Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, the Viatka District in Russia on May 7, 1840 to a Russian miner and a mother of French origin. During his early life, Tchaikovsky did receive some musical training from a French governess in the form of piano lessons, but the training did not continue. As a young child, Tchaikovsky’s family moved to St. Petersburg because his father had been given the position of a government mining official there. In St. Petersburg, he was sent to school to study the law and prepare for a career there, but he continued his musical training in his own time.
By improvising on the piano, Tchaikovsky was not only able to improve his skill, but it was in the course of his practices that gave him a great love of music. He wouldn’t again train formally in music until after his graduation from law school in 1859. In 1861, he had taken a job as a clerk in the Ministry of Justice in St. Petersburg when he enrolled in the newly formed St. Petersburg Conservatory to continue his learning. He began to study composition under the direction of Anton Rubinstein, a highly celebrated pianist and composer; also, he was the director of the conservatory.
Rubinstein was impressed by Tchaikovsky and once commented that while he was a bit careless, the young man was “definitely talented. ” This commentary from his instructor inspired Tchaikovsky to “give up his day job”, so to speak, and become a full time student of the conservatory. Tchaikovsky graduated in 1865 and immediately received the position of Professor of Harmony in the new Moscow Conservatory. It was in this position that he started to compose. He began by composing some minor overtures, quartets, and one large symphony.
In 1866 that he suffered from his first nervous breakdown brought on the stress of overwork on his First Symphony. His early works were to include two other symphonies, the violin concerto, and the Piano Concerto in B flat Minor. During his years in Moscow, Tchaikovsky was able to teach, compose, write, travel, and associate with other composers of the time. With one of those, Balakirev, a member of a group of Russian composers known as “the Five”, he formed a close friendship, and from him he gained the idea for the fantasy overture Romeo and Juliet.
But the relationship between him and the Five soured, and he even later parodied in one of ballets their use of certain folk melodies over and over again. Although Tchaikovsky was enjoying life in Moscow among his composer friends, he found himself constantly in periods of deep depressions and unhappiness. The largest contributor to his bouts of depression and sadness was his self-hatred and guilt that he had from carrying a heavy secret: Tchaikovsky was gay. In 1876, Tchaikovsky entered into a correspondence relationship with a wealthy widow, Madame Nedezhda von Meck, who was an admirer of his music.
First off, she merely commissioned works for him to compose and gave him rather nice payments for the music, but eventually, Madame von Meck became his patron by providing him with six thousand roubles annually. Interestingly enough, she agree to maintain this support only under one condition: they were to never meet. For the next thirteen years, this unique relationship allowed Tchaikovsky to dedicate his life to music, compose, perform, and, in general, work on his music without ever the worry of finance.
During those years, the letters that the two shared were intense and personal, it could even be said that the two had gained a great love for one another. After thirteen years, Madame von Meck ended her patronage and the relationship as well, abruptly in 1890. No explanation was ever offered as to why, and while Tchaikovsky was not hurt financially by this (he had become very well off due to his music career and had even gained a life pension from the Czar of Russia), it hurt him emotionally very deeply.
Driven by feelings of self-loathing and guilt over his homosexuality, Tchaikovsky attempted to “cure” himself by marrying Antonia Milyukova in 1877, a student at the Moscow Conservatory where he taught. Apparently she herself was mentally unstable, and this, combined with the complexities of Tchaikovsky’s mental state, turned the marriage into an instant disaster that didn’t even last three months. As a result, Tchaikovsky fled back to St. Petersburg, attempted suicide, and had another nervous breakdown.
It took him several months before he was stable enough to again to compose, after which he resigned his post at the Moscow Conservatory in 1878. He maintained his St. Petersburg residence the remainder of his life. During this later part of his life, Tchaikovsky was able to travel through Europe and America, gaining in popularity and wealth. It was during these years that wrote almost all of his more well known music, including the 1812 Overture, the Sixth Symphony Pathetique, and probably the most famous ballet of all time, The Nutcracker.
Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg in 1893 of Cholera that he contracted from drinking some contaminated water. Some say that it was on purpose in order to commit suicide over the threat of exposure of his homosexuality, but that is perhaps something that the world will never know. During his lifetime, Tchaikovsky composed some of the most memorable music of all time. In my life, there were always three names that I would recognize when it came to classical music: Beethoven, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky.
He is most famous for his two ballets The Nutcracker and Swan Lake and if I had to put him in a category, it would be in the ballet, but the music that Tchaikovsky loved the most had to be the symphony. This is evidenced most clearly in his comment on his Sixth Symphony or better known as the Pathetique Symphony. He said, “I love it as I have never loved any one of my musical offspring. ” Tchaikovsky works include concertos for both violin and piano, symphonies, operas, quartets, ballets, and overtures. His music was always filled with passion and emotion.
While he didn’t opt for the gigantic orchestras of the time, like his fellow composers, Tchaikovsky concentrated on adding color to his music, which he was extremely successful at. Truly, Tchaikovsky was one of the greatest composers of the Romantic Period, and his music will continue to delight audiences for years to come. The first movement of the symphony starts out in almost an official style, more like a march. This initially leads one to think that the piece is going to turn out to be a more militaristic type of music with a lot of rigid melodies, confined to a certain space or tone or something like that.
But Tchaikovsky doesn’t do that. He starts that way, then suddenly drops all of the crescendo and forte to make the music softer and slower. It was hard at first to describe my feelings about this particular piece up to this point because in my head, I hadn’t visualized any type of mental imagery to follow the music along with. It took me a couple of listenings to really get a picture or idea of that first movement. One thing that I really didn’t notice until after the first few times through was the tempo of the first movement.
It stays quite fast through the whole thing. It wasn’t until the fifth or sixth listening of the piece that the first movement began to take on shape in my mind. To me, it began to sound like a chase, someone chasing someone else. It this chase, the person fleeing starts out running to get away from his pursuer, pauses for a moment to rest, then the chase once again resumes. About five minutes into the piece, the music tells me that the individual who was running gave his pursuer the slip and is very happy and even starts to celebrate a little.
The whole first movement goes on like this, with periods of fast tempo, then slowing down a bit, and once again building to that fast tempo. I can definitely see the outpouring of emotion that Tchaikovsky put into this first movement. The second movement just starts off slow and relaxing, a real breather when compared to the first. It almost seems like a lullaby, slowly relaxing the listeners and putting them into a kind of a somber, tranquil mood. Even with all the crescendos and decrescendos that are woven into the piece, it never really seems to lose that lullaby type feeling to it.
One thing that I didn’t realize at first about this movement is that it is not a ‘happy’ type of lullaby, but it has a sadness and darkness to it. I’m not surprised by that after studying the life of Tchaikovsky. The mood of the piece most likely is reflecting the turmoil that he was experiencing at this point in his life. Out of all the movements, I find that I like this one the most. The second movement is usually the one that I liked to put on at night when I needed to relax enough to go to sleep–worked better than a glass of warm milk.
For awhile the beginning of the third movement had me a little confused as to why Tchaikovsky began it this way with the plucking of all the strings like he did, but after listening to the second movement, I began to see how the two could really be used together. The second movement is the lullaby to put the audience to sleep, and the third could be the pixies dancing in their heads or about the room as they slept. I could just see a bunch of little fairies dancing around the room and playing to the music while the people slept.
In the third and final movement Tchaikovsky really starts out loud, as if to wake up his audience. It was after finally listening to the final and the first movements separately that I really could gain a mental picture of the whole. As an example, I picture a man who is running from someone and we don’t know why. Throughout the entire first movement, we hear his pursuit-the ducking, hiding, resting, then the resuming of the chase. We move into the second movement, and night has fallen. Our man is going to sleep, lulled by the night music all around.
This is never really a happy tune, because in the back of the man’s mind is the chase. We move into the third movement, of which I will not elaborate, because I have done so previously. In the forth and final movement, morning comes and the chase resumes. The pursuer in close on the man’s heels and he is caught and escapes several times. The listenercan almost taste the tension and the excitement mount as Tchaikovsky continually builds and builds and make the music louder and louder until, at last, the man escapes and it is over.