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Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.1 in G minor, Op. 13, is also known as Winter Daydreams. The composer's brother Modest claimed this work cost Tchaikovsky more labor and suffering than any of his other works^[1]. Nevertheless, Tchaikovsky maintained a fondness for this work. He admitted to friend several years after writing it, "For all its glaring deficiencies, I have a soft spot for it^[2]." He wrote Nadezhda von Meck in 1883 that "although it is in many ways very immature, yet fundamentally it has more substance and is better than any of my other more mature works^[3]."

Tchaikovsky biographer John Warrack writes about this composition, "Here, while he has not yet developed the extremely personal solution [to symphonic form] which marks his last three symphonies with greatness, [Tchaikovsky] produces a work which is conventional in form but already strongly coloured by his own individuality^[4]."

Contents 1 Composition 2 Instrumentation 3 Form 4 Influences 4.1 Teachers 4.2 Mendelssohn 4.3 Russia 5 Struggles with form 6 Sources 7 External Links 8 Notes

Tchaikovsky started to work on this symphony in March 1866, just after accepted a job as professor of harmony at the Moscow Conservatory. Sluggish progress plus a scathing review by Cesar Cui of a cantata Tchaikovsky had written as a graduation piece from the St. Petersburg Conservatory did not help his morale. The resulting depression, plus the added stress the composer placed on himself by composing day and night, strained Tchaikovsky's mental and physical health tremendously. He suffered from insomnia, from pains in his head which he thought to be strokes, and became convinced he would not live to finish the symphony^[5].

A successful performance in St Petersburg on May 13, under the baton of Anton Rubinstein, of his revised Overture in F lifted his spirits, along with a change of scene for the summer with his family. However, Tchaikovsky continued to compose day and night, working himself again into nervous and physical exhaustion. Eventually, the family summoned a doctor, who declared Tchaikovsky "one step away from insanity." He ordered complete rest. Tchaikovsky complied.

Despite his lack of progress, when he returned to St Petersburg at the end of August, Tchaikovsky sought the opinion of his former teachers, Anton Rubinstein and Nikolai Zaremba, on what he had finished so far ^[6]. Both Rubinstein and Zaremba were negative. Moreover, they refused to consider performing any of the symphony at a St Petersburg concert of the Russian Musical Society (RMS), something for which Tchaikovsky had hoped^[7].

After stopping work to fulfill a commission to write a festival overture based on the Danish national anthem^[8], Tchaikovsky completed the symphony—including all the modifications requested by Rubinstein and Zaremba—before the conservatory's Christmas break. During the break, Tchaikovsky resubmitted the manuscript to Rubinstein and Zaremba. Though they still disapproved of the symphony on the whole, this time they passed the adagio and scherzo as "being fit for performance." These two movements were played at an RMS concert in St Petersburg on February 23, 1867, with no success^[9].

Tchaikovsky had looked to St Petersburg as the premier musical location in Russia and been obsessed with having his symphony performed there first. He was now thoroughly disillusioned with St Petersburg audiences as well as the critical judgments of both his former teachers. He discarded all the revisions he had made to the symphony and stood firmly by his original version, with one exception. At Zaremba's insistence, Tchaikovsky had composed a new second subject for the opening movement. In reversing his amendments, however, Tchaikovsky found that he had discarded the papers that contained his original second subject, and he could not remember what he had originally composed. Tchaikovsky let the second subject as approved by Zaremba stand as it was^[10].

Back in Moscow, Anton's brother Nikolay was more positive about the symphony and had no problem performing it. It was only Tchaikovsky's insistence on a St Petersburg performance of the work that held him back. Tchaikovsky grudgingly allowed Rubinstein to conduct the scherzo at a Moscow concert of the RMS on December 22. Though this performance met with little success, it did not deter Rubinstein from wishing to perform the complete work. After the failure of the St Petersburg concert, Tchaikovsky became more open to a Moscow premiere of the whole symphony. This finally took place on February 15, 1868. This time the audience reception was enthusiastic. Surprisingly, though, the symphony would have to wait 15 years for its next performance^[11].

Tchaikovsky dedicated the symphony to Nikolay Rubinstein.

The symphony is scored for piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets (A, B-flat), two bassoons, four horns (E-flat, F), two trumpets (C, D), three trombones, tuba, timpani, cymbals, bass drum and strings.

1. Allegro tranquillo
2. Adagio cantabile ma non tanto
3. Scherzo, allegro scherzando giocoso

   This was the earliest movement to be written. Salvaged from a piano sonata in C sharp minor that he had written as a student, Tchaikovsky transposed the movement a semitone and replaced the trio with the first of a whole line of orchestral waltzes.

4. Finale, andante lugubre—allegro maestoso.

   Tchaikovsky uses the folk-song "Распашу ли я млада, младeшенка" (Raspashu li ya mlada, mladeshenka) as the basis for both the introduction and the second subject. This song also colors the vigorous first subject.

Both Anton Rubinstein and Nikolai Zaremba's musical sympathies were Teutonic and conservative. As opposed to the forward-looking tendencies of The Five, Rubinstein and his followers remained suspicious, even hostile, to new trends in music. Instead, they attempted to preserve in their own works what they saw as the best in the Western tradition in the immediate past^[12].

Though not active as a composer, Nikolai Zaremba was no exception to this rule. He idolized Beethoven, particularly the late works, but his personal tastes had progressed no further than Mendelssohn. If anyone would ask him about Hector Berlioz, Robert Schumann—or, closer to home, Mikhail Glinka, Zaremba would probably have to admit knowing nothing^[13].

Anton Rubinstein, a highly prolific composer in his own right, was almost as backward-looking as Zaremba, writing in a Germanic style similar to Schumann and Mendelssohn^[14]. Though as a teacher Rubinstein would try to foster his students' imaginations, he also expected them to remain as conservative as he was.

To this end, when Richard Wagner came to St Petersburg in 1863 to conduct excerpts from his then-unperformed Der Ring des Niebelungen, Rubinstein dealt scrupulously in class on the enlarged forces Wagner employed, then expected his students to ignore using them^[15]. While he agreed to conduct Tchaikovsky's graduation cantata, albeit grudgingly, Rubinstein found his student's orchestration of that piece "heretical" and refused to conduct it at a second performance unless Tchaikovsky made substantial changes. Tchaikovsky refused^[16].

Over the summer holiday with his family in 1866, when evening activitiess turned to music, Tchaikovsky invariably played Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony, Schumann's First or Third Symphonies, or Das Paradies und die Peri^[17]. Perhaps unsurprisingly, as Warrack writes, Mendelssohn's presence is very strong in Winter Daydreams. A Mendelssohnian grace of invention prevails throughout the work, and the lightness and pace of the scherzo seems to emanate from the dream world of A Midsummer Night's Dream^[18].

Moreover, Warrack adds, both the symphony's subtitle and those of the first two movements—"Dreams of a Winter Journey" and "Land of Desolation, Land of Mists"—betray a possible fondness of Mendelssohn's ability to express in symphonic form a personal experience arising out of emotion at a romantic landscape. Though Tchaikovsky did not carry through this idea to the end (the latter two movements lack subtitles), the overall atmosphere of the symphony is closer to Mendelssohn than to anything else in the symphonic tradition^[19].

Even with these influences, Russian writer Daniel Zhitomirsky explains, "the subject, the genre and intonation" of Tchaikovsky's writing are closely intwined with Russian life and folk music^[20]." Warrack notes that "the obsessive thirds of Russian folk-song permeate Tchaikovsky's tunes; and he must also at some time been haunted by the interval of the falling fourth, so strongly does it colour [sic] the invention in the early symphonies, always prominently placed in the melodies and acting as emotional coloration rather than implying a harmonic progression^[21]."

Writer Herbert Weinstock may have been harsh to call Winter Daydreams a failure in his biography of Tchaikovsky, but his reasoning for calling it that could actually be considered sound. Weinstock writes, "The cause of the symphony's failure was the cause of the unnerving struggle its composition had been to [Tchaikovsky]: he could not write a symphony that would simultaneously stay within the formal bounds of earlier symphonies — thus pleasing Anton Rubinstein—and contain music he felt inside himself and had to get out^[22]."

This does not mean that Tchaikovsky was completely unable to work within musical form. On the contrary: Brown admits that while Tchaikovsky's natural aptitude to think in terms of organic symphonic procedures may have been limited, the frank confessions of his difficulties that he made later in his career have been too easily accepted as a blanket assessment on his entire work. Though he may have been attempting to be frank, Tchaikovsky may have actually done himself less than full justice^[23].

Brown continues that the First Symphony was a turning point in one very important way. Up to the time he wrote it, Tchaikovsky had been satisfied with acting as a competent craftsman, shaping his music as best he could to accommodate the practice of previous composers. With Winter Daydreams, Tchaikovsky said that if he were to grow and develop as a composer in his own right, he would have to work "around the rules," so to speak, to find his own solutions. His victories may have sometimes been hard-won — and, as it turned out, no more hard-won that they were here — but they were victories nonetheless^[24].

This being Tchaikovsky's first large-scale work, it was only natural that he would suffer the anxieties that he did. Complicating matters, as both Brown and Warrack point out, Tchaikovsky's finest asset as a composer actually worked against him in writing in musical form — namely, that Tchaikovsky was simply too successful a melodist^[25].

Warrack refers back to Tchaikovsky's later student and fellow-composer Sergey Taneyev to explain this problem. A melody that is of itself complete will not be amenable to musical development. It can be repeated and modified by someone like Tchaikovsky ingeniously enough to maintain interest, tension and satisfaction over a long span. Little more than that can be done. ^[26].

As Brown points out, what Tchaikovsky had to do was adapt sonata form and symphonic structure to make it more compatible with the type of music he was gifted to write. In doing so, Tchaikovsky often shows tremendous resourcefulness, even in this symphony. "The opening stretch of the first movement is enough to scotch the hoary old legend that Tchaikovsky was devoid of any real symphonic aptitude^[27]."

Warrack adds that in Winter Daydreams are already several fingerprints of Tchaikovsky's mature style. One is the very charming waltz replacing the trio section of the scherzo. Others include decorating a theme with woodwind scales, certain harmonic traits, allowing skillful orchestration to substitute for more basic musical variety, and relying on the repetition of melody instead of a musical cell that could generate true symphonic energy.^[28].

In short, Warrack writes, Tchaikovsky's stylistic defects as well as its merits are already present. Even so, he concludes, while Tchaikovsky ruefully acknowledged those defects, "he was also right to take pleasure in the music's youthful freshness and charm^[29]."

• Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Early Years, 1840-1874 (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1978)
• Holden, Anthony, Tchaikovsky: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1995)
• Keller, Hans, ed. Simpson, Robert, The Symphony, Volume One (Harmondsworth, 1966)
• Poznansky, Alexander, Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man (New York, Schirmer Books, 1991)
• Strutte, Wilson, Tchaikovsky, His Life and Times (Speldhurst, Kent, United Kingdom: Midas Books, 1979)
• Warrack, John, Tchaikovsky (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973)
• Warrack, John, Tchaikovsky Symphonies and Concertos (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1971, 1969)
• Weinstock, Herbert, Tchaikovsky (New York: Albert A. Knoff, 1944)
• Zhitomirsky, Daniel, ed. Shostakovich, Dmitry, Russian Symphony: Thoughts About Tchaikovsky (New York: Philosophical Library, 1947)

• http://www.tchaikovsky-research.net/en/Works/Symphonies/TH024/index.html
• Symphony No. 1 was available at the International Music Score Library Project.

v • d • e Symphonies by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
No. 1 in G minor (Winter Daydreams) · No. 2 in C minor (Little Russian) · No. 3 in D major (Polish) · No. 4 in F minor · Manfred Symphony · No. 5 in E minor · No. 6 in B minor (Pathétique) Unfinished: No. 7 in E flat major List of compositions by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky