The opus Six Romances was composed in 1878 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840 – 1893) for voice and piano, and was published as Opus 38 later that year. Of these six songs, "Don Juan's Serenade" was the most successful, becoming one of the best-known works among the approximately 100 romances that Tchaikovsky composed during his lifetime.[1]
At this point in his life, the composer was rebounding from a personal crisis, having married and quickly separated the year before. Tchaikovsky characterized the creation of this opus as "something between relaxation and work".[2]
Opus 38 consists of the following six songs, with tempo indicated in Italian:
The lyrics of the first four songs are from writings of Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817 – 1875), the Russian poet, novelist and playwright.[3] For example, the first song is based on Tolstoy's 1862 drama Don Juan.
The lyrics for "The Love of a Dead Man" are from Mikhail Lermontov (1814 – 1841), the Russian writer, poet and painter. And, the lyrics for "Pimpinella" are by Tchaikovsky, based upon a Florentine popular song.
The six songs are not in chronological order of composition. He wrote the last two ("The Love of a Dead Man" and "Pimpinella") while visiting Florence in February and March 1878, respectively.[4] [5] Later, he wrote the first four songs (based on Tolstoy) in May 1878 while visiting the Ukrainian estate of his benefactor, Nadezhda von Meck (1831 – 1894), who previously suggested he might want to put Tolstoy to music.
The opus was dedicated to Anatoly, one of the composer's brothers, in gratitude for helping Tchaikovsky through a difficult emotional period in 1877. It was during that year when the composer married and separated from Antonina Miliukova (1848 – 1917).[6]