Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

EARLY LIFE 

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 in Votkinsk, a grim industrial town half way between Moscow and the Ural mountains.

Portrait of Tchaikovsky by Nikolai Kuznetsov, 1893

His father, Ilya Petrovich Tchaikovsky was a Ukrainian mining engineer who managed the Kamsko-Votkinsk Ironworks.

Pyotr's adored mother, Alexandra Andreyevna (née d'Assier), was the second of Ilya's three wives, 18 years her husband's junior and French on her father's side.

Pyotr never recovered from the death of his mother from cholera at the age of 14.

He had two twin brothers, Modest and Anatoly, ten years younger than him. Pyotr became their effective guardian after the marriage of his sister, Aleksandra in 1860.

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

His last name derives from Tchaika (чайка) which means gull.

Pyotr was a withdrawn child, who was affected by abnormal insensitivity. He sought refuge in music from an early age and began piano lessons at the age of five showing remarkable gifts. 

It was seeing Mozart's Don Giovanni as a boy that persuaded Pyotr to become a composer.

Pyotr was sent at the age of ten to boarding school and had to be physically wrenched from his mother when he was sent to away. 
Once those two years had passed, Pyotr transferred to the Imperial School of Jurisprudence (the School of Laws) to begin a seven-year course of studies. 

Modern view of the Imperial School of Jurisprudence By I, Lite, 

CAREER 

After graduating from the School of Laws in 1859, Tchaikovsky was appointed to the Ministry of Justice in St Petersburg, where he became a senior assistant after eight months. He remained a senior assistant for the rest of his three-year civil service career.

Tchaikovsky gave up his clerical job to become full time composer. However, his father feared a music career would encourage his nervous disposition.

At the age of 22, Tchaikovsky became a music student at St Petersburg Conservatoire at Moscow, where he studied until 1865.

Tchaikovsky as a student at the Moscow Conservatory. Photo, 1863

In 1866, Tchaikovsky was appointed professor of theory and harmony at the Moscow Conservatory, which had been established that year. He held the post until 1877 when his patron, Nadezhda von Meck, gave him an annual allowance which enabled him to give up teaching and became a full time composer. 

A wealthy middle-aged widow, Madame Von Meck agreed to pay Tchaikovsky 6,000 rubles a year providing they never met, as she feared it would destroy their friendship. It enabled him not to have to worry about money.

By 1880, Tchaikovsky was the most popular composer in Russia. 

Originally a timid conductor, Tchaikovsky began promoting Russian music in that capacity in January 1887, when he substituted, on short notice, at the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow for performances of his opera Cherevichki. Within a year, he was in considerable demand as a conductor throughout Europe and Russia. These appearances helped him overcome life-long stage fright.

In 1890 Nadezhda von Meck abruptly cut off her support for the composer. It is widely believed that she did so because she found out about Tchaikovsky's homosexual orientation. However, by now Tchaikovsky had achieved success throughout Europe as well as in the United States after his visit there in 1891.

Nadezhda von Meck, 

On a typical day Tchaikovsky started work composing at 9.30 am. Then at 5.00 pm, after returning from a three hour afternoon walk, he would make alterations to his compositions.

WORKS 

Tchaikovsky's music was highly emotional, melancholic, melodic, many of his themes were taken from Russian folk tunes. He wrote 11 operas, 3 ballets and 6 symphonies.

The idea of writing a piece based on William Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet play was suggested to Tchaikovsky by his mentor Mily Balakirev. Balakirev was a much more senior composer at the time and a leading member of ‘The Five’, a group of high-profile Russian Nationalist composers that also included Rimsky-Korsakov, Mussorgsky, Cui and Borodin. Tchaikovsky was just 29-years-old. He’d had some modest success but was struggling for musical inspiration when Balakirev pressed the idea on him. Balakirev even went so far as to send Tchaikovsky musical ideas, including the first four bars of music as he would have written them himself. Tchaikovsky wisely overlooked most of Balakirev’s musical contributions but was otherwise inspired by the musical concept and finished his "Romeo & Juliet" piece in just six weeks.

Tchaikovsky’s wrote his Piano Concerto in B Flat between November 1874 and February 1875. It was originally dedicated to his mentor and director of the Moscow Conservatoire Nikolai Rubenstein. When the Russian composer first played it to him on Christmas Eve 1874, Rubenstein's reaction was, "Banal, clumsy and incompetently written; poorly composed and unplayable." "I shall not alter a single note," the notoriously touchy composer responded, "I shall publish the work exactly as it is!" Tchaikovsky did in fact subject the concerto to some minor revision as well as changing the dedication to pianist Hans Von Bulow.

The introductory theme

Bulow was the soloist at the concerto’s premiere on October 25, 1875 in Boston, Massachusetts where it went down a storm with the audience, but the critics were less impressed. One wrote that the concerto was "hardly destined ..to become classical".

The Russian premiere of Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto took place on November 13, 1875 in Saint Petersburg, but the Russian composer claimed that the soloist, Russian pianist Gustav Krossm reduced the work to "an atrocious cacophony."

The four opening crashing chords are some of the most famous chords in history. The concerto's first theme, which follows it, is based on a folk melody that Tchaikovsky heard performed by blind beggar-musicians at a market in Kamenka (near Kiev in what is now Ukraine).

Tchaikovsky's 1877 ballet Swan Lake was commissioned by Bolshoi Theatre. Tchaikovsky took it on as he needed the money and longed to try his luck at this form of music. 

Tchaikovsky was paid only 800 rubles for 'Swan Lake.' The ballet was based on King Ludwig II's life which Russians disliked and also called it "unimaginative" and "unmemorable." It was originally disliked by the critics and failed due to poor choreography. 

Swan Lake sunk without trace and was not performed again in Tchaikovsky's lifetime. It was only acclaimed 17 years later after a revised score. 

Tchaikovsky’s 1878 The Violin Concerto in D major, Op. 35 is one of the best known of all violin concertos and also among the most technically difficult works for the instrument. The Russian composer sketched the entire piece in just 11 days and dedicated the work to the famous violinist Leopold Auer. But Auer found the piece unplayable and refused to premiere it, so it fell to another violinist, Adolf Brodsky, to give the first performance in Vienna,
Notoriously dismissed by critic Eduad Haslick as ‘music that stinks to the ear,’ Tchaikovsky’s great violin concerto nevertheless went on to conquer the whole world. 

The Capriccio Italien, op. 45 is a fantasy for orchestra composed between January and May of 1880 by Tchaikovsky. It was inspired by a trip Tchaikovsky took to Rome, during which he saw the Carnival in full swing, and is reminiscent of Italian folk music and street songs. 

The 1812 Overture was an 1880 official commission for the opening of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior during the Moscow Exhibition of Industry and the Arts.

It was first performed at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow on August 20, 1882.

Composed by Tchaikovsky to commemorate the Russian defense of Moscow against Napoleon’s armies, the Overture traces the sequence of the military campaign.

At the turning point of the invasion, the Battle of Borodino in 1812, the musical score includes five Russian cannon shots signalling the reversal of French fortunes. This is followed by a descending string passage, including a fragment of La  Marseillaise mocking the retreating French forces. After this comes victory bells and a triumphant repetition.

Although the 1812 Overture was written to include cannons firing and cathedral bells, synchronizing them with an orchestra proved all but impossible. It wasn't until 1954 that Hungarian-born conductor and composer Antal Doráti mixed a studio recording with real cannons and church bells, finally playing it as intended.

The 1812 Overture was the first piece of music that could be construed as a "diss track" as it was written to mock the French about their failed invasion of Russia.

The directors of St Petersburg Opera commissioned Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty ballet in 1888. He worked on it for six weeks before touring western Europe. Tchaikovsky returned in the summer to finish it and was pleased with the ballet describing it as "One of my best works". The public response was initially more cool though it grew in popularity.

Original cast of  The Sleeping Beauty, Saint Petersburg, 1890

After the success of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty, the St Petersburg Opera commissioned the Russian composer to write another score. He was asked to compose the music to accompany an adaption of a 1816 German story, E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, that they wanted to perform as a ballet.

The Nutcracker ballet was premièred at the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg on December 18, 1892. Although the original production was not a success, the 20-minute "Nutcracker Suite" that Tchaikovsky extracted from the ballet was more warmly received.

The original production of The Nutcracker, 1892

Following an unsuccessful attempt at a sixth symphony in the autumn of 1892, Tchaikovsky made a fresh start the following February and within a matter of days had outlined some of the music. He told his nephew Vladimir ('Bob') Davidov that it was to be a programmatic symphony and one that would remain an enigma to all, "let them guess!"

The symphony was written in Tchaikovsky's summer house in Klin, 50 miles northwest of Moscow, and completed by the end of August 1893. Writing to his nephew again he said, "I consider the Symphony the best thing I've ever done."

Tchaikovsky's brother, Modest, had wanted to call the work "Magic" but the Russian composer more modestly prompted for "Pateticheskaya", a Russian word meaning "passionate" or "emotional." Pateticheskaya was mistranslated into French as "pathétique", meaning "evoking pity" but  the mistranslation has since been retained in every country but Russia. 

Tchaikovsky conducted the first performance of his Pathétique symphony, which was dedicated to his nephew, in St Petersburg, on October 8, 1893. It was not well received. The premiere was just nine days before his sudden and unexpected death. 

The second performance took place 21 days later, at a memorial concert. It included some minor corrections that Tchaikovsky had made after the premiere. 

Tchaikovsky's draft of the Sixth Symphony

RELATIONSHIPS

Antonina Ivanovna Milivkova was a not particularly bright student at the Moscow Music Conservatory during the time Tchaikovsky was one of her professors. In 1875 she had to abandon her studies at that institution, probably as a result of financial troubles. She wrote to Tchaikovsky on at least two occasions in 1877 declaring her love for him, two years after she had left school. She pleaded and pleaded and finally threatened suicide so Tchaikovsky married her. 

Tchaikovsky and Antonina were married at the Church of Saint George in Moscow on July 18, 1877 and held their wedding dinner at the Hermitage Restaurant. They had their honeymoon on the Moscow- St Petersburg train. At that time Antonina was 28, far past the age at which women of that time generally married.

Tchaikovsky and Antonina on their honeymoon, 1877

The marriage was hasty, and Tchaikovsky quickly found he could not bear his wife. The composer made an attempt at suicide two weeks after the wedding.

Finding Antonina physically repulsive, Tchaikovsky sneaked away one night six weeks after their marriage and fled to his brother, Anatoly in St Petersburg. Antonia kept in touch with letters and they never divorced. 

This episode only served to confirm Tchaikovsky's homosexuality, which he was apparently trying to conceal through the marriage.

Antonia had several affairs (as did Tchaikovsky) and died in an asylum in 1917.

Tchaikovsky exchanged between 1878-90 1,100 letters with his patron Madame Nadezhda Von Meck. She was a great lover of his work and she had commissioned him to compose music for her. It is possible she was planning to marry off one of her daughters to Tchaikovsky, as she also tried unsuccessfully to marry one of them to Claude Debussy, who had lived in Russia for a time as music teacher to her family.

At his country house at Klin Tchaikovsky would drink with friends late into the night. 

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

During his last eight years, Tchaikovsky lost his sister, his two well loved nieces and several close friends.

HOBBIES AND INTERESTS 

Tchaikovsky adored Mozart's music, "A musical Christ", Delibes' Coppélia "glorious music" and admired Bizet's Carmen but was very critical of other composers. Brahms' music he called "presumptuous mediocrity" and Wagner bored him. Whenever Tchaikovsky met up with Tolstoy, they would argue about the merits of Beethoven.

Tchaikovsky went for a customary three hour afternoon walk. In the evening he liked a game of cards or a piano duet with friends.

HEALTH

The breakdown of Pyotor Ilyich Tchaikovsky's month long marriage led to a nervous collapse, unconsciousness for 48 hours and a doctor's order to leave Russia. So depressed was the Russian composer that he stood waist deep in the icy Moscow river hoping in vain to catch pneumonia and die from it. 

Pyotor Ilyich Tchaikovsky was an unstable hypochondriac to the extent it is claimed that when conducting he would often conduct with his right hand while his left hand clutched his chin, because he was convinced that his head was going to roll off his shoulders. 

DEATH

Tchaikovsky died nine days after conducting the first performance of his Sixth Symphony in St Petersburg. 

Tchaikovsky in 1888

Tchaikovsky already feeling ill, knowingly drank a glass of unboiled water at a local restaurant, even though a cholera epidemic was raging through St Petersburg. He lapsed into a dehydrated fever. A week later his kidneys failed and he died at 3.00 on the morning of November 6, 1893. 

He was buried in Alexander Nevsky Monastery Cemetery, St Petersburg.

Source Classic FM magazine May 2011