Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

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Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky ^[1] (Russian: Пётр Ильич Чайковский, Russian pronunciation: [ˈpʲɵtr ɪlʲˈjit͡ɕ  ˌt͡ɕɪjˈkofskʲɪj] listen (help·info)) (May 7 [O.S. April 25] 1840 – November 6 [O.S. October 25] 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic era. While not part of the nationalistic music group known as "The Five", Tchaikovsky wrote music which was distinctly Russian: plangent, introspective, with modally-inflected melody and harmony.^[2]

Tchaikovsky considered himself a professional composer. He felt his professionalism in combining skill and high standards in his musical works separated him from his colleagues in "The Five." He shared several of their ideals, including an emphasis on national character in music. His aim, however, was linking those ideals with a professional standard high enough to satisfy European criteria. His professionalism also fueled his desire to reach a broad public, not just nationally but also internationally, which he would eventually do.^[3]

Aesthetically, Tchaikovsky remained open to all aspects of St Petersburg musical life. He was impressed by Serov and Balakirev as well as the classical values upheld by the conservatory. Both the progressive and conservative camps in Russian music at the time attempted to win him over. Tchaikovsky charted his compositional course between these two factions, retaining his individuality as a composer as well as his Russian identity.^[4] A clear summation of Tchaikovsky's approach can be found in Hermann Laroche's review of Sleeping Beauty:

The Russian way in music ... is the issue at hand.... The point is not in the local color, in the internal structure of the music, above all in the foundation of the element of melody. This basic element is undoubtedly Russian. It may be said, without lapsing into contradiction, that the local color [in Sleeping Beauty] is French, but the style is Russian.... One may thank Pyotr Ilyich that his development has coincided with a time when the influences of the soil became stronger among us, when the Russian soul was inspired, when the word "Russian" ceases to be a synonym of "peasant-like," and when the peasant-like itself was recognized in its proper place, as but part of being Russian.^[5]

Contents 1 Life 1.1 Childhood 1.2 Early manhood 1.3 Dealing with the Five 1.4 Dostoyevskian turmoil in music 1.5 Timely benefactress 1.6 Later career 1.7 Death 1.8 Tchaikovsky's life in media 1.8.1 Films 1.8.2 Television 1.8.3 Music 2 Music 2.1 Characteristics 2.2 Imperial style 2.3 Aesthetics 2.4 Media 3 See also 4 References 5 Bibliography 6 Further reading 7 External links

Life

Childhood

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, a small town in present-day Udmurtia (at the time the Vyatka Guberniya of Imperial Russia). His father, Ilya Petrovitch, was the son of a government mining engineer. His mother, Alexandra, was a Russian woman of partial French ancestry and the second of Ilya's three wives. Pyotr was the older brother (by some ten years) of the dramatist, librettist, and translator Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

In 1843, Tchaikovsky acquired a French governess, Fanny Dürbach. Her love and affection for her charge provided a counter to Alexandra, a cold, unhappy, distant parent not given to displays of physical affection.^[6] For all her undemonstrativeness, however, Alexandra doted on Pyotr.^[7] Also, by her aloofness and demeanor, she may have seeded her son's lifetime fascination and sympathy for deprived, suffering or otherwise doomed women^[8]—one he would later express musically in such works as Romeo and Juliet, Swan Lake, Francesca da Rimini and Pique Dame.^[9]

Pyotr began piano lessons at age five with a local woman. Musically precocious, he could read music as well as his teacher within three years. However, his parents' passion for his musical talent soon cooled. Feeling inferior due to their humble origins, the family sent Pyotr in 1850 to a school for the "lesser nobility" or gentry called the School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg to secure him a career as a civil servant. The minimum age for acceptance was 12. For Pyotr, this meant two years boarding at the School of Jurisprudence's preparatory school, 800 miles (1,300 km) from his family. Pyotr adored Alexandra and was already hypersensitive emotionally. He lacked self-confidence and often clung to his mother's skirts.^[10] Her abandonment of him at the preparatory school was extremely traumatic. It was to be the first of two brutally symbolic departures.

Early manhood

The second brutal leave-taking came on June 25, 1854 with her death from cholera. This was such a harsh blow that Pyotr could not inform his former governness Fanny Dürbach of it until two years later.^{[11][12][13][14]} He reacted to her loss by turning to music; within a month of her death, he was making his first serious efforts at composition, a waltz in her memory. Several writers, including Poznansky, Holden, and Warrack, have claimed that the loss of his mother was formative on Tchaikovsky's sexual development, in particular because of the close emotional connection he had to her. Regardless, the same-sex practices widespread among students at the all-male School of Jurisprudence,^[15][16][17] became his norm. With these proclivities came friendships with fellow students, such as Alexei Apukhin and Vladimir Gerard, intense enough to make up for the loss of his mother and isolation from the rest of his family. Some of these friendships would last the rest of his life.^[18]

While music was not considered a high priority at the Institite, Tchaikovsky was taken to the theater and the opera with classmates regularly. He was fond of works by Rossini, Bellini, Verdi and Mozart. A piano manufacturer, Franz Becker, made occasional visits as a token music teacher and gave lessons. This was the only music instruction Tchaikovsky received at school. In 1855, Ilya Tchaikovsky funded private studies outside the Institute for his son with Rudolph Kündinger, a well-known piano teacher from Nuremberg. Ilya also questioned Kündinger about a musical career for his son. He replied that nothing suggested a potential composer or even a fine performer. Tchaikovsky was told to finish his course work, then try for a post in the Ministry of Justice.

Tchaikovsky graduated on May 25, 1859 with the rank of titular counselor, the lowest rung of the civil service ladder. On June 15, he was appointed to the Ministry of Justice. Six months later he became a junior assistant to his department; two months after that, a senior assistant. There Tchaikovsky remained for the rest of his three-year civil service career. In 1861, he attended classes in music theory taught by Nikolai Zaremba through the Russian Musical Society (RMS). The following year he followed Zaremba to the new St Petersburg Conservatory. Tchaikovsky followed but did not give up his civil service post until his father agreed to support him. From 1862 to 1865, he studied harmony, counterpoint and fugue with Zaremba. Anton Rubinstein, director and founder of the Conservatory, taught him instrumentation and composition. Rubinstein was impressed by Tchaikovsky's talent.

Anton Rubinstein's younger brother Nikolai asked Tchaikovsky after graduation to become professor of harmony, composition, and the history of music at the Moscow Conservatory. Tchaikovsky gladly accepted the position as Ilya had retired and lost his property.

Dealing with the Five

See also: Tchaikovsky and the Five

As Tchaikovsky studied with Zaremba at the Western-oriented St. Petersburg Conservatory, critic Vladimir Stasov and composer Mily Balakirev espoused a nationalistic, less Western-oriented and more locally ideomatic school of Russian music. Stasov and Balakirev recruited what would be known as The Mighty Handful or kuchka (better known in English as "The Five") in St. Petersburg. Balakirev considered academicism to be not a help but a threat to musical imagination. Along with Stasov, he attacked Rubinstein and the Conservatory relentlessly in print as well as verbally at every opportunity.^[19]

Since Tchaikovsky became Rubinstein's best known student, he was initially considered by association as a natural target for attack, especially as fodder for Cesar Cui's criticism.^[20] This attitude changed slightly when Rubinstein exited the St. Petersburg musical scene in 1867. Tchaikovsky entered into a working relationship with Balakirev. The result was Tchaikovsky's first masterpiece, the fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet, a work the kuchka wholeheartedly embraced.^[21] When Tchaikovsky wrote a positive review of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Fantasy on Serbian Themes, he was welcomed into the circle despite concerns about his academic background.^[22]

He remained friendly but never intimate with most of the Five, ambivalent about their music; their goals and aesthetics did not match his.^[23] He took pains to insure his musical independence from them as well as from the conservative faction at the Conservatory—a course of action facilitated by his accepting the professorship at the Moscow Conservatory offered to him by Nikolai Rubinstein.^[24] When Rimsky-Korsakov was offered a professorship at the St. Petersburg Conservatory after Zaremba had left, it was Tchaikovsky to whom he turned for advice and guidance.^[25] Later, Tchaikovsky enjoyed closer relations with Alexander Glazunov, Anatoly Lyadov and, at least on the surface, the elder Rimsky-Korsakov.^[26]

Dostoyevskian turmoil in music

See also: Antonina Miliukova

Beginning with his Fourth Symphony, Tchaikovsky's music became an intense psychic outlet, allowing him to voice frustrations and emotions previously kept bottled up. The importance of Tchaikovsky's homosexuality and its consequences on the personal expression in his compositions cannot be underestimated. Tchaikovsky's gayness in itself has been known to the West for at least 75 years, gathered from the composer's own writings as well as those of his brother Modest, who was also gay.^[27][28] More debatable is how well he accepted his sexuality or was comfortable with it. ^[29]

Pivotal in letting loose his psychic cataract was Tchaikovsky's ill-starred marriage to one of his former composition students, Antonina Miliukova. Tchaikovsky had decided to "marry whoever will have me" just before Antonina appeared on the scene. His favorite pupil Vladimir Shilovsky had married suddenly in late April 1877.^[30] Shilovsky, like Tchaikovsky, was gay.^[31] They had shared a mutual bond of affection for just over a decade.^[32][33] Shilovsky's wedding may, in turn, have spurred Tchaikovsky to consider such a step himself.^[34] He may have hoped in marrying Antonina that marriage would lend him public respectability while he continued having sex privately with other men.^[35] The brief time with his wife drove him to the brink of emotional ruin.^[36].

Paradoxically, the marriage's strain on Tchaikovsky may have actually enhanced his creativity.^[37] The Fourth Symphony and the opera Eugene Onegin could be considered proof of this. He finished both these works in the six months from his engagement to his "rest cure" in Clarens, Switzerland following his marriage. They are arguably two of his finest compositions.^[38]

The intensity of personal emotion now flowing through Tchaikovsky's works was entirely new to Russian music. ^[39] It prompted Russians to place his name alongside that of novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky.^[39] Like Dostoyevsky's characters, they felt the musical hero in Tchaikovsky's music persisted in exploring the meaning of life while trapped in a fatal love-death-faith triangle.^[39] A typical passage about the two reads, "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."^[40]

Timely benefactress

See also: Nadezhda von Meck

Four months prior to Antonina's first letter came another at least as significant. Nadezhda von Meck, wealthy widow of a Russian railway tycoon and an influential patron of the arts, wanted to commission some chamber pieces. She eventually paid Tchaikovsky an annual subsidy of 6,000 rubles. This would also allow him to resign from the Moscow Conservatory in October 1878 and concentrate primarily on composition.^[41] With von Meck's patronage came a relationship that, at her insistence, was mainly epistolary. They exchanged over 1,200 letters, some of them quite lengthy, between 1877 and 1890. For both of them, these letters would become a solace and a safety valve, filled with details extraordinary for two people who would never meet. Tchaikovsky was more open to von Meck about much of his life and his creative processes than to any other person.

Some could claim legitimately that Tchaikovsky and von Meck's friendship rose to a level similar to that of his future attachment to his nephew, Vladimir "Bob" Davydov.^[42] This arrangement can often take place between a woman and a gay man who is spiritually and artistically oriented.^[42] A parallel relationship would be the platonic affair between Michelangelo and Vittoria Colonna, marchioness of Pescara. Like von Meck, Vittoria was a mature widow. She withdrew into a convent, from which she exchanged passionate sonnets with Michelangelo. Von Meck remained a fully dedicated supporter of Tchaikovsky and all his works. She took the place of the mother figure he had lost—and more. She also became a vital enabler in his day-to-day existence. 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.^[43]

Tchaikovsky and von Meck also became related by marriage. One of her sons, Nikolay, married Tchaikovsky's niece Anna Davydova in 1884. However, after 13 years von Meck suddenly ended the relationship. She claimed bankruptcy. Tchaikovsky, now a success throughout Europe, no longer needed her money. Her friendship and encouragement were another matter. Losing that companionship devastated him.^{[44][45][46] [47]}

Later career

Tchaikovsky returned to Moscow Conservatory in the fall of 1879. He had been away from Russia a year after his marriage disintegrated. Shortly into that term, however, he resigned. He settled in Kamenka yet travelled incessantly. Assured of a regular income from von Meck, he wandered around Europe and rural Russia. Not staying long in any one place, he lived mainly alone, avoiding social contact whenever possible. This may have been due partly to troubles with Antonina. She alternately accepted and refused divorce and at one point exacerbated matters by moving into the apartment directly above her husband's.^[48][49] Perhaps understandably, his music suffered in quality. Except for his piano trio, which he wrote upon the death of Nikolai Rubinstein, his best work from this period is found in genres which did not depend heavily on personal expression.^[48]

While Tchaikovsky's reputation grew rapidly outside Russia, "it was considered obligatory [in progressive musical circles in Russia] to treat Tchaikovsky as a renegade, a master overly dependent on the West," Alexandre Benois wrote in his memoirs.^[50] In 1880, this assessment changed practically overnight. During commemoration ceremonies for the Pushkin Monument in Moscow, Dostoyevsky called for the Russian "to become brother to all men, uniman, if you will."^[50] Dostoyevsky had been a fervent nationalist. Like Tchaikovsky, though, he also had what Osip Mandelstam termed "a longing for world culture."^[50] Focusing on the "European" essence of Pushkin's work, Dostoyevsky's charged that the poet had given a prophetic call to Russia for "universal unity" with the West^[50] An unprecedented acclaim for Dostoyevsky's message rushed throughout Russia. Disdain for Tchaikovsky's music dissipated. He even drew a cult following among the young intelligentsia of St. Petersburg, including Benois, Leon Bakst and Sergei Diaghilev.

During 1884, Tchaikovsky began to shed his unsociability and restlessness.^[51] In 1885 Tsar Alexander III conferred upon Tchaikovsky the Order of St. Vladimir (fourth class). With it came hereditary nobility. The tsar's decoration was a visible seal of official approval that helped the composer's social rehabilitation.^[51] That year he resettled in Russia. 1885 also saw his debut as a guest conductor. Within a year, he was in considerable demand throughout Europe and Russia in appearances which helped him overcome a life-long stage fright and boosted his self-assurance. He wrote von Meck, "Would you now recognize in this Russian musician traveling across Europe that man who, only a few years ago, had absconded from life in society and lived in seclusion abroad or in the country!!!"^[52] Conducting brought him to America in 1891. He led the New York Music Society's orchestra in his Marche Slave^[53] at the inaugural concert of New York's Carnegie Hall.

In 1893, the University of Cambridge awarded Tchaikovsky an honorary Doctor of Music degree. Other composers similarly honored on the same occasion included Camille Saint-Saëns, Max Bruch and Arrigo Boito. Edvard Grieg was also to be honored but could not attend due to illness.

Death

See also: Death of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Tchaikovsky died on November 6, 1893, nine days after the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique. His death has traditionally been attributed to cholera, most probably contracted through drinking contaminated water several days earlier. However, some have theorized his death was a suicide. In one variation of the theory, a sentence of suicide was imposed in a "court of honor" by Tchaikovsky's fellow alumni of the St. Petersburg School of Jurisprudence, as a censure of the composer's sexual preferences.^[54][55][56]

Tchaikovsky's life in media

Films

• Song of My Heart (1948, US).

  Directed by Benjamin Glazer.

  Screenplay by Benjamin Glazer.

  allmovies.com link.

• Tchaikovsky (1969, Russia).

  Directed by Igor Talankin.

  Screenplay by Yuri Nagibin.

  Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film.

  allmovies.com link

• The Music Lovers (1970, UK).

  Directed by Ken Russell.

  Screenplay by Melvyn Bragg.

  Based on Beloved Friend, a collection of personal correspondence edited by Catherine Drinker Bowen and Barbara von Meck.

  allmovies.com link

Television

• Pride or Prejudice (1993, UK).

  BBC documentary.

  Various theories investigated regarding Tchaikovsky's death.

• Tchaikovsky: Fortune and Tragedy (2007, UK).

  Two-part docudrama on the composer's life.

  Part of BBC series The Tchaikovsky Experience.

Music

• Shameful Vice

  Opera by English composer Michael Finnissy.

  Libretto focuses on Tchaikovsky's last days and death.

Music

See also: List of compositions by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Characteristics

Tchaikovsky demonstrated the Romantic ideals of color, emotional expressiveness, and dramatic intensity. Tchaikovsky was also typically Romantic in his choice of subject matter in his operas and symphonic poems. He leaned toward doomed lovers and heroines — Romeo and Juliet, Francesca and Paolo (Francesca da Rimini), Tatiana (Eugene Onegin), even the title character from his abandoned opera Undina. Sometimes, as in his final opera, Iolanta, and in his final tone poem, The Voyevode, the love music could outshine the rest of the composition, especially if the music or story was otherwise sub-standard.

Tchaikovsky stood out from many of his contemporaries in his great fund of melody and quality of that melody—sweet and at times bittersweet in tone, sensuous in the undulations of the melodic line, and lush in texture, yet providing a clear periodic structure. That structure can be obscured by the sheer expansiveness of the musical phrase, as well as by its sequential extension. The love theme in Romeo and Juliet is an example. The theme starts as an eight-bar phrase, the second half a free sequence of the first. This sequence establishes a principle of growth which is used on the theme's recurrence to expand freely and unpredictably. Unlike The Five's work, folk songs and folk-like melodies appear only sporadically in Tchaikovsky's work.

Tchaikovsky was also extremely imaginative in orchestration; he never stopped seeking new timbral combinations. This penchant was drilled into him early, through Anton Rubinstein's exercises at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. It also caused him to run afoul of Rubinstein, choosing instruments his conservative teacher would never use himself.

‎ The major leap Tchaikovsky made in terms of orchestral skill was through the first three orchestral suites.^[57] Through these works two changes took place. First, Tchaikovsky's orchestration became tremendously subtler and more sophisticated when needed. Second, he allowed the instrumental sound he desired to dictate the music he would write, instead of vice versa. There would still be touches of novelty, such as his using four accordions in the Second Orchestral Suite and, much later, the celesta solos in The Nutcracker and The Voyevoda. More often, though, his ability to conjure an atmosphere or scene with the colors he chose would become increasingly keener and further ranging, allowing him to expand into the various degrees of fantasy which would incorporate some of his finest work.

Imperial style

Tchaikovsky's musical cosmopolitanism made him especially adept in writing in a Italo-Franco "Imperial style." This style was favored by Tsar Alexander III and the Russian upper classes over the "Russian" harmonies of Mussorgsky, Borodin and Rimsky-Korsakov.^[58]

Imperial style was symbolized by the polonaise, imported into Russia near the end of the 18th century by Jozef Kozlowski, a Polish composer who served in the Russian Army. Kozlowski's greatest musical successes were with his polonaises. He wrote a triumphal polonaise on a text by Derzhavin, "Thunder of Victory, Resound," to celebrate the Russian victory over the Turks in the Ukraine. After that, the polonaise became the preeminent ceremonial gesture in Russia. It became an expression of tsarist patriotism and imperialism. ^[59] With this cachet came both an opulence and importance in the dance's use:

[T]he polonaise became the supreme courtly form and the most brilliant of all the ballroom genres. The polonaise came to symbolize the European brilliance of eighteenth-century Petersburg [then the capital of Russia] itself. In 'Eugene Onegin Pushkin (like Tchaikovsky) used the polonaise for the climactic entry of Tatiana at the ball in Petersburg. Tolstoy used the polonaise at the climax of the ball in War and Peace, where the Emperor makes his appearance and Natasha dances with Andrei.^[60]

Tchaikovsky's phenomenal success in St. Petersburg with the premiere of his Third Orchestral Suite may have been due in large part to his concluding the work with a polonaise.^[61] He also used a polonaise for the final movement of his Third Symphony. This led to a misunderstanding when the symphony was performed in the West. Western nations, more familiar with the polonaise as used by Frédéric Chopin, subtitled the symphony Polish. They considered the finale an expression of a Polish longing for freedom and national resurgence. The real meaning of the polonaise in the symphony was the exact opposite. Like the finales of Tchaikovsky's first two symphonies, the finale of the Third was meant to appeal to the patriotic sentiment of the Russian aristocracy—precisely the people who wanted to keep the Poles yoked to the tsarist regime.^[62]

Tchaikovsky used a Russian folk song in the finale of the First Symphony and a Ukranian folk song in the finale of the Second. Both times, as with the Third, he did so to glorify the Russian empire and the victories of Russian arms.^[63] This theme, traditional in Russian culture, was first sounded by Pushkin. The defeat of Napoleon led to a rapid expansion of the empire and the ethnic variety of its peoples. A subsequent and growing appetite in the capital for further conquests was reflected in Russian music.^[63] Even the finales of the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies could be argued to be in imperial vein.^[64] Neither finale works satisfactorily as either a strictly formal or psychological apotheosis for their respective works. However, as patriotic and heroic appeals—the Fourth by repeating the opening motto at a climactic point and the Fifth with a version of the opening melody of the introduction transposed to a major key—both could be heard to serve just that purpose.^[65]

Tchaikovsky made full use of the emotional and symbolic possibilities of the Russian anthem "God Save the Tsar" in several commemorative works, including two of his most popular compositions, the Marche Slave and the 1812 Overture. Tchaikovsky wrote Marche Slave in support of Pan-Slavism. This was one of the most cherished ideas of imperial Russia. When Serbia rebelled against Turkish rule in 1876, the atmosphere in Russia toward the Serbs became electric. Performances of the Marche Slave, with its Serbian folk melodies, inevitably elicited outbursts of patriotism. This was something the equally patriotic composer did not mind one bit. The 1812 Overture likewise glorified the greatest military and political victory of the Romanov dynasty, in the Patriotic War against Napoleon.

Aesthetics

Tchaikovsky differed aesthetically from his contemporaries, with his art as well as his artistic sensibilities leaning closer to Mozart and Mendelssohn than to the music of Russians such as Mussorgsky and the other members of The Five. In one sense this is not a surprise. Russia in Tchaikovsky's day was considered in some respects "the last eighteenth-century state." This placed him in circumstances Mozart or Beethoven might have found congenial. He enjoyed an extensive system of artistic patronage. Nadezhda von Meck was not his only sponsor, simply his most noted one. Others were more closely connected to the tsarist court. These included Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Director of the Imperial Theatres; Prince Meshchersky, a leading politician and counselor to Alexander III; and Grand Duke Konstantin Konstantonovich, a cousin of Alexander III.^[66]

From 1885, Tchaikovsky also enjoyed the direct patronage of Alexander III. The tsar asked personally for a new production of Eugene Onegin to be staged in St. Petersburg. The opera had previously been seen only in Moscow, produced by a student ensemble from the conservatory. He had Onegin staged not at the Mariyinsky Theater but in the Bolshoi kamennïy theater. This act served notice that Tchaikovsky's music was replacing Italian opera as the official imperial art. Thanks to Vsevolozhsky, Tchaikovsky received a lifetime pension of 3000 rubles per year from the tsar. This essentially made him the premier court composer, at least in practice if not in actual title.^[67]

Russia's society was paternalistic. Members of the higher classes patronized those of the lower. Tchaikovsky could therefore count on the support of the higher ranks of the aristocracy. An essential feature of this artistic patronage was that patron and artist were considered equals. While it is well-known that Tchaikovsky and von Meck discussed a variety of subjects as equals, he and Konstantin Konstantonovich enjoyed a similarly straightforward (though less intimate) relationship.^[68] Dedications of works to patrons were not gestures of humble gratitude but expressions of artistic partnership. The dedication of the Fourth Symphony to von Meck is known to be a seal on their friendship. His relationship with Konstantin Konstantinovich bore creative fruit in the Six Songs, Op. 63, for which the grand duke wrote the words.^[69]

As his career advanced, Tchaikovsky increasingly became the embodiment of the artistic values cherished by the aristocracy.^[68] For Tchaikovsky, there was no conflict between the artist and his public. Highly sensitive to external circumstances and expectations, he searched constantly for new ways of reaching the public. He saw no harm in playing on the tastes of particular audiences. The patriotic themes and stylization of 18th-Century melodies in his works lined up with the values of the Russian aristocracy; and using the polonaise, the musical symbol of Russian patriotism, as a finale was one of Tchaikovsky's recepes for success.^[70]

Tchaikovsky's idea of music was to a large extent based on its aesthetic impact. He felt the high demands of Wagner's music on its audiences conflicted with this criterion. His objections to Brahms were similar. He felt Brahms's music lacked what was most important—beauty. He sought tne expressive value in music that was immediately comprehensible and appreciable—in other words, what was apparent on the surface. He admired Bizet's Carmen for exactly this reason. "This music has no pretensions to profundity, but it is so charming in its simplicity, so vigorous, not contrived but instead sincere, that I learned all of it from beginning to end almost by heart." Mozart aroused tremendous fascination in Tchaikovsky. While he loved Mozart's music, it was also a mystery to him, especially in the way Mozart combined simplicity with profundity.^[71]

While many may immediately think of self-expression when they hear the name "Tchaikovsky", it was not necessarily central to him.^[72] 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:

In the first instance, [the composer] uses his music to express his own feelings, joys, sufferings; in short, like a lyric poet he pours out, so to speak, his own soul. In this instance, a program is not only not necessary but even impossible. But it is another matter when a musician, reading a poetic work or struck by a scene in nature, wishes to express in musical form that subject that has kindled his inspiration. Here a program is essential.... Program music can and must exist, just as it is impossible to demand that literature make do without the epic element and limit itself to lyricism alone.

This meant program music such as Francesca da Rimini or the Manfred Symphony was as much a part of their composer's artistic credo as the expression of his "lyric ego."^[73] While he could feel a great deal of sympathy for his subjects, sympathy does not necessarily mean identification. Labeling all his works based on literary subjects as confessional music would be unwarranted. The character of Hermann in Pique Dame has sometimes been mentioned as an expression of the composer's morbidity and suicidal tendencies. Tchaikovsky's letters and diary entries disprove this notion, showing that he did not identify with Hermann. His diary entry for March 2, 1890, when he had just completed the opera, shows a characteristic mixture of empathy and detachmant. "Wept terribly when Hermann breathed his last. The result of exhaustion, or maybe it is truly good."^[74]

There is also 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 orchestral suites, Capriccio Italien and the Serenade for Strings.^[75] He displays his clearest link to pre-Romantic sensitivities in retrospective works such as the Variations on a Rococo Theme and Mozartiana, a collection of orchestrations based on Mozart piano pieces and a Liszt transcription of a Mozart work. The Violin Concerto also looks back to pre-Romantic aesthetics. While Tchaikovsky does not follow classical practice, most notably in the lack of a double exposition in the first movement, he also does not follow the conventions of other 19th-Century violin concertos. It is not written as a virtuosic work for virtuosity's sake, like Paganini's concertos, nor virtuosity used to express a symphonic concept, as in the Brahms Violin Concerto. The tone of the orchestral introduction could almost be considered classicist; the same is true for the transparent orchestration, with the orchestra itself relegated for the most part to background for the soloist.^[76]

Few compositions are as far removed from the idea of Tchaikovsky as musical confessor as the orchestral suites, yet they are entirely true to his pre-Romantic ideal. They were an outgrowth of a trend beginning in Germany following the rediscovering of Bach's orchestral suites, and he valued the genre for formal freedom as well as its unrestricted musical fantasy.^[77] Capriccio italien, an urban tableau evoking Italian urban folklore, was the continuation of a tradition begun with Haydn and Mozart.^[76] The Serenade for Strings was intended as a tribute to Mozart. While not copying any style, Tchaikovsky attempts to convert the spirit of the Classicl approach into his own compositional idiom. The Serenade's unique tone comes from a subtle balance between Tchaikovsky's lyrical sentimentality and his attention to classical measure and clarity.^[78]

Tchaikovsky may have best summed his perception of music himself to von Meck: "It alone clarifies, reconciles, and consoles. But it is not a straw just barely clutched at. It is a faithful friend, protector, and comforter, and for its sake alone, life in this world is worth living."^[74]

Media

See also

• Nadezhda von Meck
• Antonina Miliukova Tchaikovskaya
• Nikolai Grigoryevich Rubinstein
• International Tchaikovsky Competition
• Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra of Moscow Radio
• Category:Compositions by Pyotr Tchaikovsky

References

Bibliography

• Brown, David, ed. Stanley Sadie, The New Grove Encyclopedia of Music and Musicians (London: MacMillian, 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.
• Cooper, Martin, ed Abraham, Gerald, Music of Tchaikovsky (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1946). ISBN n/a.
• Figes, Orlando, Natasha's Dance: A Cultural History of Russia (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2002). ISBN 0-8050-5783-8 (hc.).
• 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.
• 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 Ca.ilfornia 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.
• 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).
• Steinberg, Michael, The Symphony (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
• 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.
• Warrack, John, Tchaikovsky Symphonies and Concertos (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1969). Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 78-105437.
• 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.

Further reading

• Greenberg, Robert "Great Masters: Tchaikovsky -- His Life and Music"
• Kamien, Roger. Music : An Appreciation. Mcgraw-Hill College; 3rd edition (August 1, 1997). ISBN 0-07-036521-0.
• ed. John Knowles Paine, Theodore Thomas, and Karl Klauser (1891). Famous Composers and Their Works, J.B. Millet Company.
• Meck Galina Von, Tchaikovsky Ilyich Piotr, Young Percy M. Tchaikovsky Cooper Square Publishers; 1st Cooper Square Press ed edition (October, 2000) ISBN 0-8154-1087-5.
• Meck, Nadezhda Von Tchaikovsky Peter Ilyich, To My Best Friend: Correspondence Between Tchaikovsky and Nadezhda Von Meck 1876-1878 (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993) ISBN 0-19-816158-1.
• Poznansky, Alexander & Langston, Brett The Tchaikovsky Handbook: A guide to the man and his music. (Indiana University Press, 2002).

  Vol. 1. Thematic Catalogue of Works, Catalogue of Photographs, Autobiography. ISBN 0-253-33921-9.

  Vol. 2. Catalogue of Letters, Genealogy, Bibliography. ISBN 0-253-33947-2.

• Poznansky, Alexander, Tchaikovsky's Last Days, (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), ISBN 0-19-816596-X.
• Poznansky, Alexander. Tchaikovsky through others' eyes. (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1999). ISBN 0-253-33545-0.

External links

• Tchaikovsky Research (active site)
• Istituto Musicale Tchaikovsky (Italy) (active site)
• Tchaikovsky (inactive site)
• Tchaikovsky page (inactive site)
• PBS Great Performances biography of Tchaikovsky
• Tchaikovsky cylinder recordings, from the Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
• Tchaikovsky's sacred works by Polyansky
• Biography of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

Public Domain Sheet Music:

• www.kreusch-sheet-music.net Free Scores by Tchaikovsky
• Mutopia Project Tchaikovsky Sheet Music at Mutopia
• Free scores by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in the Werner Icking Music Archive (WIMA)

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Persondata
NAME	Tchaikovsky, Pyotr Ilyich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Пётр Ильич Чайкoвский
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Russian composer
DATE OF BIRTH	May 7, 1840
PLACE OF BIRTH	Votkinsk, Imperial Russia
DATE OF DEATH	November 6, 1893
PLACE OF DEATH	St. Petersburg, Russia