Kamarinskaya was completed in 1848 and is subtitled "Fantasy for Orchestra on Themes of Wedding Songs and Dances." For the two years leading up to 1847, Glinka had lived in Spain where his fascination with the music of that region resulted in several colorful works such as Jota Aragonesa and Summer Night in Madrid. He returned to Smolensk, happy to be back with his family and friends, but his pleasure was short-lived, for within a year he was in great demand to play piano at balls and parties. Unwilling to respond to these new-found social pressures, he retreated with a few companions to Warsaw. While in Poland, inspiration struck. He wrote: "By chance I discov苟red a relationship with the wed苓ing song, 'From behind the moun-tains, the high mountains', which I had heard in the country, and the dance tune 'Kamarinskaya', which everyone knows. And suddenly my fantasy ran high; instead of a piano piece I wrote an orchestral piece called Wedding tune and dance tune An associate who observed tree composer while he worked gives us an insight into Glinka's powers ofconcentration: " ... he was writing it out, like an ordinary mortal jotting down hasty notes, and at the same time he talked and joked with me, Soon afterwards two or three friends arrived, but he carried on through loud laughter and conver貞ation, in no way hindered by this: and during this he was noting down 觔ne of his most remarkable compo貞itions." The music opens with a brief introduction based upon a section: the Wedding Tune, after which We hear the melody three times with contrasting accompaniments, The Dance Tune (Kamarinskaya), which is only four bars long, is then heard in a rapid-fire sequence of thirteen variations. After a repetition of the Wedding Tune, the music closes with twenty-one more repetitions of the Dance Tune.
Glinka's facility at combining these two radically different melo苓ies is nothing short af amazing as is his sense of instrumental color and the ingenuity he summoned to build such an entertaining composi負ion from these relatively trivial sources.
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