Variations on a Rococo Theme
Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky was born at Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka Province, Russia, on May 7, 1840, and died in Saint Petersburg on November 6, 1893. He composed the Variations on a Rococo Theme between December 1876 and March 1877. Wilhelm Fitzenhagen was the soloist in the premiere, on November 30, 1877, in Moscow, with the Russian Musical Society under Nikolai Rubinstein.
The score of the Rococo Variations calls for solo cello with a small orchestra of 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses).
For Tchaikovsky, Wolfgang Amade Mozart was “a sunny genius” whose music “moves me to tears.” From childhood, he studied Mozart’s scores and grew especially fond of Don Giovanni. As an adult, he turned to Mozartian themes and style for refuge from his turbulent personal life, finding equilibrium and peace in the world of late-18th-century Classicism. Tchaikovsky paid tribute to Mozart in several works: the Variations on a Rococo Theme, the orchestral Suite No. 4 (Mozartiana), and the pastoral interlude in the opera The Queen of Spades.
What the frequently melancholic Tchaikovsky admired in Mozart was his extroverted, optimistic spirit. “Perhaps it is precisely because as a man of my time I am broken, morally ill, that I so like to seek solace and consolation in Mozart’s music, which for the most part serves as an expression of life’s joys, experienced by a healthy, complete nature uncorroded by reflection.”
In Variations on a Rococo Theme, Tchaikovsky channels his inner Mozart in one of his sunniest works, a combination of what Russian musicologist Yury Keldysh calls “purely Russian melodiousness with Mozartian clarity and purity of design.” In Russia, the rococo style reached its peak during Mozart’s lifetime (1756-91), under the reigns of Empresses Elizabeth and Catherine II. Following the more restrained Baroque, the rococo style in architecture favored elaborate ornamentation, pastel colors, theatricality and frivolity. Some of the best examples can be found in and around the Russian capital of St. Petersburg, where Tchaikovsky spent much of his youth. The exuberant, exquisitely detailed, blue-and-white Catherine Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, built in the mid-1700s, is a particularly fine example.
When Tchaikovsky began composing the neoclassical Rococo Variations in late 1876, he was perhaps seeking an escape from the dark emotional world of the work he had just completed, the passionate symphonic fantasia Francesca da Rimini, based on Dante’s tale of doomed lovers. The origins of the composition of the Variations are somewhat obscure, but we know that the work’s dedicatee, cellist Wilhelm Fitzenhagen, Tchaikovsky’s colleague at Moscow Conservatory, was involved from an early stage. Eventually Fitzenhagen made numerous significant changes to Tchaikovsky’s original score to showcase the cello part, rearranging the order of Tchaikovsky’s original eight variations, eliminating the final one and altering transitions between the variations. Jurgenson published Fitzenhagen’s heavily edited version (with seven variations rather than Tchaikovsky’s eight) in a cello-piano version in 1878, and in full score in 1889.
Apparently Jurgenson and Tchaikovsky were both unhappy with Fitzenhagen’s changes, but allowed them to stand. Jurgenson complained to Tchaikovsky in 1878 that Fitzenhagen “is most importunate in wishing to alter your cello piece, to make it more suitable for the instrument, and he says you have given him full authority to do this. Good heavens! Tchaikovsky revu et corrigé par Fitzenhagen!” But when Tchaikovsky reviewed the full score before its 1889 publication, he allegedly told his cellist friend Anatoly Brandukov he would not take any further action: “The devil take it! Let it stand as it is!” And so the Fitzenhagen edition became the standard for performances. Soviet musicologist Viktor Kubatsky later resurrected Tchaikovsky’s original version, published by Muzgiz in Moscow in 1956. Some cellists have since adopted the original, but Fitzenhagen’s remains the version of choice for most.
Writing for a small Mozartian-era ensemble (with clarinets and oboes, not always found in Mozart’s scores), Tchaikovsky composed the main theme himself, imitating the style of Mozart’s era. After a short introduction ending with a thrice repeated plaintive three-note solo horn call, the theme unfolds with symmetrical precision in bright A major (the primary key throughout) in two mirroring eight-bar phrases, evoking the gentility, lightness, elegant proportions, and good humor of Mozart’s comic operas. A six-bar codetta for oboes, clarinets, and bassoons follows each reprise of the theme, a piquant chromatic drone-like complement to the theme’s sweetness.
The ensuing variations vary in mood and complexity, but all are sparely scored, allowing the soloist to take center stage. The only variation in a minor key—D minor—is the sixth (third in Tchaikovsky’s original), a languid Andante that slows the theme down to a seductive serenade with the strings strumming pizzicato accompaniment to the cello’s soulful song. Fitzenhagen enjoyed particular success with this variation, which allegedly inspired Franz Liszt to praise him after an 1879 performance in Wiesbaden in 1879: “You carried me away! You played splendidly. Now there, at last, is real music!”
Other variations allow the soloist to display virtuosity, particularly the fifth (Tchaikovsky’s sixth), where the flute takes the theme against sixteenth-note runs in the cello, climaxing in an extended and highly dramatic cadenza. In the dancing triplets for the flute and clarinet in the third variation (Tchaikovsky’s seventh), one can hear echoes of the music for the ballet Swan Lake, completed just months before the Rococo Variations. The allegro vivace (variation seven) that concludes the piece is a tour de force for the cellist, with explosive staccato runs, leaps, arpeggios, and double stops racing across the instrument’s range before a decisive concluding A-major cadence.
Given how brilliantly and idiomatically Tchaikovsky writes for the cello in the Rococo Variations, it seems a shame he never composed a concerto or sonata for the instrument. Over the years the Rococo Variations has become one of the most popular vehicles for cellists all over the world. Mstislav Rostropovich adored the work, played it very often throughout his long career, and taught it to generations of students at Moscow Conservatory. When at Rostropovich’s insistence the cello was added to the violin and piano for the second Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1962, the Rococo Variations was a required work in the final round.
Harlow Robinson
Harlow Robinson is an author, lecturer, and Matthews Distinguished University Professor of History, Emeritus, at Northeastern University. His books include Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography and Russians in Hollywood, Hollywood’s Russians. He has contributed essays and reviews to the Boston Globe, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Symphony, Musical America, and Opera News, and program essays to the Boston Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Aspen Music Festival, and Metropolitan Opera.
The first Boston Symphony Orchestra performances—also evidently the first American performances—of the Variations on a Rococo Theme took place at Symphony Hall with Max Fiedler conducting on October 30 and 31, 1908, featuring former BSO principal cellist Alwin Schroeder as soloist.