Individual excerpts have always been popular – Troika (November) was a favourite encore of Sergei Rachmaninoff,[2] and Barcarolle (June) was enormously popular and appeared in numerous arrangements (including for orchestra, violin, cello, clarinet, harmonium, guitar and mandolin).

The Seasons was commenced shortly after the premiere of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, and continued while he was completing his first ballet, Swan Lake.

[3] In 1875, Nikolay Matveyevich Bernard, the editor of the St. Petersburg music magazine Nouvellist, commissioned Tchaikovsky to write 12 short piano pieces, one for each month of the year.

The orchestration of Swan Lake was finished by 22 April, leaving the composer free to focus on other music; and he left for abroad at the end of May.

This seems to put the lie to Nikolay Kashkin's published version of events, which was that each month the composer would sit down to write a single piece, but only after being reminded to do so by his valet.