Peter Iljitsch Tschaikowsky

Legend

Legend, Op. 54, No. 5 (also known as The Crown of Roses in some English-language sources) composition originally written in 1883 as a song for solo voice and piano. It was subsequently arranged by Tchaikovsky for solo voice and orchestra (1884), and then for unaccompanied choir.

The words are based on the poem 'Roses and Thorns' by American poet Richard Henry Stoddard. 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. Pleshcheyev described the origin of the poem only as 'translated from the English', without crediting Stoddard, the nature of whose contribution was thus lost. The poem was included in Pleshcheyev's anthology Snowdrop where it was found by Tchaikovsky.