Romeo and Juliet is a musical work by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, subtitled Overture-Fantasy. Like other composers such as Berlioz and Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky was deeply inspired by Shakespeare and by Shakespeare's play of the same name.

History

In 1869 Tchaikovsky was just 28 years old and an up-and-coming lecturer at the Moscow Conservatory. Having written his first symphony and an opera, he then wrote an orchestral work entitled Fate and dedicated it to Mily Balakirev, who conducted the first St. Petersburg performance. Balakirev was one of the “Mighty Five” Russian composers in the mid-1800s. (The others were Modest Mussorgsky, Alexander Borodin, César Cui, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. The group was not entirely sympathetic to Tchaikovsky’s musical outlook, which was too international for their liking.) Despite the fact that Balakirev had many problems in his own musical life, he had a head full of ideas, and almost a compulsion to persistently give detailed help to all the musicians he met.

The Fate piece received only a lukewarm reception, and the older composer wrote a detailed letter to Tchaikovsky explaining the defects. Tchaikovsky accepted the criticism, and the two continued to correspond. Balakirev then pressed Tchaikovsky to write a piece based on Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.^{[citation needed]} In suggesting this, Balakirev knew that Tchaikovsky had just emerged from what would be his only real infatuation with a member of the opposite sex, a Belgian soprano named Désirée Artôt. (Tchaikovsky had indeed proposed to her, but she had walked out on him to marry a Spanish baritone.)

Balakirev wrote suggestions about the structure of Romeo and Juliet, giving details of the type of music required in each section, and even opinions on which keys to use. Tchaikovsky largely followed this advice and forwarded his first draft to Balakirev. Balakirev responded by praising the love theme: "I play it often, and I want very much to hug you for it",^{[citation needed]} but then went on to grind away at him to make changes in the first section. Tchaikovsky accepted some, but not all, of Balakirev’s nagging, and completed the work. He dedicated it to Balakirev. His friend Nikolai Rubinstein was due to conduct it on March 16, 1870.

Sadly, the first performance in 1870 was hindered by a sensational court case surrounding Rubinstein and a female student. The court had found against the eminent musician the previous day, and this incited a noisy demonstration in his favour when he appeared on the concert platform, which proved much more interesting to the audience than the new overture. The result was not encouraging as a premiere for Romeo and Juliet. Tchaikovsky said of the premiere:

"After the concert we dined.... No one said a single word to me about the overture the whole evening. And yet I yearned so for appreciation and kindness." (Kamien 254)

It induced Tchaikovsky to rework the piece, now fully accepting Balakirev's criticisms. The new version was published late in 1870 and the perfectionist Balakirev still quibbled that the ending was not powerful enough. Included in this version as per Balakirev's request was a new theme for Friar Laurence. In 1880, ten years after his first reworking of the piece, Tchaikovsky rewrote the ending, finally giving the piece a conclusion that Balakirev could endorse.

Musical structure

Although styled a 'Overture-Fantasy' by the composer, the overall design is a symphonic poem in sonata-form with an introduction and an epilogue. The work is based on three main strands of the Shakespeare story. The first strand, following Balakirev’s suggestion, is the introduction representing the saintly Friar Laurence. Here there is a flavour of Russian Orthodoxy, but also a foreboding of doom from the lower strings. Eventually a single chord passed back and forth between strings and woodwinds grows into the second strand, the agitated theme of the warring Capulets and Montagues, including a reference to the sword fight. The forceful irregular rhythms of the street music point ahead to Stravinsky and beyond. The action suddenly slows, the key dropping from B-minor to D-flat (as suggested by Balakirev) and we hear the opening bars of the love theme, the third strand, passionate and yearning in character but always with an underlying current of anxiety. The strings enter with a lush, hovering melody over which the flute and oboe eventually soar with the love theme once again, signalling the development section.

The recapitulation proceeds with the themes brought back and ends in four bars of abrupt chords, proclaiming the death of the star-crossed lovers.

Used in movies and TV

The Overture's love theme had been used in many TV shows and movies such as Wayne's World, Seeing Double, Ren & Stimpy, South Park, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, etc.

A part of the theme has also been used in the popular videogame The Sims.

Recordings

Link to download music - Romeo and Juliet Overture recording from Musopen.

References

Kamien, Roger. Music : An Appreciation. Mcgraw-Hill College; 3rd edition (August 1, 1997) ISBN 0-07-036521-0

External links

Program notes from the Redwood Symphony with a more in-depth listening guide [1]