Tchaikovsky’s Garden: Lily of the Valley & Suite No. 3 (1884)
This botanical history post was featured on The Daily Gardener podcast:
May 24, 1884
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky discarded his early work on Suite No. 3 and began again; weeks earlier he had walked the garden and found the seed of a melody. The composer’s letters reveal a tender gardener, anxious over seedlings and ecstatic over bloom.
In the forest and indoors I have been trying to lay the foundation of a new symphony but - am not at all satisfied.... Walked in the garden and found the germ, not of a symphony, but of a future Suite.
Just now I am busy with flowers and flower-growing. I should like to have as many flowers as possible in my garden, but I have very little knowledge or experience. am not lacking in zeal, and have indeed taken cold from pottering about in the damp. Now, thank goodness, it is warmer weather; I am glad of it, for you, for myself, and for my dear flowers, for I have sown a quantity, and the cold nights made me anxious for them....'
The real summer weather has not lasted long, but how I enjoyed it! My flowers, which I feared would die, have nearly all recovered, and some have blossomed luxuriantly. I cannot tell you what a pleasure it has been to watch them grow and to see daily- even hourly-new blossoms coming out. Now I have as many as - want. When I am quite old, and past composing, I shall devote myself to growing flowers.
At Klin, his final country home, the garden moved toward woodland—winding path, gazebo, wildflowers and lilies of the valley. He even set down a poem for the lily, proud of the verses as of his scores:
There he is!
I pluck the wondrous gift of the enchantress Spring.
O lily of the valley, why do you so please the eye?
Where lies the secret of your charms?
...Your balmy fragrance,
Like flowing wine, warms and intoxicates me,
Like music, it takes my breath away,
...I am happy while you bloom.
After his death, his brother Modest ringed the garden with lilies of the valley, and added other favorites—violets, forget-me-nots, bluebells—so the composer might forever have his “Waltz of the Flowers” at arm’s length.
