Lullaby in a Storm

About this Piece

Tchaikovsky, a man who famously described his own psychological fragility as that of a "Child of Glass," spent the autumn of 1883 at his sister’s Kamenka estate churning out nursery rhymes at the frantic rate of one per day. Among these sixteen ostensibly agreeable trifles is the Lullaby in a Storm (Op. 54, No. 10), a piece that suggests the nursery is less a place of quiet rest and more a frontline bunker against existential collapse. While the text by Aleksey Pleshcheyev depicts a mother praying for a literal thunderstorm to subside, Tchaikovsky’s setting in the original key of F minor (the same tonality utilized for his most fatalistic symphonic outbursts) makes it clear that the real tempest is the child’s inevitable arrival into adulthood. The accompaniment’s insistent, pulsing rhythm mimics both the rocking of a cradle and the anxious heartbeat of a composer who suffered from chronic insomnia and a pathological dread of his own bed. Ever the absent-minded professional, Pyotr Ilyich managed to forget the proofs for these songs while traveling to Berlin, leaving his colleagues to ensure the words actually fit the music. This legacy of unease was later perfected by Sergei Rachmaninoff, whose solo piano transcription adds enough chromatic blurry vision to ensure the cradle never quite stops rocking, even after the storm has passed.