Like the fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet, Tchaikovsky wrote Manfred at the behest of the nationalist composer Mily Balakirev, who provided him the program, which had a long history.

But Balakirev had felt unable to carry out the project and instead had at first forwarded the program to French composer Hector Berlioz, whose programmatic works impressed him.

Berlioz in turn had declined the project claiming old age and ill health and returned to the program, after which it had remained with Balakirev until he reestablished contact with Tchaikovsky in the early 1880s.

Manfred is the only programmatic symphonic work by Tchaikovsky in more than one movement and is larger than any of his numbered symphonies both in length and instrumentation.

During his second and final trip to Russia in the winter of 1867–68, the French composer Hector Berlioz conducted his program symphony Harold en Italie.

As he explained in a letter to Tchaikovsky in October 1882, "this magnificent subject is unsuitable, it doesn't harmonise with my inner frame of mind".

Balakirev also gave warning to avoid "vulgarities in the manner of German fanfares and Jägermusik," plus instructions about the layout of the flute and percussion parts.

He claimed the subject left him cold and seemed too close to Berlioz's work for him to manage anything but a piece that would lack inspiration and originality.

[6] So did Tchaikovsky's rereading Manfred for himself while tending to his friend Iosif Kotek in Davos, Switzerland, nestled in the same Alps in which the poem was set.

Once he returned home, Tchaikovsky revised the draft Balakirev had made from Stasov's programme and began sketching the first movement.

He wrote to his friend and former student Sergei Taneyev, "Composing a program symphony, I have the sensation of being a charlatan and cheating the public; I am paying them not hard cash but rubbishy bits of paper money.

Weary of the fatal question of existence, tormented by hopeless longings and the memory of past crimes, he suffers cruel spiritual pangs.

He has plunged into occult sciences and commands the mighty powers of darkness, but neither they nor anything in this world can give him with the forgetfulness to which alone he vainly aspires.

A second theme leads to a second musical slab, this time pushing forward with the loudest climax Tchaikovsky ever wrote.

[12] Tchaikovsky's efforts in exploring fresh possibilities in scoring allowed him to present his music with new colors and more refined contrasts.

In this scherzo, it seems as though the orchestration creates the music, as though Tchaikovsky has thought directly in colors and textures, making these the primary focus.

Now, however, the program takes over, beginning with a fugue, which is by its nature academic and undramatic, to depict the horde's discovery of Manfred within their midst.

At least one critic has suggested that, in its heroic but perfectly judged dimensions, Manfred resembles Richard Strauss's later tone poem Ein Heldenleben.

[18] Musicologist John Warrack suggests that, of all Tchaikovsky's major neglected works, Manfred may be the one which least deserves this fate.

He apparently felt such an impulse—if not from Byron's poem, then from the program Balakirev gave him—and that impulse brought forth a work of great originality and power.

He seeks and begs for oblivion, which no-one can give him.It is not hard to see how these carefully selected elements might appeal to Tchaikovsky.

The fatal flaw is the fugue, which Tchaikovsky wrote to convey the reaction of the hordes of the evil spirit Arimanes to Manfred's appearance amongst them.

A fugue, Brown argues, is by nature undramatic in both its fixation on one thematic idea and its measured progress; therefore, it cannot help but sound stodgy, resulting in a misstep from which the music never fully recovers.

César Cui, the member of the Russian nationalistic music group known as The Five whose reviews of Tchaikovsky's compositions were mostly negative, praised Manfred.

Cui commented especially on the "masterly description of Manfred's gloomy, noble image" in the opening movement and the "ravishing refinement" of the scherzo, concluding that "we can only thank [Tchaikovsky] for his new contribution to the treasure-store of our nation's symphonic music.

"[23] The composer's friend, critic Herman Laroche, was less positive, calling Manfred "among the most raw and unfinished of [Tchaikovsky's] compositions.

Conductors who have recorded the work include Arturo Toscanini, Mstislav Rostropovich, Lorin Maazel, Eugene Goossens, André Previn, Bernard Haitink, Eugene Ormandy, Yuri Temirkanov, Paul Kletzki, Constantin Silvestri, Yevgeny Svetlanov (three recordings), Riccardo Muti, Sir Neville Marriner, Igor Markevitch, Yuri Ahronovitch, Andrew Litton, Mikhail Pletnev (twice), Vladimir Fedoseyev, Riccardo Chailly, Mariss Jansons, Vasily Petrenko, Zubin Mehta, Vladimir Jurowski, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Kurt Masur and others.