Table of contents
Introduction
Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet is a fantasy overture, as the composer himself called it. Like many composers, like Berlioz or Prokofiev, Tchaikovsky was drawn to Shakespeare’s tragedy. Although Romeo and Juliet is not the only play that inspired him: he wrote works based on Hamlet and The Tempest as well.
The original idea didn’t come from Tchaikovsky himself but from another great Russian composer: Mily Balakirev.
In spite of that, the premiere was a total flop. Tchaikovsky revised the work over and over again following Balakirev’s suggestions: from the first version in 1869 it took him 11 years of polishing to arrive at the version we know today. And the premiere of the final version had to wait even longer, as it only happened in 1886.
Mily Balakirev c. 1900
Time well spent, as Romeo and Juliet went from a criticized piece to one of the most loved of all times: its love theme, with its passionate melody, has sunk into our own consciousness.
Tchaikovsky: an analysis of Romeo and Juliet Overture
Structure
Romeo and Juliet is a symphonic poem in sonata form. As I mentioned many times now, a sonata form typically consists of an exposition with 2 contrasting themes, a development, and a recapitulation. Everything is often framed by an introduction and a coda.
Tchaikovsky here goes slightly off the rails and follows 3 threads in Shakespeare’s tragedy and assigns them to three different themes:
- Friar Laurence
- the conflict between Capulets and Montagues
- the love between Romeo and Juliet.
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Allegro giusto
This is like a street scene: people coming from all over the places, facing each other, going after one another. You can actually picture it through the music.
Listen to this passage:
Doesn’t it sound like an argument? The violins take 3 notes and shorten them to sixteenths
and piccolo, flutes and clarinets answer in anger
The dialogue is expanded and contracted again, using also a composing trick: the inversion. The same 3 notes that were going up now are “read” backward and move down. Tchaikovsky also increase the tension by moving up ½ step each time
until he takes us to a battle: all the fire is concentrated in the strings while the rest of the orchestra plays short chords. And the swords? Are in the cymbals.
Second theme
The action slows down, the same 3 notes reappear getting more and more scattered: the two confronting families are leaving the scene making room for the love theme
This theme is warm, delicately played by the English horn and violas with mute, representing Romeo. Look at the orchestration, very peculiar: the horns palpitate in syncopation, while a bassoon offers a supporting carpet doubled by the cellos and basses in pizzicato
The rest of the strings offer a moment of absolute intimacy before the theme is played again, this time by the flutes and the oboes, representing Juliet. And look at the first horn: those descending figures are a topos of classical music, traditionally representing sorrow and/or anxiety
Development
After this beautiful page, signifying the couple’s first meeting and the scene at Juliet’s balcony, the battle returns. The music intensifies, and we hear an anxious Friar Laurence in the midst of it
The different motives come back and intertwine each other. But there’s no room in this section for the love theme, not even a shred of it. The atmosphere is suspended: the violins are in syncopation while the dialogue, in pianissimo, moves back and forth between brass and woodwinds
The conflict grows, swords cross again, and, again, the love theme rushes in, in a powerful D major, spreading its wings in the strings and piccolo
The conflict interrupts the dream of a lifetime: the lovers try to resist but they are pull apart
Friar Laurence’s theme sounds almost menacing
but there’s no chance: we get into the final part of the battle, the lovers die, and the music dies with them into the Moderato assai.
Coda
The timpani sound of death with those triplets doubled by the low pizzicato of the basses. A dark combination of bassoon, first violins, and cellos pays a final homage to the lovers
followed by the woodwinds. A last shred of the love theme ends on a timpani roll which leads us to the end of the piece
In conclusion
At first, Romeo and Juliet was not successful either in Russia or in Europe. But a small but powerful group of musicians showed its appreciation for it: Camille Saint-Saëns, in France, and the group of five in Russia, Balakirev on top of everyone else.
In time, it became so popular that it has been used in movies, commercials, cartoons, and all different types of shows.
Tchaikovsky had the power to transform a tragic story into a musical journey: he captured all of the drama, the tension, and, above all, the intense love.
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