The document presented in the museum is a certificate from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky on passing the rights to publish the librettos of the operas “Eugene Onegin”, “Mazeppa” and “The Maid of Orleans” to Peter Jurgenson, a music publisher and friend of the composer. Jurgenson was Tchaikovsky’s main publisher, and it was his firm that first published most of Tchaikovsky’s works.

Coming from a poor Estonian-Danish family, after the death of his father at the age of 14, Jurgenson moved to St. Petersburg, where he worked as a sheet music engraver and served as a salesman in music stores.

He moved to Moscow in 1859 and headed the music department of the Schildbach firm. Then, on the advice of Nikolay Rubinstein, he opened his own business. From 1861, he published sheet music, from 1866 — books about music, in 1867 he founded a music printing house. Expanding his business, Jurgenson began to issue sheet music in mass editions. In 1870–1903, he acquired 17 music companies in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Riga and Odessa. Thanks to Jurgenson’s energy and organizational skills, his company became the largest in Russia and gained global prestige.

The following year, the composer already addressed the publisher familiarly and the tone of a letter from 1871, containing a similar request, was already devoid of abundant formality,

In 1866, Jurgenson became the first publisher of almost all Tchaikovsky’s works, and from 1876, the composer began printing his new scores exclusively with Jurgenson. In the last year of his life, in 1893, Tchaikovsky presented Jurgenson with his photograph with an inscription: