PYOTR ILYICH TCHAIKOVSKY’S beautiful poetic-elegy piece, Meditation (in the original Russian, Рaзмышление), is the first of the cycle of  Three Pieces for  Violin and Piano, Memory of a Dear Place, Op. 42, written in 1878. During the month of March that year, Tchaikovsky, accompanied by his younger brother Modest, as well as his ten-year-old deaf pupil Kolya Konradi and his close friend Iosif Kotek, was in the Swiss resort town of Clarence, where the composer worked on his Violin Concerto, and he and Kotek performed works for violin and piano by various composers. On March 10^th,  Tchaikovsky announced to his benefactress Nadezhda von Meck that he would begin composing the second movement of the Andante Concerto the following day. But, as he would share later, performing it on the violin, he was not satisfied and so would write a new second movement, a short Canzonetta. The Andante molto cantabile (the unfolded Andante) would become a violin piece in its own right, to be included in a separate opus with two other violin pieces. These are Tchaikovsky’s only works for this ensemble (apart from his violin and piano arrangement of  Valse-Scherzo for violin and orchestra, Op. 34). His chamber-instrumental works also include 4 string quartets, Trio for piano, violin and cello, String Sextet “Remembrance of Florence”, piano pieces.

In May, the composer left for a two-week holiday at the Brailovo estate which belonged to Nadezhda von Meck, where he sketched the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.  He finished working on the cycle on May 31^st . For the first movement, he used the discarded Méditation, (composed between 23 and 25 March 1878) recasting it for violin and piano. The two additional movements, Scherzo and Mélodie, completed the Souvenir d’un lieu cher.He titled the cycle Memories of a Dear Place with a dedication to Brailovo in gratitude to Nadezhda von Meck.

The cycle was published in May 1879 as op. 42 by the publisher Peter Jurgenson with the French translation of the title “Souvenir d’un lieu cher”. In 1880 Meditation was published separately and has since been a very popular piece under its French title Méditation (“Meditation”). Scherzo and Melody were printed separately in 1884.

After Tchaikovsky’s death in 1896 Jurgenson published the cycle in an arrangement for violin and orchestra by Alexander Glazunov, which became repertoire. There are also arrangements for violin and strings by Nils Thore Røsth and Alexandru Lascae.