Both the orchestral and choral arrangements were published in 1890. The choral arrangement was premiered by the Chorus of the Imperial Opera under the direction of Fyodor Becker in March 1889. The orchestra arrangement was made for tenor Dmitri Usatov, who premiered it in April 1884 at the Bolshoi Theatre. The original version of the music, for solo voice and piano, was published as part of Tchaikovsky's Songs for Children, Op. While Pleshcheyev's Russian lyrics are a near-literal translation of Stoddard, and also copy the original rhyming scheme ABCB, Dearmer uses considerable poetic licence and a new rhyming scheme of AABB.Īudio playback is not supported in your browser. Dearmer himself was only 20 years old when he wrote the words. When 'Legend' is sung by English-speaking choirs, the words used are usually those of Geoffrey Dearmer, who translated Pleschcheyev's Russian text back into English for the English Carol Book (1913). The poem was included in Pleshcheyev's anthology Snowdrop (Подснeжник 1878), where it was found by Tchaikovsky. Pleshcheyev described the origin of the poem only as 'translated from the English', without crediting Stoddard, the nature of whose contribution was thus lost. Stoddard's poem was translated into Russian by the poet Aleksey Pleshcheyev and published in the Russian journal Sem'ia i shkola ('Family and School') in 1877. The words are based on the poem 'Roses and Thorns' by American poet Richard Henry Stoddard, originally published in Graham's Magazine of May 1856. Pleshcheyev's poem 'Legend' (Legenda), as published in his collection Snowdrop (1878)

A crown of thorns and roses