10.1: Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet

Tchaikovsky: Romeo and Juliet.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-93) was a Russian-born composer who is best known for his overtures, ballets, and symphonies. Perhaps his best-known work is his ballet The Nutcracker, which depicts a Russian folk tale centered around the Christmas holiday. His music combined Russian sounds with the musical tradition of the Western European composers, which helped him gain much more popularity than his Russian contemporaries. He is most known for his treatment of melody and orchestration: his melodies are long, lush, and lyrical -- the embodiment of the Romantic style. His orchestration was full of huge swells of dynamics. As you listen to his orchestral music, you'll notice that it sounds better with the volume up! His softs are almost imperceptible, but his louds can almost blow out your speakers!

This unit looks at his piece Romeo and Juliet, which is purely instrumental music that tells the story of Shakespeare's play of the same name. The piece is written as a single-movement for orchestra. As such, it can't be called a symphony, because these pieces have more than 1 movement. We thus call this piece an overture. Overtures grow out of the Classical Era that came before him as a single-movement work, often in sonata form.

The question becomes: "How can we tell the story of Romeo and Juliet using only music?"

Tchaikovsky does this by providing the most important characters their own musical theme. If you re-familiarize yourself with the plot of Romeo and Juliet, you'll recall that there are several important characters and several important plot points. Tchaikovsky provides musical themes to all of these different elements of Shakespeare's play, and organizes it around a very expanded sonata form.

As one might expect, because this is the 19th century Romantic style, the sonata form is much more expansive than the Classical Era. This single-movement piece is about 20 minutes long, and depicts the entire story of Romeo and Juliet through the themes, and the way they interact with the sonata form.

Photo of Tchaikovsky by Émile Reutlinger - NYPL Digital Gallery — Image ID: 1158492, Public Domain.

Musical Themes.

Tchaikovsky provides three important themes in this overture. The themes all represent important characters and plot points in the story. Listen to these themes by clicking the link and see what they sound like:

Theme 1: Friar Lawrence (the man who weds Romeo and Juliet, and who also warned them against marrying in the first place). The theme has a religious sound to it, as it's supposed to resemble the Friar, who is a man of the Church and of God. It's written in the style of a Christian hymn.

Theme 2: the feud/fight/hate theme. This theme represents the hatred that the Capulets and Montegues have for one another. It's in the minor mode, it's fast, exciting, and dark. Specifically, this music represents the scene where Mercutio and Tybalt dual in the street, and Mercutio is stabbed and killed. More broadly, it represents the hatred that the families have for each other.

Theme 3: the love theme. This is one of the most famous themes he ever wrote, and represents Romeo and Juliet's love. It's been used in cartoons ever since the Golden Age of cartoons including Buggs Bunny and Daffy Duck shorts.

These three themes dominate the entire 20-minute work, and interact with one another and the piece's form itself to tell the story.

Musical Form depicts the story of Romeo and Juliet

As a concert overture, Tchaikovsky's music is in sonata form. As a Romantic-era sonata, it's much larger than its Classical predecessors. It contains a huge introduction before moving into the exposition, development, and recapitulation. There's also a substantial coda that winds down the music. Over the course of the piece, Tchaikovsky orders and combines these themes in such a way that the listener can vividly put together the entire story of Romeo and Juliet. The following picture is a diagram that depicts the entire piece's form:

As you can see, the introduction is quite long: it lasts over 5 minutes in this recording, as Friar Lawrences' theme plays three times in a very somber way.

The Exposition contains Theme 2 and Theme 3: you'll hear an exciting and almost violent melody interrupt the Friar's theme, which begins the exposition---it then moves into the Theme of Love (theme 3) before closing out. This then moves into the development, where Tchaikovsky combines all of the themes together in brilliant counterpoint. The music then moves into the Recapitulation, where Tchaikovsky brings back the fight and love theme.

One of the most incredible and moving parts of the movement takes place in the recapitulation, where the Love Theme returns in its loudest, and most luscious presentation. In the above diagram, this is under "Recapitulation," under "love theme returns, played over and over, louder and louder, and more passionately---Romeo and Juliet think they'll get away with it." Here, the love theme reaches its ultimate climax before being interrupted by the fight theme! It then moves into one last statement of Friar Lawrence's theme, as if it remind us all that he warned Romeo and Juliet that nothing good would come from their premature marriage. This leads into one last statement of the fight theme, which ultimately moves into the booming drum hit---depicting both Romeo and Juliet's death.

The music's coda at the end combines a funeral march with the love theme. We hear Friar Lawrence's theme as he eulogizes the two lovers' passing before the music finally playing their theme one last time.

The music finally ends triumphantly in the major mode. You may ask "why such a happy ending for a tragedy?" But recall that the end of Romeo and Juliet concludes with the families reconciling! Though it took a tragedy, the families finally put aside their differences and reconcile: the silver lining of the story.

When you're done listening to these shorter excerpts, listen to the entire piece, paying close attention to where the different themes come in. Ask yourself how they represent the stoy being told, focusing on instrumentation, key (bright or dark harmonies), and especially the dynamics (loud vs. soft).

This piece is a wonderful example of a Romantic-era composer using traditional sonata form to musically tell a story. Our next example will demonstrate a composer who creates his own unique form for his own unique story.