Tchaikovsky originally wrote this tone poem in 1868 to his own very abstract program dealing with the cruelty of fate in people's destinies. Tchaikovsky himself was not satisfied with the outcome—indeed he destroyed the orchestral score, which was reconstructed from a set of parts after he died. It begins with a unisonal statement of a very emphatic broad-noted theme that starts and stops several times. Several themes that express hopeful aspirations and resignation to inevitability arise against a gloomy background—the first of these is introduced imitatively by woodwinds and eventually taken up and extended by strings, and the second shows up initially in high woodwinds and is likewise extended by strings. Timpani introduce another idea as the hand of Fate shows up again in an ominous theme that is driven by some insistent motifs with some rather fanfarish and galloping material. The feeling of someone resigning himself helplessly before destiny wells up in waves of plaintive melody and rushing background figures. The introductory gesture returns, beginning the second half of the work in which previously heard themes are restated and extended in accord with the dramatic curve.

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