Pyotr Tchaikovsky as a translator of François Gevaert

Abstract:
The article is concerned with the history of Tchaikovsky’s translation of François-Auguste Gevaert’s textbook Traité général dʼinstrumentation. The author reviews the history and the reasons of what made Tchaikovsky do this translation, as well as presents an analysis of its specificities in the context of music theory and pedagogy of the 2nd half of the 19th century both in Europe and in Russia. Special attention is paid to the commentaries that Tchaikovsky gave as the translator, as well as to the fact that he introduced some examples from Mikhail Glinka’s works.

Keywords:
Orchestra, orchestration, translations of works and textbooks on the theory of orchestration, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, Anton Rubinstein, François-Auguste Gevaert, Mikhail Glinka, Hector Berlioz