Tchaikovsky: Six Romances and Songs, Op. 27 (1875) II. Look Yonder Cloud. Andante semplice (C minor)

Tchaikovsky: Six Romances and Songs, Op. 27
(1875)
II. Look, Yonder Cloud (Смотри: вон облако)
Andante semplice (C minor)


Tchaikovsky's Six Romances and Songs (Шесть романсов и песен), Op. 27 (TH 98 ; ČW 232-237), were written in March and April 1875 in Moscow.

Instrumentation:
Scored for medium voice (Nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 6) or low voice (No. 2), with piano accompaniment.

Movements:

II. Look, Yonder Cloud (Смотри: вон облако) Andante semplice (C minor)

Look: there is a silvery cloud;
Everywhere around him the sky is shining clear,
How beautiful your youth is.
And the morning brilliance reflects so brightly on it;
And so it is light, as if smiling -
It looks like you, it looks like you.

Look: over there a lonely cloud comes out;
It is dark as night, as the sadness of the soul is deep -
The radiance of the day will not enlighten her ...
Perhaps that is why she is gloomy so formidable,
That with a bright cloud a different path was given to her, -
She looks like me, she looks like me

Nikolay Grekov (1810–1866), from his poem Stanzas (Стансы) (by 1860).

Composition:
The history of these romances is undocumented. They were probably composed sometime between mid/late March (after the Six Romances, Op. 25) and 7/19 April 1875 (the date they were received by Pyotr Jurgenson, as noted on the manuscript).

Performances:
The romance Evening (No. 4) was performed, possibly for the first time, by Aleksandra Svyatlovskaya in Moscow on 17/29 December 1876, at the sixth symphony concert of the Russian Musical Society.

Publication:
The romances were published by Pyotr Jurgenson in May 1875. A new edition, containing the second version of My Spoiled Darling (No. 6), was issued by Jurgenson in August 1892.

The set (including both versions of No. 6) was published in volume 44 of Tchaikovsky's Complete Collected Works (1940), edited by Ivan Shishov and Nikolay Shemanin.

Arrangements:
The romance Do Not Leave Me (No. 3) was orchestrated by Sergey Taneyev in 1891, and this arrangement was published by Pyotr Jurgenson in 1892.

Autographs:
Tchaikovsky's manuscript scores of all six romances are now preserved in the Russian National Museum of Music in Moscow (ф. 88, No. 136).

The same archive also holds Sergey Taneyev's autograph arrangement of Do Not Leave Me (No. 3) for voice and orchestra, containing annotations by Tchaikovsky (ф. 85, No. 38).

Dedication:
All the romances are dedicated to Yelizaveta Lavrovskaya.