Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893
often anglicised as Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Russian composer whose works included
symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets,
chamber music, and a choral setting of the
Russian Orthodox Divine Liturgy.
First Russian
He was the first Russian composer whose music made a
lasting impression internationally
Tchaikovsky was honored in 1884 by Emperor Alexander III,
and awarded a lifetime pension in the late 1880s.
He entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from
which he graduated in 1865.
The formal Western-oriented teaching he received there
set him apart from composers of the contemporary
nationalist movement embodied by the Russian composers
of The Five
New Style
• He forged a personal but unmistakably Russian style—a task
that did not prove easy.
• Despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovsky's life was
punctuated by personal crises and depression.
• Contributory factors included his leaving his mother for
boarding school, his mother's early death, as well as that of
his close friend and colleague Nikolai Rubinstein, and the
collapse of the one enduring relationship of his adult life, his
13-year association with the wealthy widow Nadezhda von
Meck.
Controversial
• His homosexuality, which he kept private, has traditionally
also been considered a major factor, though some
musicologists now downplay its importance.
• His sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to
cholera; there is an ongoing debate as to whether it was
accidental or self-inflicted.
• While his music has remained popular among audiences,
critical opinions were initially mixed.
• . Tchaikovsky's music was dismissed as "lacking in
elevated thought," according to longtime New York Times
music critic Harold C. Schonberg, and its formal workings
were derided as deficient for not following Western
principles stringently.
Life/ Childhood/ Family
• Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, a small town
in Vyatka Governorate (present-day Udmurtia) in the
Russian Empire.
• His family had a long line of military service. His father, Ilya
Petrovich Tchaikovsky, was an engineer who served as a
lieutenant colonel in the Department of Mines.
• Both of Tchaikovsky's parents were trained in the arts,
including music.
• 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
Early Music Training
• Tchaikovsky took piano lessons from the age of five.
• He could read music as adeptly as his teacher within three
years.
• The family decided in 1850 to send Tchaikovsky to the
Imperial School of Jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg.
• Because of the growing uncertainty of his father's income,
both parents may have wanted Tchaikovsky to become
independent as soon as possible.
• Since both parents had graduated from institutes in Saint
Petersburg, they decided to educate him as they had
themselves been educated.
Emerging composer
Childhood trauma and school years
• Tchaikovsky's separation from his mother to attend boarding
school caused an emotional trauma that tormented him
throughout his life.
• Her death from cholera in 1854 further devastated him. He
mourned his mother's loss for the rest of his life and called it
"the crucial event" that ultimately shaped
• The loss also prompted Tchaikovsky to make his first serious
attempt at composition, a waltz in her memory.
• Tchaikovsky's father, who also contracted cholera at this
time but fully recovered.
• Music became a unifier.
• Fond of works by Rossini, Bellini, Verdi and Mozart, he
would improvise for his friends at the school's harmonium
on themes they had sung during choir practice.
• Tchaikovsky also continued his piano studies .
• In 1855, Tchaikovsky's father funded private lessons for his
son. Tchaikovsky was told to finish his course and then try
for a post in the Ministry of Justice. Even though he gave this
practical advice, his father remained receptive about a
career in music for Tchaikovsky. No public education system
in music existed at the time in Russia.
Conservatory and Anton Rubinstein
• In 1861, Tchaikovsky attended classes in music theory taught
by Nikolai Zaremba in Saint Petersburg. These classes were
organized by the Russian Musical Society (RMS), founded in
1859 by the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna (a German-born
aunt of Tsar Alexander II) and her protégé, pianist and
composer Anton Rubinstein.
• The aim of the RMS was to foster native talent, in
accordance with Alexander II's stated intent.
• Tchaikovsky enrolled at the Conservatory as part of its
premiere class but held on to his Ministry post until the
following year wanting to make sure his course lay in music.
• From 1862 to 1865 he studied harmony and counterpoint
with Zaremba. Rubinstein, director and founder of the
Conservatory, taught instrumentation and composition.
Conservatory
• Tchaikovsky benefited from his Conservatory studies in two
ways.
• First, it transformed him into a musical professional and gave
him tools that helped him thrive as a composer.
• Second, his in-depth exposure to European principles and
forms for organizing musical material gave Tchaikovsky the
sense that his art belonged to world culture and was not
exclusively Russian or Western.
• This mindset became important in his reconciling Russian
and European influences in his compositional style and
showed that both these aspects of Russian culture were
actually "intertwined and mutually dependent".It also
became a starting point for other Russian composers to build
their own individual styles.
Anton and Nikolai Rubinstein
• While Rubinstein was impressed by Tchaikovsky's musical talent
on the whole, he was less pleased with the more progressive
tendencies of some of Tchaikovsky's student work.
• Nor did he change his opinion as Tchaikovsky's reputation grew in
the years following his graduation. He and Zaremba clashed with
Tchaikovsky when he submitted his First Symphony for
performance by the RMS in Saint Petersburg.
• Rubinstein and Zaremba refused to consider the work unless
substantial changes were made. Tchaikovsky complied but they
still refused to perform the symphony. Tchaikovsky, distressed that
he had been treated as though he were still their student,
withdrew the symphony.
• It was given its first complete performance, minus the changes
Rubinstein and Zaremba had requested, in Moscow in February
1868.
Relationship with The Five
• In 1856, critic Vladimir Stasov and an 18-year-old pianist,
Mily Balakirev, met and agreed upon a nationalist agenda for
Russian music.
• They espoused a music that would incorporate elements
from folk music.
• Moreover, they saw Western-style conservatories as
unnecessary and antipathetic to fostering native talent.
• César Cui, an army officer who specialized in the science of
fortifications, and Modest Mussorgsky, a Preobrazhensky
Lifeguard officer, came in 1857. Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, a
naval cadet, followed in 1861 and Alexander Borodin, a
chemist, in 1862.
Folk War
• Like Balakirev, they were not professionally trained in
composition but possessed varying degrees of musical
proficiency. Together, the five composers became known as
the moguchaya kuchka, translated into English as the Mighty
Handful or The Five.[57]
• Balakirev and Stassov's efforts fueled a debate. Rubinstein's
criticism of amateur efforts in musical composition and his
pro-Western outlook and training fanned the flames further.
• His founding a professional institute where predominantly
foreign professors taught alien musical practices heated the
controversy to boiling point.
• Balakirev attacked Rubinstein for his musical conservatism
and his belief in professional music training.
War Wages On
• Mussorgsky jumped on the bandwagon.
• Tchaikovsky and his fellow conservatory students were
caught in the middle, well-aware of the argument but
directed by Rubinstein to remain silent and focus on their
own artistry.
• Nevertheless, as Rubinstein's pupil, Tchaikovsky became a
target for The Five's scrutiny and was criticized for not
following their precepts.
• Cui, who championed the nationalist cause as a music
critic for the next half-century, wrote a blistering review of
a cantata Tchaikovsky had composed as his graduation
thesis.
• The review devastated the composer.
• In 1867, Rubinstein resigned as conductor of the RMS
orchestra and was replaced by Balakirev.
• Balakirev, whose influence over the other composers in The
Five had meanwhile waned, may have sensed the potential
for a new disciple in Tchaikovsky.
• He replied "with complete frankness" that he considered
Tchaikovsky "a fully fledged artist". These letters set the
tone for their relationship over the next two years.
• In 1869, they worked together on what became
Tchaikovsky's first recognized masterpiece, the fantasyoverture Romeo and Juliet, a work which The Five
wholeheartedly embraced.
• ]
• The group also welcomed his Second Symphony, subtitled
the Little Russian.
• In its original form, Tchaikovsky allowed the unique
characteristics of Russian folk song to dictate the
symphonic form of its outer movements, rather than
Western rules of composition.
• While ambivalent about much of The Five's music,
Tchaikovsky remained on friendly terms with most of its
members.
• 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.
Growing fame; budding opera
composer
• Tchaikovsky's successes during his first years as a composer
were infrequent, won with tremendous effort.
• Several factors helped bolster Tchaikovsky's music. One was
having several first-rate artists willing to perform it.
• Another was a new attitude becoming prevalent among
Russian audiences. Previously, they had been satisfied with
flashy virtuoso performances of technically demanding but
musically lightweight compositions. They gradually began
listening with increasing appreciation of the music itself.
• Tchaikovsky's works were performed frequently, with few
delays between their composition and first performances;
Tchaikovsky began to compose operas. His first, The
Voyevoda, based on a play by Alexander Ostrovsky, was
premiered in 1869.
• The composer became dissatisfied with it and, having reused parts of it in later works, destroyed the manuscript.
• Undina followed in 1870. Only excerpts were performed and
it, too, was destroyed.
• The first Tchaikovsky opera to survive intact, The Oprichnik,
premiered in 1874
Opera and Ballet
• Tchaikovsky decided to write the next libretto himself,
modelling his dramatic technique on that of Eugène Scribe.
• Cui wrote a "characteristically savage press attack" on the
opera. Mussorgsky, writing to Vladimir Stasov, disapproved
of the opera as pandering to the public.
• Other works of this period include the Variations on a
Rococo Theme for cello and orchestra, the Second and
Fourth Symphonies, the ballet Swan Lake and the opera
Eugene Onegin.
Emotional life and Sexuality
• Discussion of Tchaikovsky's personal life, especially his
sexuality, has perhaps been the most extensive of any
composer in the 19th century and certainly of any Russian
composer of his time. It has also at times caused
considerable confusion, from Soviet efforts to expunge all
references to same-sex attraction and portray him as a
heterosexual, to efforts at armchair analysis by Western
biographers. A current tendency is to discuss Tchaikovsky's
personal life candidly.
Bachelor ?
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•
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Tchaikovsky lived as a bachelor most of his life.
In 1877, at the age of 37, he wedded a former student, Antonina Miliukova.
The marriage was a disaster. Mismatched psychologically and sexually, the couple
lived together for only two and a half months before Tchaikovsky left.
Overwrought emotionally and suffering from an acute writer's block,
Tchaikovsky's family remained supportive of him during this crisis and
throughout his life. He was also aided by Nadezhda von Meck, the widow of a
railway magnate who had begun contact with him not long before the marriage.
As well as an important friend and emotional support, she also became his
patroness for the next 13 years, which allowed him to focus exclusively on
composition.
Tchaikovsky had clear homosexual tendencies; some of the composer's closest
relationships were with men. He sought out the company of other same-sex
attracted men in his circle for extended periods, "associating openly and
establishing professional connections with them."Relevant portions of his
brother Modest's autobiography, where he tells of the composer's sexual
orientation, have been published, as have letters previously suppressed by Soviet
censors in which Tchaikovsky openly writes of it.
Unsuccessful Marriage
• In 1868, Tchaikovsky met Belgian soprano Désirée Artôt,
then touring Russia with an Italian opera company .] Artôt
was "one of the most lustrous opera stars of her day," with a
"beguiling voice".
• The composer's friend, music critic Hermann Laroche, called
her "dramatic singing personified, an opera goddess fusing
numerous gifts which would normally be shared among
several different artists.“
• Tchaikovsky and Artôt became infatuated and engaged to be
married. Even so, Artôt told Tchaikovsky that she would not
give up the stage or settle in Russia.
Jilted
• Nikolai Rubinstein, fearful that living in a famous singer's
shadow would stifle Tchaikovsky's creativity, warned against
the union.
• However, on September 15, 1869, without any
communication with Tchaikovsky, Artôt married a Spanish
baritone in her company, Mariano Padilla y Ramos.
• 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
Years of Wandering
• Tchaikovsky remained abroad for a year after the
disintegration of his marriage, during which he completed
Eugene Onegin, orchestrated the Fourth Symphony and
composed the Violin Concerto.
• He returned to the Moscow Conservatory in the autumn of
1879 but only as a temporary move.
• He informed Nikolai Rubinstein on the day of his arrival that
he would stay no longer than December.
• Once his professorship had ended officially, he traveled
incessantly throughout Europe and rural Russia. Assured of a
regular income from von Meck, he lived mainly alone, did
not stay long anywhere and avoided social contact whenever
possible.
Foreign Rep and 1812 Overture
• Tchaikovsky's foreign reputation grew rapidly.
• In 1880, the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour neared
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 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.”
Most Memorable Work?
• He 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."
Death of Rubinstein
• On 23 March 1881, Nikolai Rubinstein died in Paris.
• Tchaikovsky, holidaying in Rome, went immediately to
attend the funeral. He arrived in Paris too late for the
ceremony but was in the cortege which accompanied
Rubinstein's coffin 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 Rubinstein's death.
• The piece became extremely popular during the composer's
lifetime and became Tchaikovsky's own elegy when played
at memorial concerts in Moscow and St. Petersburg in
November 1893.
Return to Russia
• Tsar Alexander III
• 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.
Finally accepted in Mother Russia
• 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.".
• 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.
• 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.
RMS Director
• 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 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.
• In January 1887 he substituted at the Bolshoi Theater in
Moscow at short notice for performances of his opera
Cherevichki
Global Acclaim
• 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, both works were
received with extreme enthusiasm by audiences and
Tchaikovsky, undeterred, continued to conduct the
symphony in Russia and Europe.
• 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
Carnegie Hall.
Death
• On 28 October 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.
Cause of Death in Question
• 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 longterm effects of smoking and alcohol. We do
not know how Tchaikovsky died. We may
never find out ....."
His Music
• 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 his First Piano Concerto and his
Violin Concerto, the last three of his six numbered
symphonies and his 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.
Wide Creative Range
• Tchaikovsky displayed an unusually wide stylistic and
emotional range, from salon works of innocuous charm to
symphonies of tremendous depth, power and grandeur.
• Some of his works, such as the Variations on a Rococo
Theme, employ a poised "Classical" form reminiscent of
18th-century composers such as Mozart (the composer
whose work was his favorite).
• Other compositions, such as his Little Russian symphony and
his opera Vakula the Smith, flirt with musical practices more
akin to those of the Five, especially in their use of folk song.
• Other works, such as the last three symphonies, employ a
personal musical idiom that facilitated intense emotional
expression.
Legacy
• Tchaikovsky was a pioneer in several ways.
• "Thanks in large part to Nadezhda von Meck", Wiley
writes, "he became the first full-time professional Russian
composer".
• This, Wiley adds, allowed him the time and freedom to
consolidate the Western compositional practices he had
learned at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory with Russian
folk song and other native musical elements to fulfill his
own expressive goals and forge an original, deeply
personal style. He made an impact not only in absolute
works such as the symphony but also in program music
and, as Wiley phrases it, "transformed Liszt's and Berlioz's
achievements ... into matters of Shakespearean elevation
and psychological import."