Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

This article is about the 19th century composer. For other uses, see Tchaikovsky (disambiguation).

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky by Nikolay Kuznetsov, 1893

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky ( /ˈpiːtər ˈɪlɨtʃ tʃaɪˈkɒfski/); (Russian: Пётр Ильич Чайковский) (May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893) was a Russian composer whose works included symphonies, operas, ballets, and chamber music. Some of these rate amongst the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire.

Despite his musical precocity, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant. Against the wishes of his family, he pursued a musical career and entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory from which he graduated in 1865. This formal Western-oriented training set him apart from composers of the contemporary nationalist movement embodied by the Russian composers of The Five, with whom Tchaikovsky's professional relationship was mixed.

Despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovsky's life was punctuated by personal crises and depression. Contributory factors include the loss of his mother through boarding school and her early death, his suppressed homosexuality, and the collapse of the one enduring relationship of his adult life, his 13-year association with the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck. His sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, but some attribute it to suicide.

During his life, Tchaikovsky was honored by the Tsar and awarded a lifetime pension. His music was extremely popular then, and still is today, although critics have sometimes dismissed it as lacking in elevated thought. By the end of the 20th century, however, Tchaikovsky's status as a significant composer had become secure.

Life

Childhood

The Tchaikovsky family in 1848. Left to right: Pyotr, Alexandra Andreyevna (mother), Alexandra (sister), Zinaida, Nikolai, Ippolit, Ilya Petrovich (father)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, a small town in present-day Udmurtia, a former province of Vyatka in the Russian Empire. His family had a long line of military service; his father, Ilya Petrovich Tchaikovsky, was an engineer of Ukrainian descent who served as a lieutenant colonel in the Department of Mines and manager of the Kamsko-Votkinsk Ironworks. His grandfather, Petro Fedorovych Chaika, emigrated from Nikolaevka (near Poltava), Ukraine. His mother, Alexandra Andreyevna née d'Assier, was 18 years her husband's junior and of French ancestry on her father's side, and the second of Ilya's three wives.

Tchaikovsky had four brothers (Nikolai, Ippolit, and twins Anatoly and Modest), a sister, Alexandra and a half-sister Zinaida from his father's first marriage. He was particularly close to Alexandra and the twins. Anatoly later had a prominent legal career, while Modest became a dramatist, librettist, and translator. Alexandra married Lev Davydov and had seven children, one of whom, Vladimir Davydov, nicknamed 'Bob' by the composer, was to become very close to the composer. The Davydovs provided the only real family life Tchaikovsky knew as an adult, and their estate in Kamianka (now part of Ukraine) became a welcome refuge for him during his years of wandering.

In 1843 the family hired a 22-year old French governess, Fanny Dürbach, to look after Tchaikovsky's elder brother Nikolai and a Tchaikovsky niece. . Tchaikovsky became attracted to the young woman and her affection for him is said to have provided a counter to Tchaikovsky's mother, who has been described as a cold, unhappy, distant parent , although others assert that the mother doted on her son.

Tchaikovsky took piano lessons from the age of five. A precocious pupil, he could read music as adeptly as his teacher within three years. His parents were initially supportive, hiring a tutor, buying an orchestrion (a form of barrel organ that could imitate elaborate orchestral effects), and encouraging his study of the piano. However, his parents' passion for his musical talent soon cooled, and, in 1850, the family decided to send Tchaikovsky to the Imperial School of Jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg. The school mainly served the lesser nobility, and would prepare him for a career as a civil servant. As the minimum age for acceptance was 12, Tchaikovsky was required to spend two years boarding at the Imperial School of Jurisprudence's preparatory school, 800 miles (1,300 km) from his family. Once those two years had passed, Tchaikovsky transferred to the Imperial School of Jurisprudence to begin a seven-year course of studies.

Emerging composer

Childhood trauma and school years

Modern view of the Imperial School of Jurisprudence

The separation of Tchaikovsky from his mother resulting from his stay at boarding school in 1850 caused him enormous emotional trauma that tormented him throughout his life. On June 25, 1854 Tchaikovsky suffered the shock of his mother's death from cholera, which has been described as "the crucial event of [Tchaikovsky's] years at the School of Jurisprudence". Tchaikovsky mourned his mother for the rest of his life, and admitted that it had "a huge influence on the way things turned out for me." He was so affected that he was unable to inform Fanny Dürbach until two years later. More than 25 years after the death, Tchaikovsky wrote to his patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, "Every moment of that appalling day is as vivid to me as though it were yesterday."

However, within a month of his mother's death he was making his first serious efforts at composition, a waltz in her memory. Tchaikovsky's father, who also became sick with cholera at this time but made a full recovery, immediately sent the boy back to school in hope that the classwork would occupy him. To compensate for his sense of isolation and his loss, Tchaikovsky formed important friendships with fellow students, including Aleksey Apukhtin and Vladimir Gerard, which lasted the rest of his life.

Music was not a priority at the School of Jurisprudence, but Tchaikovsky maintained a extracurricular connection by regularly attending the theater and the opera with other students. At this time, he was fond of works by Rossini, Bellini, Verdi and Mozart. He was known to sit at the school's harmonium after choir practice and improvise on whatever themes had just been sung. "We were amused," Vladimir Gerard later remembered, "but not imbued with any expectations of his future glory." The piano manufacturer Franz Becker made occasional visits to the school as a music teacher, and gave Tchaikovsky the only formal music instruction he received.

In 1855, Ilya Tchaikovsky funded private lessons with the teacher Rudolph Kündinger, and questioned him about a musical career for his son. Kündinger replied that while he was impressed with Tchaikovsky's ability to improvise at the keyboard, nothing suggested a potential composer or even a fine performer. Tchaikovsky was told to finish his course and then try for a post in the Ministry of Justice.

Civil service; pursuing music

Tchaikovsky in his teens

On June 10, 1859, at the age of 19, Tchaikovsky graduated from the School of Jurisprudence with the rank of titular counselor, a low rung on the civil service ladder. On June 15, he was appointed to the Ministry of Justice. Six months later he became a junior assistant and two months after that, a senior assistant, in which position he remained for the rest of his three-year civil service career.

In 1861, Tchaikovsky attended classes in music theory organized by the Russian Musical Society (RMS) and taught by Nikolai Zaremba. A year later he followed Zaremba to the new Saint Petersburg Conservatory. Tchaikovsky decided not to give up his Ministry post "until I am quite certain that I am destined to be a musician rather than a civil servant." From 1862 to 1865 he studied harmony and counterpoint with Zaremba, while Anton Rubinstein, director and founder of the Conservatory, taught him instrumentation and composition. In 1863, Tchaikovsky abandoned his civil service career and began studying music full-time, graduating from the Conservatory in December 1865. Though Rubinstein was impressed by Tchaikovsky's musical talent, he and Zaremba later clashed with the young composer over his First Symphony, written after his graduation, when he submitted it to them for their perusal. The symphony was given its first complete performance in Moscow in February 1868, where it was well received.

Relationship with The Five

See also: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and The Five

The young Mily Balakirev

Rubinstein's Western musical orientation brought him into opposition with the nationalistic group of musicians known as The Five, who also targeted Tchaikovsky as Rubinstein's pupil. Cesar Cui for example wrote a blistering review of an early Tchaikovsky cantata which devastated the composer.

When in 1867, Rubinstein resigned as conductor from Saint Petersburg's Russian Musical Society orchestra, he was replaced by Mily Balakirev, leader of The Five. Tchaikovsky, now Professor of Music Theory at the Moscow Conservatory, had already promised his Dances of the Hay Maidens (which he later included in his opera The Voyevoda) to the Society. In submitting the manuscript to Balakirev, Tchaikovsky included a note requesting a word of encouragement should the Dances not be performed. Possibly sensing a new disciple in Tchaikovsky, Balakirev wrote "with complete frankness" in his reply that he felt that Tchaikovsky was "a fully fledged artist". These letters set the tone for Tchaikovsky's relationship with Balakirev over the next two years. In 1869, the two entered into a working relationship, the result being Tchaikovsky's first recognised masterpiece, the fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet, a work which The Five wholeheartedly embraced.

Although Tchaikovsky remained on friendly terms with most of The Five, he was often ambivalent about their music. Despite his collaboration with Balakirev, Tchaikovsky made considerable efforts to ensure his musical independence from the group as well as from the conservative faction at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory.

Emotional life

Sexuality

Tchaikovsky had clear homosexual tendencies; some of the composer's closest relationships were with persons of his own sex. He sought out the company of homosexuals in his circle for extended periods, "associating openly and establishing professional connections with them."

It is debatable how comfortable the composer felt with his sexual nature. One conclusion is that the composer "eventually came to see his sexual peculiarities as an insurmountable and even natural part of his personality ... without experiencing any serious psychological damage." Relevant portions of his brother Modest's autobiography, where he tells of Pyotr's sexual orientation, have also been published. Modest, like Pyotr, was homosexual. Some letters previously suppressed by Soviet censors, where Tchaikovsky openly speaks out about his homosexuality, have now been published.

Another theory suggests that while Tchaikovsky experienced "no unbearable guilt" over his homosexuality, he remained aware of the negative consequences of that knowledge becoming public, especially of the ramifications for his family. His decision to enter into a heterosexual union and try to lead a double life was prompted by several factors—the possibility of exposure, the willingness to please his father, his own desire for a permanent home and his love of children and family. There is no reason however to suppose that these personal travails impacted negatively on the quality of his musical inspiration or capacity.

Unsuccessful marriage

See also: Désirée Artôt and Antonina Miliukova

In 1868, at the age of 28, Tchaikovsky met the Belgian soprano Désirée Artôt, then on a tour of Russia. They became infatuated, and were engaged to be married. However, on September 15, 1869, without any communication with Tchaikovsky, Artôt married a member of her company. Although it is generally thought that Tchaikovsky swiftly got over the affair, it has been suggested that he coded Désirée's name into the Piano Concerto No. 1 in B-flat minor and the tone-poem Fatum. They met on a handful of later occasions, and in October 1888 he wrote Six French Songs, Op. 65, for her, in response to her request for a single song. Tchaikovsky later claimed she was the only woman he ever loved.

Tchaikovsky's favorite pupil, Vladimir Shilovsky, who, it is asserted, was homosexual and with whom it is believed that the composer had shared a mutual bond of affection for just over a decade, married suddenly in 1877. Shilovsky's wedding may in turn have spurred Tchaikovsky to consider such a step himself. Declared his intention to marry in a letter to his brother, Tchaikovsky's ill-starred marriage to one of his former composition students, Antonina Miliukova, followed. This drove him after a short while to an emotional crisis, which he followed by a stay in Clarens, Switzerland, for rest and recovery. The couple remained legally married but never lived together again nor had any children., though Antonina later gave birth to three children by another man.

Tchaikovsky's marital debacle may have forced him to face the full truth about his sexuality.He apparently never again considered matrimony, or considered himself capable of loving women in the same manner as other men. He wrote to his brother Anatoly from Florence on February 19, 1878:

There's no doubt that for some months on end I was a bit insane, and only now, when I'm completely recovered, have I learned to relate objectively to everything which I did during my brief insanity. That man who in May took it into his head to marry Antonina Ivanova, who during June wrote a whole opera as though nothing had happened, who in July married, who in September fled from his wife, who in November railed at Rome and so on —that man wasn't I, but another Pyotr Ilyich.

A few days later, in another letter to Anatoly, he added that there was "nothing more futile than wanting to be anything other than what I am by nature."

Mature composer

Main theme of the First Piano Concerto, (piano part)

From 1867 to 1878, Tchaikovsky combined his professorial duties with music criticism while continuing to compose. Some of his best-known works from this period include the First Piano Concerto, the Variations on a Rococo Theme for cello and orchestra, the Second and Fourth Symphonies, the ballet Swan Lake and the opera Eugene Onegin. The First Piano Concerto suffered an initial rejection by its intended dedicatee, Anton Rubinstein's brother Nikolai, though he eventually championed the work. The work was subsequently premiered in Boston in October 1875, played by Hans von Bülow, whose pianism had impressed Tchaikovsky during an appearance in Moscow in March 1874.

During the early part of this period, Tchaikovsky began to compose operas. His first, Voyevoda (Opus 3), premiered in 1869, but the composer became dissatisfied with it and, having re-used parts of it in later works, he destroyed the manuscript. Undina followed in 1870, but only excerpts were ever performed and it, too, was destroyed.

In Moscow, teaching with Nikolai Rubinstein, Tchaikovsky gained his first taste of fame when he was introduced into the Artistic Circle, a club founded by Rubinstein for his friends and fellow artists. However, over a five-year period, Tchaikovsky became frustrated with teaching and found himself struggling financially. He gradually distanced himself from Rubinstein, to maintain his independence. Nevertheless,Tchaikovsky's time in Moscow was successful from a professional point of view. His works were performed frequently, with few delays between their composition and first performances, and the publication from 1867 onwards of his songs and piano music for the home market helped bolster the composer's popularity.

It may have been the case that the emotional stresses in Tchaikovsky's life enhanced his creativity. Whilst the Fourth Symphony was begun some months before Tchaikovsky married Antonina, both the symphony and the opera Eugene Onegin, arguably two of his finest compositions,are held up as proof of such creative development. He finished both these works in the six months between his engagement and the completion of the rest cure following his marriage breakdown. While in Clarens he also composed his Violin Concerto, with the technical assistance of one of his former students the violinist Iosif Kotek.

Hans von Bülow became a fervent champion of Tchaikovsky's music.

Like the First Piano Concerto, the Violin Concerto was rejected initially by its intended dedicatee, virtuoso and pedagogue Leopold Auer, and was premiered by Adolph Brodsky. While the work eventually achieved public success, the audience hissed at its premiere in Vienna, and it was denigrated by music critic Eduard Hanslick:

"The Russian composer Tchaikovsky is surely no ordinary talent, but rather, an inflated one, obsessed with posturing as a man of genius, and lacking all discrimination and taste ... the same can be said for his new, long, and ambitious Violin Concerto.... In the course of a discussion of obscene illustrations, Friedrich Vischer once maintained that there were pictures whose stink one could see. Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto confronts us for the first time with the hideous idea that there may be musical compositions whose stink one can hear."

Auer however belatedly accepted the concerto, and eventually played it to great public success.

The intensity of personal emotion now flowing through Tchaikovsky's works was entirely new to Russian music. It prompted some Russian commentators to place his name alongside that of novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The critic Osoovski wrote of Tchaikovsky and Dostoyevsky: "With a hidden passion they both stop at moments of horror, total spiritual collapse, and finding acute sweetness in the cold trepidation of the heart before the abyss, they both force the reader to experience those feelings, too."

Tchaikovsky's fame among concert audiences began to spread outside Russia, and continued to grow within it. Hans von Bülow had become a fervent champion of the composer's work after a Moscow concert during Lent of 1874. In a German newspaper later that year, he praised the First String Quartet, Romeo and Juliet and other works, and he later took up many other Tchaikovsky works both as pianist and conductor. In France, Camille Benoit began introducing Tchaikovsky's music to readers of the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris. The music also received significant exposure during the 1878 International Exhibition in Paris. While Tchaikovsky's reputation as a composer grew, a corresponding increase in performances of his works did not occur until he began conducting them himself, starting in the mid-1880s. Nevertheless, by 1880, all of the operas Tchaikovsky had completed up that point had been staged, and his orchestral works had been given performances that had been sympathetically received.

Nadezhda von Meck

See also: Nadezhda von Meck

Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky's patroness and confidante from 1877 to 1890

Nadezhda von Meck was the wealthy widow of a Russian railway tycoon and an influential patron of the arts, who was encouraged by Kotek to commission some chamber pieces from Tchaikovsky. Her support became an important element in Tchaikovsky's life; she eventually paid him an annual subsidy of 6,000 rubles, enabling him to resign from the Moscow Conservatory in October 1878 at the age of 38, and concentrate on composition. With von Meck's patronage came a relationship that, at her insistence, was mainly epistolary – she stipulated they were never to meet face to face (although in 1884 they became related by marriage when one of von Meck's sons married Tchaikovsky's niece Anna Davydova).. They exchanged well over 1,000 letters between 1877 and 1890. In these letters Tchaikovsky was more open about much of his life and his creative processes than he had been to any other person.

As he explained to her:

There is something so special about our relationship that it often stops me in my tracks with amazement. I have told you more than once, I believe, that you have come to seem to me the hand of Fate itself, watching over me and protecting me. The very fact that I do not know you personally, while feeling so close to you, accords you in my eyes the special status of an unseen but benevolent presence, like a benign Providence.

However, in 1890 von Meck suddenly ended the relationship. She was suffering from health problems; there were family pressures, and also financial difficulties arising from the mismanagement of her estate. The break with Tchaikovsky was announced in a letter delivered by a servant. It contained a request that he should not forget her, and was accompanied by a year's subsidy in advance. She claimed to be facing bankruptcy, which, if not literally true, was evidently a real threat at the time.

Tchaikovsky may have been aware for nearly a year of his patroness's financial difficulties. This did not stop him from continuing to take his allowance for granted (with regular protestations of his eternal gratitude), nor did he offer to return the advance he received with the farewell letter. Despite his growing celebrity throughout Europe, von Meck's allowance still made up a third of the composer's income. Whilst he may have no longer needed her money, the loss of her friendship and encouragement was devastating; he remained bewildered and resentful about her abrupt disappearance for the remaining three years of his life.

Years of wandering

Tsar Alexander III, who remained a devotee of Tchaikovsky's music, conferred an award and a lifelong pension on the composer.

Tchaikovsky returned to Moscow Conservatory in the autumn of 1879, having been away from Russia for a year after the disintegration of his marriage. However, he quickly resigned, settling in Kamenka yet traveling incessantly. In the following years, assured of a regular income from von Meck, he wandered around Europe and rural Russia, never staying long in any one place and living mainly alone, avoiding social contact whenever possible. During this period he had continuing troubles with Antonina, who alternately agreed to, then refused, divorce, at one point exacerbating matters by moving into an apartment directly above him. Tchaikovsky listed Antonina's accusations to him in detail to Modest: "I am a deceiver who married her in order to hide my true nature ... I insulted her every day, her sufferings at my hands were great ... she is appalled by my shameful vice, etc., etc." He may have lived the rest of his life in dread of Antonina's power to expose him publicly . This could be why why his best work from this period, except for the piano trio which he wrote upon the death of Nikolai Rubinstein, is found in genres which did not depend heavily on personal expression.

Although Tchaikovsky's foreign reputation grew rapidly, it was, as Alexandre Benois wrote in his memoirs, "considered obligatory [in progressive musical circles in Russia] to treat Tchaikovsky as a renegade, a master overly dependent on the West." In 1880 this assessment changed; during commemoration ceremonies for the Pushkin Monument in Moscow, Dostoyevsky charged that Alexander Pushkin had given a prophetic call to Russia for "universal unity" with the West. An unprecedented acclaim for Dostoyevsky's message spread throughout Russia, and with it disdain for Tchaikovsky's music evaporated. He even drew a cult following among the young intelligentsia of St. Petersburg, including Benois, Léon Bakst and Sergei Diaghilev.

In 1880 the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour was nearing completion in Moscow; the 25th anniversary of the coronation of Alexander II in 1881 was imminent; and the 1882 Moscow Arts and Industry Exhibition was in the planning stage. Nikolai Rubinstein suggested a grand commemorative piece for association with these related festivities. Tchaikovsky began the project in October 1880, finishing it within six weeks. He wrote to von Meck that the resulting work, the 1812 Overture, would be "very loud and noisy, but I wrote it with no warm feeling of love, and therefore there will probably be no artistic merits in it." He also warned conductor Eduard Nápravník that "I shan't be at all surprised and offended if you find that it is in a style unsuitable for symphony concerts." Nevertheless, this work has become for many "the piece by Tchaikovsky they know best."

On March 23, 1881, Nikolai Rubinstein died in Paris. Tchaikovsky was holidaying in Rome, and he went immediately to attend the funeral in Paris for his greatly respected mentor, but arrived too late (although he was in the cortege which saw Rubinstein's coffin returned by train to Russia). In December, he started work on his Piano Trio in A minor, "dedicated to the memory of a great artist." The trio was first performed privately at the Moscow Conservatory on the first anniversary of his death. The piece became extremely popular during the composer's lifetime and was to become Tchaikovsky's own elegy when played at memorial concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg in November 1893.

Return to Russia

Now 44 years old, in 1884 Tchaikovsky began to shed his unsociability and restlessness. In March of that year, Tsar Alexander III conferred upon him the Order of St. Vladimir (fourth class), which carried with it hereditary nobility and won Tchaikovsky a personal audience with the Tsar. This was a visible seal of official approval which advanced Tchaikovsky's social standing. This advance may have been cemented in the composer's mind by the great success of his Orchestral Suite No. 3 at its January 1885 premiere in Saint Petersburg, under von Bülow's direction, at which the press was unanimously favorable. Tchaikovsky wrote to von Meck: "I have never seen such a triumph. I saw the whole audience was moved, and grateful to me. These moments are the finest adornments of an artist's life. Thanks to these it is worth living and laboring." .

Tchaikovsky's last home, in Klin, now the Tchaikovsky Museum

In 1885 the Tsar requested a new production of Eugene Onegin to be staged at the Bolshoi Kamenny Theatre in Saint Petersburg. (Its only other production had been by students from the Conservatory.) By having the opera staged there and not at the Mariinsky Theatre, he served notice that Tchaikovsky's music was replacing Italian opera as the official imperial art. In addition, thanks to Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Director of the Imperial Theaters and a patron of the composer, Tchaikovsky was awarded a lifetime annual pension of 3,000 rubles from the Tsar. This made him the premier court composer, in practice if not in actual title.

Despite his disdain for public life, Tchaikovsky now participated in it both as a consequence of his increasing celebrity and because he felt it his duty to promote Russian music. He helped support his former pupil Sergei Taneyev, who was now director of Moscow Conservatory, by attending student examinations and negotiating the sometimes sensitive relations among various members of the staff. Tchaikovsky also served as director of the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society during the 1889-1890 season. In this post, he invited many of international celebrities to conduct, including Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák and Jules Massenet, although not all of them accepted.

Tchaikovsky also promoted Russian music as a conductor, as which he had sought to establish himself for at least a decade, believing that it would reinforce his success. In January 1887 he substituted at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow at short notice for performances of his opera Cherevichki. Within a year of the Cherevichki performances, Tchaikovsky was in considerable demand throughout Europe and Russia, which helped him overcome life-long stage fright and boosted his self-assurance. Conducting brought him to America in 1891, where he led the New York Music Society's orchestra in his Festival Coronation March at the inaugural concert of the Carnegie Hall.

In 1888 Tchaikovsky led the premiere of his Fifth Symphony in Saint Petersburg, repeating the work a week later with the first performance of his tone poem Hamlet. Although critics proved hostile, with César Cui calling the symphony "routine" and "meretricious", both works were received with extreme enthusiasm by audiences, and Tchaikovsky, undeterred, continued to conduct the symphony in Russia and Europe.

Belyayev circle and growing reputation

See also: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and the Belyayev circle

In November 1887, Tchaikovsky arrived in Saint Petersburg in time to hear several of the Russian Symphony Concerts, devoted exclusively to the music of Russian composers. One included the first complete performance of his revised First Symphony; another featured the final version of Third Symphony of Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov with whom and whose circle Tchaikovsky was already in touch. Rimsky-Korsakov, with Alexander Glazunov, Anatoly Lyadov and several other nationalistically minded composers and musicians, had formed a group known the Belyayev circle, named after a merchant and amateur musician who became an influential music patron and publisher. Tchaikovsky's spent much time in this circle, becoming far more at ease with them than he had been with the 'Five' and increasingly confident in showcasing his music alongside theirs. This relationship lasted until Tchaikovsky's death.

In 1892, Tchaikovsky was voted a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts in France, only the second Russian to so honored (the first was sculptor Mark Antokolski). The following year, the University of Cambridge in Britain awarded Tchaikovsky an honorary Doctor of Music degree.

Death

See also: Death of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Symphony No. 6 (Tchaikovsky)

Tchaikovsky's death mask

On October 30, 1893 Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique In Saint Petersburg. Nine days later, Tchaikovsky died there, aged 53. He was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, near the graves of fellow-composers Alexander Borodin, Mikhail Glinka, and Modest Mussorgsky; later, Rimsky-Korsakov and Balakirev were also buried nearby.

While Tchaikovsky's death has traditionally been attributed to cholera, most probably contracted through drinking contaminated water several days earlier. some have theorized that his death was a suicide. Opinion has been summarized as follows: "The polemics over [Tchaikovsky's] death have reached an impasse ... Rumor attached to the famous die hard ... As for illness, problems of evidence offer little hope of satisfactory resolution: the state of diagnosis; the confusion of witnesses; disregard of long-term effects of smoking and alcohol. We do not know how Tchaikovsky died. We may never find out ....."

Music

See also: List of compositions by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Symphonies by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Original cast of Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, Saint Petersburg, 1890

Tchaikovsky wrote many works which are popular with the classical music public, including his Romeo and Juliet, the 1812 Overture, his three ballets (The Nutcracker, Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty) and Marche Slave. These, along with two of his four concertos, the last three of his six numbered symphonies and, of his eight extant operas, The Queen of Spades and Eugene Onegin, are among his most familiar works. Almost as popular are the Manfred Symphony, Francesca da Rimini, the Capriccio Italien and the Serenade for Strings. His three string quartets and piano trio all contain beautiful passages, while recitalists still perform some of his 106 songs. Tchaikovsky also wrote over a hundred piano works, covering the entire span of his creative life. Brown has asserted that "while some of these can be challenging technically, they are mostly charming, unpretentious compositions intended for amateur pianists." He adds, however, that "there is more attractive and resourceful music in some of these pieces than one might be inclined to expect."

Creative range

Tchaikovsky's formal conservatory training allowed him to write works with Western-oriented attitudes and techniques. His music showcases a wide range and breadth of technique, from a poised "Classical" form simulating 18th century Rococo elegance, to a style more characteristic of Russian nationalists, or (according to Brown) a musical idiom expressly to channel his own overwrought emotions. Despite his reputation as a "weeping machine," self-expression was not a central principle for Tchaikovsky. In a letter to von Meck dated December 5, 1878, he explained there were two kinds of inspiration for a symphonic composer, a subjective and an objective one, and that program music could and should exist, just as it was impossible to demand that literature make do without the epic element and limit itself to lyricism alone. Correspondingly, the large scale orchestral works Tchaikovsky composed can be divided into two categories—symphonies in one category, and other works such as symphonic poems in the other. According to musicologist Francis Maes, program music such as Francesca da Rimini or the Manfred Symphony was as much a part of the composer's artistic credo as the expression of his "lyric ego." Maes also identifies a group of compositions which fall outside the dichotomy of program music versus "lyrical ego," where he hearkens toward pre-Romantic aesthetics. Works in this group include the four orchestral suites, Capriccio Italien, the Violin Concerto and the Serenade for Strings.

One of the recognizable characteristics of Tchaikovsky’s works is his use of harmony or rhythm to create a sudden, powerful release of emotion. Like the other Romantic composers of the era, Tchaikovsky colored his works with rich harmonies, utilizing German Augmented Sixth chords, minor triads with added major sixths, and augmented triads. These colorful harmonies progressed to moments of extreme emotion. Though the peaks were preceded by building tension, Tchaikovsky was often criticized for his lack of development throughout his material. Yet what critics failed to accept was the fact that Tchaikovsky was not attempting to smoothly develop his works, but rather disregard seamless flow and embrace the intense emotion created by momentous bursts of fervid harmonies.

Reception and reputation

Although Tchaikovsky's music has always been popular with audiences, it has at times been judged harshly by musicians and composers. However, his reputation is now generally regarded as secure. The initially criticized Swan Lake is currently seen as the first step in Tchaikovsky’s reputation as one of the most important and talented ballet composers. His music has won a significant following among concert audiences that is second only to the music of Beethoven, thanks in large part to what Harold C. Schonberg terms "a sweet, inexhaustible, supersensuous fund of melody ... touched with neuroticism, as emotional as a scream from a window on a dark night." According to Wiley, this combination of supercharged melody and surcharged emotion polarized listeners, with popular appeal of Tchaikovsky's music counterbalanced by critical disdain of it as vulgar and lacking in elevated thought or philosophy. More recently, Tchaikovsky's music has received a professional reevaluation, with musicians reacting more favorably to its tunefulness and craftsmanship. Even more recent reevaluations, especially in David Brown's exhaustive four-volume critical and biographical study, have placed much more emphasis on Tchaikovsky's architectural soundness as well as his powers of melodic invention and orchestration, and he is now regarded as one of the leading and most influential composers of the second half of the nineteenth century.

Public considerations

Tchaikovsky believed that his professionalism in combining skill and high standards in his musical works separated him from his contemporaries in The Five. He shared several of their ideals, including an emphasis on national character in music. His aim, however, was to link those ideals to a standard high enough to satisfy Western European criteria. His professionalism also fueled his desire to reach a broad public, not just nationally but internationally, which he eventually did.

He may also have been influenced by the almost "eighteenth-century" patronage prevalent in Russia at the time, which was still strongly influenced by its aristocracy. In this style of patronage, the patron and the artist often met on equal terms. Dedications of works to patrons were not gestures of humble gratitude but expressions of artistic partnership. The dedication of the Fourth Symphony to Nadezhda von Meck is known to be a seal on their friendship. Tchaikovsky's relationship with Duke Konstantin Konstantinovich bore creative fruit in the Six Songs, Op. 63, for which the grand duke wrote the words. Tchaikovsky found no aesthetic conflict in playing to the tastes of his audiences, though it was never established that he satisfied any other tastes but his own. The patriotic themes and stylization of 18th-century melodies in his works lined up with the values of the Russian aristocracy.

Compositional style

According to Brown in the New Grove (1980), Tchaikovsky's melodies ranged "from Western style to folksong stylizations and occasionally folksongs themselves." His use of repetitions within these melodies generally reflect the sequential style of Western practices, which he sometimes extended at immense length, building "into an emotional experience of almost unbearable intensity." He experimented occasionally with unusual meters, although more usually, as in his dance tunes, he employed a firm, essentially regular meter that "sometimes becomes the main expressive agent in some movements due to its vigorous use." Tchaikovsky also practiced a wide range of harmony, from the Western harmonic and textural practices of his first two string quartets to the use of the whole tone scale in the center of the finale of the Second Symphony; the latter was a practice more typically used by The Five. Since Tchaikovsky wrote most of his music for the orchestra, his musical textures became increasingly conditioned by the orchestral colors he employed, especially after the Second Orchestral Suite. Brown maintains that while the composer was grounded in Western orchestral practices, he "preferred bright and sharply differentiated orchestral coloring in the tradition established by Glinka." He tends to exploit primarily the treble instruments for their "fleet delicacy," though he balances this tendency with "a matching exploration of the darker, even gloomy sounds of the bass instruments."

Impact

Wiley cites Tchaikovsky as "the first composer of a new Russian type, fully professional, who firmly assimilated traditions of Western European symphonic mastery; in a deeply original, personal and national style he unified the symphonic thought of Beethoven and Schumann with the works of Glinka, and transformed Liszt's and Berlioz's achievements in depictive-programmatic music into matters of Shakespearean elevation and psychological import."

Holden maintains that Tchaikovsky was the first legitimate professional Russian composer, stating that only traditions of folksong and music for the Russian Orthodox Church existed before Tchaikovsky's birth. Holden continues, "Twenty years after Tchaikovsky's death, in 1913, Igor Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring erupted onto the musical scene, signalling Russia's arrival into 20th century music. Between these two very different worlds Tchaikovsky's music became the sole bridge."

Russian musicologist Solomon Volkov maintains that Tchaikovsky was perhaps the first Russian composer to think seriously about his country's place in European musical culture. As the composer wrote to Nadezhda von Meck from Paris,

How pleasant it is to be convinced firsthand of the success of our literature in France. Every book étalage displays translations of Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Dostoyevsky ... The newspapers are constantly printing rapturous articles about one or another of these writers. Perhaps such a time will come for Russian music as well!

Tchaikovsky became the first Russian composer to personally acquaint foreign audiences with his own works, as well as those of other Russian composers. He also formed close business and personal ties with many of the leading musicians of Europe and the US. For Russians, Volkov asserts, this was all something new and unusual.

Finally, the impact of Tchaikovsky's own works, especially in ballet, should not be underestimated; his mastery of danseuse (melodies which match physical movements perfectly), along with vivid orchestration, effective themes and continuity of thought were unprecedented in the genre, setting new standards for the role of music in classical ballet. Noel Goodwin characterized Swan Lake as "one of [ballet's] enduring masterworks" and The Sleeping Beauty as "the supreme example of 19th century classical ballet," while Wiley called the latter work "powerful, diverse and rhythmically complex."

References

Notes

References

Sources

• Abraham, Gerald,(Ed.), Music of Tchaikovsky (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1946). ISBN n/a. OCLC 385829
  • Lockspeiser, Edward, "Tchaikovsky the Man"
  • Cooper, Martin, "The Symphonies"
  • Blom, Eric, "Works for Solo Instrument and Orchestra"
  • Wood, Ralph W., "Miscellaneous Orchestral Works"
  • Mason, Colin, "The Chamber Music"
  • Dickinson, A.E.F., "The Piano Music"
  • Abraham, Gerald, "Operas and Incidental Music"
  • Evans, Edwin, "The Ballets"
  • Alshvang, A., tr. I. Freiman, "The Songs"
  • Abraham, Gerald, "Religious and Other Choral Music"
• Brown, David, ed. Stanley Sadie, "Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich", The New Grove Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians (London: MacMillan, 1980), 20 vols. ISBN 0-333-23111-2.
• Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Early Years, 1840–1874 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1978). ISBN 0-393-07535-2.
• Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Crisis Years, 1874–1878, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1983). ISBN 0-393-01707-9.
• Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Years of Wandering, 1878–1885, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1986). ISBN 0-393-02311-7.
• Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Final Years, 1885–1893, (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1991). ISBN 0-393-03099-7.
• Brown, David, Tchaikovsky: The Man and His Music (New York: Pegasus Books, 2007). ISBN 0-571-23194-2.
• Figes, Orlando, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002). ISBN 0-8050-5783-8 (hc.).
• Goodwin, Noel, ed. Stanley Sadie, "Dance: VI. 19th Century, (iv) The classical ballet in Russia to 1900", The New Grove Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians (London: MacMillan, 1980), 20 vols. ISBN 0-333-23111-2.
• Hanson, Lawrence and Hanson, Elisabeth, Tchaikovsky: The Man Behind the Music (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company). Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 66–13606.
• Holden, Anthony, Tchaikovsky: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1995). ISBN 0-679-42006-1.
• Jackson, Timothy L., Tchaikovsky, Symphony no. 6 (Pathétique) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). ISBN 0-521-64676-6.
• Maes, Francis, tr. Arnold J. Pomerans and Erica Pomerans, A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2002). ISBN 0-520-21815-9.
• Mochulsky, Konstantin, tr. Minihan, Michael A., Dostoyevsky: His Life and Work (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967). Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 65–10833.
• Poznansky, Alexander Tchaikovsky: The Quest for the Inner Man (New York: Schirmer Books, 1991). ISBN 0-02-871885-2.
• Poznansky, Alexander. Tchaikovsky through others' eyes. (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1999). ISBN 0-253-33545-0.
• Rimsky-Korsakov, Nikolai, Letoppis Moyey Muzykalnoy Zhizni (St. Petersburg, 1909), published in English as My Musical Life (New York: Knopf, 1925, 3rd ed. 1942). ISBN n/a.
• Schonberg, Harold C. Lives of the Great Composers (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 3rd ed. 1997). ISBN 0-393-03857-2.
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• Steinberg, Michael, The Symphony (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
• Taruskin, Richard, ed. Stanley Sadie, "Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Il'yich", The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, vol. 4 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). ISBN 978-0-19-522186-2.
• Tchaikovsky, Modest, Zhizn P.I. Chaykovskovo [Tchaikovsky's life], 3 vols. (Moscow, 1900–1902).
• Tchaikovsky, Pyotr, Perepiska s N.F. von Meck [Correspondence with Nadzehda von Meck], 3 vols. (Moscow and Lenningrad, 1934–1936).
• Tchaikovsky, Pyotr, Polnoye sobraniye sochinery: literaturnïye proizvedeniya i perepiska [Complete Edition: literary works and correspondence], 17 vols. (Moscow, 1953–1981).
• Volkov, Solomon, tr. Bouis, Antonina W., St. Petersburg: A Cultural History (New York: The Free Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1995). ISBN 0-02-874052-1.
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• Warrack, John, Tchaikovsky (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973). SBN 684-13558-2.
• Wiley, Roland John, Tchaikovsky's Ballets (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1985). ISBN 0-198-16249-9.
• Wiley, Roland John, "Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich", The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Second Edition (London: Macmillian, 2001). ISBN 1-56159-239-0.
• Zajaczkowski, Henry, Tchaikovsky's Musical Style (Russian Music Studies, 19). Ann Arbor, MI: Umi Research Pr, 1987.

External links

• Tchaikovsky Research
• Tchaikovsky performances on ClassicalTV
• Tchaikovsky cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
• Turgenev and Tchaikovsky (with music samples)
• Gay Love-Letters from Tchaikovsky to his Nephew Bob Davidov
• Music Analysis. Aspects on sexuality and structure in the later symphonies of Tchaikovsky.

Public domain sheet music

• Mutopia Project Tchaikovsky Sheet Music at Mutopia
• Free scores by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky at the International Music Score Library Project
• Free scores by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)