and ordnance shot off, within]'. It is unknown if this piece was performed during the first performance. Author's music score for the play lost.

However, there are documents affirm that the musicologist Vsevolod Prokofiev looked for the lost score, working on the monograph «Music in the Former Mikhailovsky Theater». In 1936 he addressed to Director of the Tchaikovsky Museum in Klin, Nikolay Zhegin, asking about the whereabouts of the score for the play «Hamlet». In response, Zhegin reported that the score is missing in the Museum and suggested that Tchaikovsky gave the manuscript to Lucien Guitry.

For lack of the full author's score, a fragment of the work, written by the hand of the composer, is particularly valuable. It is hard to say how this sheet came to Anatoly Dmitriev, but knowing that he was a famous textual critic and, in the 1950s, participated in the preparation of several volumes from the Complete Works of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, we can safely assert that Dmitriev was not accidental owner of the composer's autograph. Whatever was the previous path of this small fragment of Tchaikovsky's music, thanks to the fact that it fell into the hands of a professional, it has been preserved up to now.