Talk:Andante and Finale

Title
I'm of the view that the title should be Andante and Finale (Tchaikovsky/Taneyev) or simply Andante and Finale.

It wasn't as if Tchaikovsky started writing a composition called Andante and Finale, died before it was completed, and Taneyev merely added the finishing touches as Tchaikovsky would have done had he lived longer, a la Franco Alfano adding the final touches to Turandot. No, it wasn't that way at all.

Tchaikovsky initially abandoned the E-flat symphony completely (December 1892). He wrote to his nephew Bob Davydov saying his decision was "irreversible, and it is wonderful that I made it". At that stage he had finished the scoring of the 1st movement only; the remaining three movements were fully sketched and he had done a little work on their scoring, but not much. After a return letter of encouragement from Davydov (who was not only his nephew but also the great love of his life), he reconsidered his "irreversible decision" to abandon the work entirely, and decided to convert it into a piano concerto. After struggling to write the first movement, he decided not to proceed beyond that point. Piano concertos usually have three movements, occasionally four, but almost never less than three. Some are written without a break, but there are still discernible segments that correspond to fast-slow-scherzo-finale, or whatever. Nevertheless, it was Tchaikovsky's clear intention that his Piano Concerto No. 3 would consist of a first movement (Allegro brillante) only. Many concertante works are single movements, but it's most unusual for a work titled "concerto" to have only one discrete movement, but there you have it: genius will have its way. The concerto was performed and published as Op. 75, in 1895. It was never presented or described as an unfinished work.

Meanwhile, thoughts were being given as to what to do with the remaining movements of what Tchaikovsky had left of the E-flat symphony. It seems impertinent from our perspective that anything should have been done with them at all, as Tchaikovsky had left no indication that he intended to go down that path (there was a solitary note "End of movement 1" remaining on the score of the 3rd concerto, and his failure to erase it when he made his decision to limit the work to one movement was obviously an oversight). He'd abandoned the symphony, been brought back from the brink, gone as far as he could down the piano-and-orchestra route, written the Pathétique symphony in the meantime, and that was that. He wanted nothing more to do with the E-flat symphony/concerto. Onwards to new adventures. Then he died, but that's another story.

Nevertheless, Modest Tchaikovsky, Sergei Taneyev, Alexander Siloti, Mitrofan Belyayev and probably others decided something should be done with the remaining movements. Taneyev would do the work. Various options were considered: two orchestral movements of an unfinished symphony; two movements of an unfinished concerto; two separate pieces for piano and orchestra; or a single piece for piano and orchestra but in two movements. The latter was the final choice. Taneyev had quite a job to do, and had various sources to draw on. I suppose he kept as closely as possible to what he thought Tchaikovsky would have done had he NOT decided to restrict it to one movement (except, he did decide that). But it was still essentially a conception of Taneyev's, drawing on Tchaikovsky's raw material - rather than a work of Tchaikovsky's that Taneyev had simply completed or polished up.

Despite this, Belyayev published it as a work of Tchaikovsky alone, and even gave it an opus number (Op. posth. 79) to fit into the sequence of Tchaikovsky opuses. And that's how it's almost always presented in sources, and that has confused people no end ever since, and given them the totally wrong slant on this work.

The closest parallel I can think of is Symphony No. 3 (Elgar/Payne), but there's a significant difference. Elgar wanted very much to complete the work, but was prevented by illness and other factors. Many years after his death, Anthony Payne completed the work according to the sketches, notes and other material left by Elgar, W.H. Reed and others. The work has been published and recorded, not as "Symphony No. 3 by Elgar", but as "Edward Elgar: the sketches for Symphony No 3 elaborated by Anthony Payne". That is, there is no pretence that this is necessarily what Elgar would have written had he lived, even though he wanted to finish the work. It has been given the opus number 88, but that doesn't even rate a mention in our article.

This is the exact opposite of the Andante and Finale: Tchaikovsky did NOT want to finish the 3rd Piano Concerto as he had originally intended (an arrangement of three movements of the abandoned E-flat symphony), but decided it would have only the one movement. Yet, Taneyev's work on the other movements, including the decisions on the form, genre and title, HAS been presented as a work by Tchaikovsky. It certainly included music by Tchaikovsky, but it was no more just by Tchaikovsky than Le baiser de la fée was just by Tchaikovsky, or Pulcinella was just by Pergolesi (it wasn't even Pergolesi as it turns out, but that's another story), or La Boutique fantasque was just by Rossini, or .. or ... .

We could easily make a case for calling this work Andante and Finale, by Taneyev, based on Tchaikovsky; but given its closeness to the structure originally created by Tchaikovsky, I'd settle for Andante and Finale (Tchaikovsky/Taneyev). A title that includes the word "Tchaikovsky" but not "Taneyev" would simply continue to perpetuate a misnomer that's been there since Day 1.

Another possibility, of course, is to make it simply Andante and Finale, because I'm not aware of any other works in the repertoire with this title, so there's really no need to disambiguate at all. I'm happy either way.

Comments? -- ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  02:55, 4 July 2012 (UTC)


 * No response after 3 days, so I'm moving it to Andante and Finale. --  ♬  Jack of Oz  ♬  [your turn]  04:34, 7 July 2012 (UTC)