A first mention of the _Souvenir_ occurs in a letter to Ippolitoff-Ivanoff dated May 5, 1890, written shortly after Tschaikowsky’s return from abroad. It is quoted by his brother Modeste: “My visit brought forth good fruit. I composed an opera, ‘Pique Dame,’ which seems a success to me.... My plans for the future are to finish the orchestration of the opera, sketch out a string sextet [the _Souvenir_], go to my sister at Kamenka for the end of the summer, and spend the whole autumn with you at Tiflis.” On the following June 30 he communicated news of the sextet to his patroness-saint Mme. von Meck, hoping she would be “pleased to hear” about it. “I know your love of chamber music,” he writes, “and I hope the work will please you. I wrote it with the greatest enthusiasm and without the least exertion.” In November Tschaikowsky went to St. Petersburg for a rehearsal of _Pique Dame_. While there he arranged for a private hearing of the sextet by friends. The performance left him cold and he resolved to rewrite the Scherzo and Finale. By the following May the work was thoroughly remodelled. It was not till June, 1892, while in Paris, that he actually completed the revision to his satisfaction. The four movements comprise an _Allegro con spirito_ (D minor, 4-4), an _Adagio cantabile e con moto_ (D major, 3-4), an _Allegretto moderato_ (A minor, 2-4), and an _Allegro vivace_ (D minor-D major, 2-4). The form is largely that of the classical string quartet, though characteristically bold and novel devices of color and structure abound. Often the strings are ingeniously treated to suggest wind instruments, and one senses Tschaikowsky’s frequent striving for orchestral effects. Research has failed to unearth the “opprobrious epithets” Tschaikowsky is alleged to have heaped upon this slight but appealing work. OVERTURE-FANTASY, _Romeo and Juliet_ Shortly before the overture-fantasy on Shakespeare’s tragedy took shape in Tschaikowsky’s mind, he had been jilted by the French soprano Désirée Artôt, then enjoying a prodigious vogue as opera singer in St. Petersburg. The twenty-eight-year-old composer and Mlle. Artôt had become engaged in 1868, but the lady promptly left him and married the Spanish baritone Padilla y Ramos. The theory is that Tschaikowsky’s composition grew out of the resulting emotional upset, or at least that his frame of mind conduced to tragic expression on a romantic theme.