Ancienne Chanson Française: A Song History
Tchaikovsky first mentioned a plan for a set of easy piano pieces in a letter to his publisher sent from Florence in February 1878, and he began the work after returning to Kamenka that April, later telling Nadezhda von Meck that he wanted a title modelled on Schumann's.[1] Sketches for all twenty-four pieces were finished by 4/16 May 1878, the fair copy was completed by 20 July/1 August, and the collection, his Op. 39, came out that October.[1] The publisher was Pyotr Jurgenson of Moscow.[1][2] The composer's autograph gives the titles in Russian, and the French titles are thought to have been added when the first edition appeared.[2]
Jules Bastien-Lepage, Joan of Arc, oil on canvas, 1879. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain (CC0). Painted the year Tchaikovsky finished his Joan of Arc opera, where this tune reappears; the painting has no connection to the music.
The album is dedicated to Vladimir Davydov, the composer's favourite nephew and the son of his sister Aleksandra, who was born in December 1871 and known in the family as "Bob."[1][3] Fifteen years later Tchaikovsky dedicated his Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique, to the same nephew.[3] The "Old French Song" stands as No. 16, a brief Molto moderato in G minor of just 32 bars, and it holds that place in the autograph too, although the manuscript arranges several other pieces in a different order from the printed set.[1] Listings of the neighbouring pieces are not fully consistent: Tchaikovsky Research gives the "Neapolitan Song" as No. 18 and "Nanny's Story" as No. 19, while some track lists on IMSLP swap the two, and English titles for No. 16 range from "Old French Song" to "Old French Air."[1][4][2]
Tchaikovsky soon used the same melody again in The Maid of Orleans, his opera about Joan of Arc, which he composed between December 1878 and March 1879.[1][5] There it appears in the Minstrels' Chorus of Act II (No. 10), which, according to the Tchaikovsky Research reference work, includes the French song "Mes belles amourettes."[1][5] The opera reached the stage at the Mariinsky Theatre in Saint Petersburg on 13/25 February 1881.[5] The sources consulted here do not trace where Tchaikovsky found the French song in the first place.[1][5]
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