Tchaikovsky
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The Underdog

Собака низкая

Musical joke (1876)

History

Tchaikovsky's wife Antonina, in her memoirs of the composer, recalled how some years before their marriage he had once come across a gang of boys who were about to drown a stray dog in the Moscow River. He had immediately taken out his purse and offered them all the money he had in return for the dog. Tchaikovsky took the latter home and gave her the name Bishka (probably an amalgamation of two Russian interjections: бишь + ка, which may be roughly translated as "now, come on!"). "She turned out to be a very intelligent dog and was terribly attached to him," recalled Antonina. When Tchaikovsky left Moscow in the autumn of 1877 after the crisis of his marriage, Bishka was entrusted to the care of his friend Mariia Golovina. Two works by the composer are dedicated to this little dog: a letter in verse to Mariia Golovina and the humorous song The Underdog: "Base dog, o shameless Bishka…" («Собака ннзкая, бессовестная Бишка...»)" [1].

Notes:

1. Antonina Chaikovskaia, «Из воспоминаний вдовы П. И. Чайковского» (1894). Quoted in Valerii Sokolov, Антонина Чайковская: История забытой жизни (1994), 269; Alexander Poznansky (ed.), Tchaikovsky through Others' Eyes (1999), p. 113–121. See also Воспоминания о П. И. Чайковском (1980), p. 364, note 7 [back]