What was tchaikovsky childhood like

Ironically, it was Oscar Wilde's trial of , with its enormous resonance in the English-speaking world, that precipitated negative tendencies in the reception and critical judgement of Tchaikovsky's art. As Richard Taruskin pointed out, that event became a "major watershed in the essentialization—and pathologization—of homosexuality around the turn of the century… The homosexual was now defined not by his acts but by his character, a character that was certified to be diseased, hence necessarily alien to that of healthy, 'normal' people" [1].

From that moment on, the essentialist curse began to reclaim Tchaikovsky. Almost everything written about his work in America, and in English-language criticism at large, has been substantially affected by the issue of his personal life. The composer's biographers and music scholars more often than not have chosen to dwell on the matter of his "abnormal" sexuality, employing their own standards as regards sexual morality and health to colour their fundamental interpretation of his music [2].

For most of our century a sort of fictionalized figure bearing that name—an embodiment of romantic grief and turbid eroticism, who was supposed by many to have committed suicide as the logical outcome of his sexual lifestyle—has continued to lurk behind the inflamed imagination of the lay audience—a caricature that fails even remotely to resemble a real man with real concerns [3]. Because Tchaikovsky's archives in Russia were recently made accessible to the students of his life and music, we now know much more about him and his environment than we ever did, and it is time to change this fallacious perception of both Tchaikovsky's personality and his art by putting the record straight.

On his father's side, Tchaikovsky's origins may be traced to the Ukrainian village of Nikolayevka in the Poltava region. His great-grandfather was an 18th-century Ukrainian Cossack named Fyodor Chayka. At first Chayka's son Pyotr studied in a seminary in Kiev , but he later received medical training in Saint Petersburg. From to he served as a physician's assistant in the army.

Eventually, he found himself in the Ural region and there, in , married Anastasia Posokhova. In he was included as a member of the landless gentry in the register of nobility instituted by Catherine the Great. He resigned from his medical service and ended his life as city governor of Glazov in Vyatka Province. Pyotr Fyodorovich Tchaikovsky had nine children, one of whom was the composer's father Ilya — After graduating from the College of Mines in Saint Petersburg with a silver medal, he held several teaching and administrative posts, some of the latter in the northeast of Russia.

In Ilya became a factory manager in Votkinsk. This city was famous for its ironworks, which had been founded in , and by it could boast the first hearth furnace in all Russia. As manager of the ironworks, Ilya Tchaikovsky enjoyed a broad authority within the Yekaterinburg region—from governing local factories to repealing the decisions of local courts.

Ten years earlier, in , he had married Maria Kaiser, who died in , leaving him with a daughter, Zinayda [4]. In , by an oath of allegiance, Michael Heinrich officially became a subject of the Imperial Crown and adopted the Russian name Andrey Mikhaylovich Assier. Owing to his social connections and excellent knowledge of almost every European language, he came to occupy a distinguished position within the bureaucracy in Saint Petersburg , where he served in the Customs Department.

Andrey Assier received government honours and was twice married. From his first marriage to Yekaterina Tchaikovskaya in he had four children, including Aleksandra , the composer's mother. After the divorce of her parents and the death of her mother in , Aleksandra was placed in the so-called Patriotic Institute—a government-sponsored school for orphaned girls from noble families—where she received a fine education.

In she met Ilya Tchaikovsky and married him. Apart from his stepsister Zinayda — and elder brother Nikolay — , after Pyotr's birth in the Tchaikovskys would have a daughter, Aleksandra — , and three more sons: Ippolit — , and the fraternal twins Anatoly — and Modest — Tchaikovsky was never close to Zinayda , nor was he particularly intimate with his older brother Nikolay , who followed in the steps of their father as mining engineer, or to a younger brother Ippolit , who became a naval officer.

But he dearly loved his sister Aleksandra or Sasha and his youngest brothers, the twins Modest and Anatoly , who always enjoyed his particular affection. Later in life Anatoly achieved a prominent career in law, rising by the end of his life to the rank of privy councillor and senator, while Modest became a playwright and educator, as well as the biographer of his famous brother Pyotr.

Tchaikovsky was a very impressionable child, due in part to the highly emotional atmosphere within his family and to the characters of his parents. These factors could not but influence the specific "familial-erotic" dimension of his developing personality—a dimension later to play a prominent role in his relations both with his younger brothers and with his nephews.

Tchaikovsky's earliest musical impressions came from the family's orchestrina, with its excerpts from Mozart , Rossini , Bellini , and Donizetti. In September , he made his first documented attempt at composition—"Our Mama in Petersburg "—a song written together with Aleksandra who was then only three.

At the end of he began taking piano lessons with one Mariya Palchikova and became familiar with the mazurkas of Chopin. In Ilya Tchaikovsky resigned his post and the family moved first to Moscow , and later, in anticipation of a new appointment, to Saint Petersburg. But his father's appointment in the capital did not materialize, and in May the family had to return to the Urals where Ilya Tchaikovsky was appointed manager of an ironworks in another city, Alapayevsk , some miles to the east of Votkinsk.

This did not prevent the composer's mother from returning with him to the capital the following autumn so that he could enrol in the preparatory class of the Imperial School of Jurisprudence. During the next couple of years Tchaikovsky's parents moved back and forth between the Urals and Saint Petersburg , finally settling in the capital in By this time Pyotr had successfully passed his entrance exam for the School of Jurisprudence, where he participated in the school choir under the direction of distinguished Russian choirmaster Gavryl Lomakin.

Tchaikovsky later remembered: "My voice was a splendid soprano, and for several years in succession I took the first line in the trio, which on these occasions was sung by the three boys at the altar at the beginning and end of [the Liturgy]" [5]. Earlier that year the Tchaikovsky family chose to live together with the family of Ilya's brother Pyotr — , a retired general, in a large apartment on Vasilyevsky Island, an arrangement that lasted for three years. After Ilya's eldest daughter Zinayda married Yevgeny Olkhovsky and left the capital to live in the Urals, Aleksandra , now fifteen years old and newly-graduated from school, ended up in charge of the household and of the twins.

Tchaikovsky spent nine years — as a boarding student at the School of Jurisprudence. During this time Tchaikovsky also made his first attempts at composition, among which were an opera Hyperbola lost , a waltz for piano, and his first published work, the song Mezza notte. His stay in that institution must have enhanced Tchaikovsky's innate homosexual sensibilities.

The School of Jurisprudence, like any boarding school, was never distinguished by high morals of any sort—a fact well recognised to its contemporaries: for instance, the school could boast an obscene homosexual song composed by its students, and it also produced a number of prominent homosexuals.

Of his schoolmates, two loomed large in his life of that period: Aleksey Apukhtin — , a future poet of renown, and Sergey Kireyev —? As regards Tchaikovsky's relationship with Kireyev, Modest Tchaikovsky called it in his still unpublished "Autobiography" as one of the "strongest, most durable and purest amorous infatuations" of Tchaikovsky's life.

Outside the school he forged a close friendship with his cousin Anna Tchaikovsky later Merkling , the daughter of his uncle Pyotr. In the autumn of Tchaikovsky's father was appointed to the coveted directorship of the Technological Institute in Saint Petersburg , and his family moved to the director's large apartments.

At the end of Tchaikovsky's sister Aleksandra moved away from the family after marrying Lev Davydov , a well-to-do landowner, and the couple settled on his family estate at Kamenka , near Kiev.

A few years later Ilya Tchaikovsky married for a third time, taking as his wife Yelizaveta or Lizaveta Lipport , who had already been taking care of his household for several years.

With the death of his mother, Tchaikovsky became mother figure for his twin brothers— Anatoly and Modest. Both boys followed in his footsteps to the School of Jurisprudence, and Modest was alarmingly similar in character to his elder brother—he too became a homosexual.

Although he remained there for four years, he quickly found the job ill-suited to his talents. At the same time, he entered the capitals social and cultural milieu as a young man-about-town, spending much of his energies in the pursuit of pleasure, engaging in affairs and amorous adventures with members of his set, until the threat of homosexual scandal, according to the autobiographical account of his brother Modest , sobered him up [9].

The conflict between his desire for pleasure and sexual pleasure in particular and his creative aspirations sowed the seed of a phobia for human contact, and especially of large crowds, which became so characteristic of the mature Tchaikovsky. This conflict could only result in a profound ambivalence with respect to the erotic dimension of his personality. In the summer of , Tchaikovsky travelled abroad for the first time as secretary and interpreter for a family friend, Vasily Pisarev, and in the course of this trip he visited Berlin , Hamburg , Antwerp , Brussels , London and Paris.

In the autumn Tchaikovsky's life took an unexpected turn: he started to attend Nikolay Zaremba 's class in harmony offered by the Russian Musical Society, which had recently been founded by the Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna and Anton Rubinstein , with the purpose of promoting professional music education in Russia.

Herman Laroche , the future music critic and composer, also enrolled in the conservatory that same year, and the two soon became friends.

There Tchaikovsky studied harmony and form with Nikolay Zaremba , and orchestration and composition with Anton Rubinstein. This decision coincided with the onset of financial hardships for his father Ilya , who by this time had retired from the directorship of the Technological Institute.

In order to support himself, Tchaikovsky began giving private lessons in piano and music theory to students recommended to him by Anton Rubinstein. Tchaikovsky spent almost three years of his life at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. In addition to his studies of harmony, strict counterpoint, composition and instrumentation and despite having been excused from the compulsory piano class , he also decided to study the flute and organ.

The leading spirits of the conservatory from its beginnings were Nikolay Zaremba and Anton Rubinstein. Despite Tchaikovsky's enthusiasm for learning, he considered Zaremba just an average instructor, whose dislike of Mozart and Glinka greatly disappointed him, and whose admiration for Beethoven and Mendelssohn the future composer found unbearable.

There is no doubt that from the start the main attraction of the newly-founded conservatory for Tchaikovsky was its director Anton Rubinstein , who seems to have had the power to stimulate his student's innate abilities, so that Tchaikovsky soon threw off the last traces of dilettantism in pursuit of his goal to become a good composer.

Tchaikovsky never worked so hard as in those years: he faithfully fulfilled his technical assignments, instrumental studies, and tried to master the art of conducting. Always in the company of his new friend Herman Laroche , a fellow student who would become the first critic to champion Tchaikovsky's music, the two friends attended concerts and operas.

Together they made many important connections in Saint Petersburg 's music circles, including Aleksandr Serov , an ideological opponent of Rubinstein , but the composer of the opera Judith , which Tchaikovsky admired.

Tchaikovsky spent the summer of at Aleksey Apukhtin 's estate in Pavlodar. The next summer he stayed at the home of his society friend Prince Aleksey Golitsyn at Trostinets , near Kharkov.

Tchaikovsky also sketched out a program for a descriptive concert overture. Upon completing the score, Tchaikovsky first sent it to Herman Laroche with instructions to pass it on to Anton Rubinstein. For Tchaikovsky the idea of taking the overture to Rubinstein was still uncomfortable: his adoration for his eminent teacher was fraught with fear.

This served him well, for it was the hapless Laroche who received the full force of Rubinstein 's anger. Here he found not the expected classical exercise, but a remarkably powerful work: a mature attempt at dramatic program music after the programmatic overtures of Henri Litolff , which not only incorporated a Russian folk song, but was scored for an orchestra that included some instruments "forbidden" to mere students, such as the harp, English Horn and tuba [10].

Tchaikovsky was not discouraged by this, which was to be the first of many such incidents with Rubinstein. Theirs was always an uneasy relationship. This task did not spoil Tchaikovsky's happy vacation spent with his younger brothers Anatoly and Modest on the Davydov family estate at Kamenka , and Rubinstein proved to be quite pleased with the completed translation, which was published by Jurgenson in as Handbook for Instrumentation. While at Kamenka , Tchaikovsky paid close attention to Ukrainian folk songs, gathering material for use in his future compositions.

Soon after his return to Saint Petersburg he was extremely pleased to learn that his Characteristic Dances for orchestra, written earlier that year, had been conducted in August by Johann Strauss the younger at a concert in Pavlovsk Park. This was the first public performance of any of Tchaikovsky's works [11]. Two weeks earlier his String Quartet in B-flat major was played by a quartet of his fellow students, including the violist Vasily Bessel.

This was not Tchaikovsky's choice, but Anton Rubinstein 's. According to Tchaikovsky's first biographer, his brother Modest , the young composer was too afraid to attend the public examination, much to Rubinstein 's annoyance.

But the examination commission's records, preserved in the archives of the conservatory, insist that "all students were present" [12]. Still, Rubinstein threatened to withhold Tchaikovsky's diploma and refused to countenance public performance of the cantata unless it were revised.

A number of musical celebrities who were present at the concert, among them Serov and Cui , also disliked it.

However, the final verdict on Tchaikovsky was very favourable and two days later he was graduated from the Conservatory.

His grades were reported as: theory and instrumentation—excellent; organ—good; piano—very good; conducting—satisfactory. To Tchaikovsky's surprise, he also received the silver medal which since the gold medal was not awarded at that time happened to be the highest award offered to students.

In September , Anton Rubinstein 's brother Nikolay offered Tchaikovsky the post of teacher later professor of harmony in the classes sponsored by the Moscow branch of the Russian Musical Society, which would shortly become the Moscow Conservatory under Nikolay Rubinstein 's directorship. Tchaikovsky found teaching rather a strain, but Nikolay Rubinstein 's constant enthusiasm and encouragement were to have the most palliative effect on him.

He began to work on his First Symphony , but found this a far from simple matter: he was unable to sleep and suffered from terrible headaches and depression.

At the end of November, his Symphony No. Nikolay Rubinstein had offered to give the work its first performance, but Tchaikovsky refused because he wanted first to hear the opinions of Zaremba and Anton Rubinstein from Saint Petersburg.

Apparently they did not like the symphony, and it was only after revisions had been made and two movements were tried out in separate performances, that the complete symphony was heard for the first time in February with Nikolay Rubinstein conducting.

In March Tchaikovsky started to work on an opera The Voyevoda to a libretto by the well-known Russian playwright Aleksandr Ostrovsky. Tchaikovsky lost the libretto and, despite Ostrovsky 's efforts to reconstruct it, their collaboration ended in failure, and Tchaikovsky himself completed the libretto on Ostrovsky 's plot [13]. Tchaikovsky spent the summer of in Finland and Estonia, where he composed a set of piano pieces Souvenir de Hapsal , Op. After returning to Moscow , he continued to work on The Voyevoda , and in February he was invited to conduct some extracts from it at a charity concert.

Music from The Voyevoda was well received, even by the "Mighty Handful," who were making their presence known in Russian composition at that time.

Later that spring Tchaikovsky went to Saint Petersburg , where he met members of the "Mighty Handful" personally, and also visited the composer Aleksandr Dargomyzhsky. In January he became friendly with the self-appointed leader of the group, Mily Balakirev , whom he sent a score of his new tone-poem Fatum , which did not meet with Balakirev 's approval. In the spring of Tchaikovsky made the acquaintance of the actor and baritone Konstantin de Lazari.

A companionable socialite, Lazari knew everyone in Moscow theatrical circles, and introduced his new friend to the actors and their milieu. It was Lazari who brought Tchaikovsky to the club, "the Artistic Circle," where Tchaikovsky enjoyed spending time, and it was he who brought Tchaikovsky to the home of Vladimir Begichev , the director of repertory for the Moscow theatres.

Here the young composer was introduced to Begichev 's wife Mariya, and her two sons from her first marriage— Konstantin and Vladimir Shilovsky. According to Modest Tchaikovsky , "the chief interest for our composer in his acquaintance with the Begichevs lay in the personality of the younger of the Shilovsky brothers, Vladimir. He was then a fourteen-year-old boy, weak and sickly; as a result he had a neglected education, but was endowed, as it seemed then, with a phenomenal capacity for music.

In addition, his appearance was unusually lovely, his manners most originally charming and his mind, despite his poor education, sharp and observant" [14]. Vladimir Shilovsky apparently studied music for some time at the Moscow Conservatory and Tchaikovsky came to be his tutor in music theory after that. He was bound to his student not only by Shilovsky 's talent, but also in great measure "by that love verging on adoration which he instilled in the boy" [15].

Though Tchaikovsky's profound attachment to Shilovsky cannot be doubted, the emotional initiative almost always issued from the opposite direction, namely from pupil to teacher. Initially Tchaikovsky appears to have been delighted with his new young friend, but during the later years of their acquaintance their relations deteriorated, becoming stormy, unpleasant and uncomfortable, full of unpleasant scenes and ruptures as a consequence of Shilovsky 's intractable character.

During the —67 season Vladimir Shilovsky 's compositions were already being performed in public concerts and productions, while later he would be commissioned by Tchaikovsky to write an entr'acte to the second act of the latter's opera The Oprichnik. Shilovsky had not only invited Tchaikovsky to join them but also paid all his travel expenses.

It seems that Tchaikovsky enjoyed life in Vladimir Shilovsky 's circle because of their mutual homosexuality. Recent archival studies have revealed the conventional perception of Tchaikovsky as a person tormented by his difference to be unfounded [16]. This perception was based on two largely unsupported assumptions. First, that 19th-century Russia was a society characterized by sexual repression; and second, that as a consequence Tchaikovsky developed a particular fear of exposure and self-hatred.

In fact, the Russia of that period happens to have been a society considerably more permissive than, say, Victorian England. Russia had no legal ban on homosexuality until Peter the Great in the early 18th century, and even then the ban only extended to the army.

Homosexuality was criminalized in by Nicholas I, but the law was virtually never enforced. When matters concerned members of the upper classes, homosexual incidents were covered up by the authorities, the guilty parties, at worst, being transferred from one official position to another.

Among Tchaikovsky's contemporaries, one may identify several homosexual members of the Imperial family, the most prominent of them being Grand Duke Sergey Aleksandrovich, governor of Moscow. One of the most powerful statesmen under the Emperors Alexander III and Nicholas II, Prince Vladimir Meshchersky who was, incidentally, Tchaikovsky's schoolmate and friend was repeatedly rescued by the two Emperors from disgrace despite his flagrant homosexual activities. One may list many other individuals of similar status in Russian society [17].

The tradition of serfdom, even after the latter was abolished in , continued to exert a powerful effect on social behaviour of both upper and lower classes. According to established patterns of conduct, socially inferior people were expected to submit to the wishes of the socially superior in every respect, including the gratification of sexual desire.

Russian peasants were traditionally tolerant of all varieties of sexual preferences among their masters and were often prepared to satisfy them on demand. This naturally resulted in boundless "sexploitation" which, at the same time, explains the sexual affairs with servants and other lower class persons so characteristic of Tchaikovsky and his milieu—a kind of hierarchical sex [18]. As far as Tchaikovsky's own attitude to his sexual predicament is concerned, he could not of course fully neglect societal convention and, generally speaking, was rather conservative by temperament.

In addition, in his youth he was repeatedly pressured to marry, and at some point he conceived the idea that he could change his sexual orientation and successfully live with a woman in order to ease his own life and mollify his relatives. Even at that stage, however, he considered his homosexual tendencies natural and in no way his own fault. The autumn of was marked for Tchaikovsky with an altogether new amorous development. Ten years later she arrived in Moscow with a mediocre Italian opera company under the direction of Merelli.

It seems that the composer fell in love not so much with her as with her voice and her performance, the more so as she was neither very young, being five years Tchaikovsky's senior, nor exceptionally beautiful, according to some contemporary memoirs.

He met her for the first time very briefly in the spring of but her name does not begin to appear in his letters until her autumn performances in Moscow. He wrote some music for her, and even began to discuss marriage plans with his father. Although he was upset by the news, Tchaikovsky recovered from the disappointment quite quickly, as could be expected.

Despite initial success, interest in the opera soon evaporated, and it was withdrawn from the repertoire after only five performances.

Two weeks after the premiere Nikolay Rubinstein conducted the first performance of the symphonic poem Fatum. The public reaction was favourable, but again, as in case of The Voyevoda , this success was short-lived. After Balakirev 's harsh criticism of its Saint Petersburg performance, Tchaikovsky refused to allow the work to be published and, a few years later, destroyed the score. It was reconstructed after his death on the basis of some discovered orchestral parts.

The same fate befell his opera The Voyevoda , from which Tchaikovsky decided to retain only the overture, one chorus, an entr'acte and the dances. Two years later the work was formally rejected and, like its predecessor, consigned to the flames by the composer himself. He saved only four pieces from it which were used later in the Symphony No.

In the autumn of Tchaikovsky met in Moscow with Balakirev , who encouraged the composer to begin a new tone-poem based on Shakespeare 's tragedy Romeo and Juliet. The Russian obsession with love and death, themes that permeate the story of the young lovers from Verona, almost immediately fired Tchaikovsky's imagination.

Tchaikovsky retained a very high opinion of Romeo and Juliet until the end of his life. It is ironic that the tragic situation so well presented by Tchaikovsky in his tone-poem had real-life implications. Fourteen years after the young man's death, Tchaikovsky wrote in his diary: "It seems to me that I have never loved anyone so strongly as him Tchaikovsky's relationships with young men were starting to cause disconcerting talk and gossip in Moscow musical circles, but despite this he continued to pursue his love affairs.

He rushed off to join Vladimir Shilovsky , after the latter fell seriously ill in Paris in , and the two travelled together for some time following Shilovsky 's recuperation.

In the autumn of , Tchaikovsky finally rented a small apartment of his own, furnished with a sofa, a few chairs and two pictures one a portrait of Anton Rubinstein , the other of Louis XVII, the dauphin who died in the aftermath of the French Revolution and whom Tchaikovsky had adored from childhood.

He also took on a manservant, Mikhail Sofronov soon to be supplanted by the latter's younger brother Aleksey , a peasant boy from the Klin region near Moscow. In May he finished his third opera, The Oprichnik adapted from a tragedy by the historical novelist Ivan Lazhechnikov and set during the reign of Ivan the Terrible , and, while staying at Kamenka during the summer, he began work on his Symphony No. Encouraged, Tchaikovsky proceeded to his next project, incidental music for Ostrovsky 's play The Snow Maiden.

The Tempest was a great success at its first performance in Moscow in early December. Despite some initial success, the opera did not convince the composer's critics. Tchaikovsky found himself agreeing with the critics: " The Oprichnik torments me", he confided to his cousin Anna Merkling [22]. The failure of the opera spoiled his journey to Italy, where he went right after the premiere in his capacity as music critic. He returned to Russia seized by an intense desire to prove to himself and others that he was capable of better things than The Oprichnik.

A few years earlier, the music patron Grand Duchess Yelena Pavlovna had commissioned a libretto for an opera based on Gogol's tale from the poet Yakov Polonsky. It had originally been intended for Aleksandr Serov , but the latter had died in without commencing the project.

The Grand Duchess decided to offer a prize in Serov 's memory for the best setting of the libretto. Upon her own death in responsibility for the competition passed to the Russian Musical Society. Although Tchaikovsky eventually won first prize, the setting did not impress the public and the opera Vakula the Smith was abandoned.

Nine years later, the composer radically revised it under the new title Cherevichki or "The Slippers". In the same story became the subject for Rimsky-Korsakov 's opera Christmas Eve.

Three years later he described Rubinstein 's reaction on that occasion in a letter to Nadezhda von Meck : "I patiently played the concerto to the end: it was greeted with silence. According to him my concerto was no good at all, impossible to play, with many awkward passages The composition was vulgar, and I had stolen bits from here, there, and everywhere I was not only astonished but offended by this scene".

Stunned, the composer left the room without a word. Presently, Rubinstein came to Tchaikovsky and seeing how upset he was, tried to soften the blow by saying that if Tchaikovsky agreed to revise the piece, he would introduce it at one of his concerts. The concerto was indeed published exactly as it stood, but Tchaikovsky did eventually make alterations, particularly to the piano part.

Petersburg on November 6, He was the second eldest of his parents' six surviving offspring. Tchaikovsky's father, Ilya, worked as a mine inspector and metal works manager.

When he was just five years old, Tchaikovsky began taking piano lessons. Although he displayed an early passion for music, his parents hoped that he would grow up to work in the civil service. At the age of 10, Tchaikovsky began attending the Imperial School of Jurisprudence, a boarding school in St. His mother, Alexandra, died of cholera in , when he was 14 years old. In , Tchaikovsky honored his parents' wishes by taking up a bureau clerk post with the Ministry of Justice — a post he would hold for four years, during which time he became increasingly fascinated with music.

When he was 21, Tchaikovsky decided to take music lessons at the Russian Musical Society. A few months later, he enrolled at the newly founded St. Petersburg Conservatory, becoming one of the school's first composition students.

In addition to learning while at the conservatory, Tchaikovsky gave private lessons to other students. In , he moved to Moscow, where he became a professor of harmony at the Moscow Conservatory.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky's work was first publicly performed in , with Johann Strauss the Younger conducting Tchaikovsky's Characteristic Dances at a Pavlovsk concert. In , Tchaikovsky's First Symphony was well-received when it was publicly performed in Moscow.

The following year, his first opera, The Voyevoda, made its way to the stage — with little fanfare. After scrapping The Voyevoda , Tchaikovsky repurposed some of its material to compose his next opera, Oprichnik , which achieved some acclaim when it was performed at the Maryinsky in St. Petersburg in He did not inform Modest or Sasha until the day before his wedding or Vladimir Shilovsky until the day of the wedding.

He invited only Anatoly to the ceremony. Almost as soon as the wedding ended, Tchaikovsky felt he had made a mistake and soon afterwards found that he and Antonina were incompatible psychologically and sexually. If Tchaikovsky attempted to explain his sexual mores to his wife, she did not understand.

As time passed, Tchaikovsky may have realized that marriage itself, not simply Antonina, may have been wrong for him. Money matters and an inability to compose compounded the situation and drove Tchaikovsky to deeper levels of despair.

The couple lived together for only two and a half months before the mounting emotional crisis forced him to leave. He traveled to Clarens, Switzerland for rest and recovery. He and Antonina remained legally married but never lived together again nor had any children, though Antonina later gave birth to three children by another man. He never blamed Antonina for the failure of their marriage and he apparently never again considered matrimony or considered himself capable of loving women in the same manner as other men.

Any news of her, regardless of how minor or innocent, would cause Tchaikovsky loss of sleep and appetite, an inability to work, and for him to fixate on imminent death. She was eventually joined by timber merchant Mitrofan Belyayev, railway magnate Savva Mamontov and textile manufacturer Pavel Tretyakov. Von Meck differed from her fellow philanthropists in two ways.

First, instead of promoting nationalist artists, she helped Tchaikovsky, who was seen as a composer of the Western-oriented aristocracy. Second, while Belyayev, Mamontov and Tretyakov made a public display of their largess, von Meck conducted her support of Tchaikovsky as a largely private matter. In , Kotek suggested commissioning some pieces for violin and piano from Tchaikovsky.

Von Meck, who had liked what she had heard of his music, agreed. Von Meck and Tchaikovsky exchanged well over 1, letters, making theirs perhaps the most closely documented relationship between patron and artist. In these letters Tchaikovsky was more open about his creative processes than he was to any other person. Von Meck eventually paid Tchaikovsky an annual subsidy of 6, rubles, which enabled him to concentrate on composition. With this patronage came a relationship that, while remaining epistolary, grew extremely intimate.

She suddenly ceased her financial subsidy in as a result of her own financial difficulties. While Tchaikovsky was not in as urgent a need of her money as he had been, her friendship and encouragement had remained an integral part of his emotional life.

He remained bewildered and resentful about her absence for the remaining three years of his life, and she was just as distressed about his apparent dropping of her friendship, which she was led to believe was because he had never cared for her personally and he had no further use for her once her subsidy had stopped. This was completely untrue.

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 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. His troubles with Antonina continued. She agreed to divorce him, then refused. While he was on an extended visit to Moscow, she moved into an apartment directly above where he was staying. This could be 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 require deep personal expression.

In , the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour neared completion in Moscow; the 25th anniversary of the coronation of Alexander II in was imminent; and the 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 , finishing it within six weeks.

On 23 March , Nikolai Rubinstein died in Paris. Tchaikovsky, holidaying in Rome, went immediately to attend the funeral. Petersburg in November Now 44 years old, in Tchaikovsky began to shed his unsociability and restlessness. Vladimir fourth class , which carried with it hereditary nobility and won Tchaikovsky a personal audience with the Tsar. I saw the whole audience was moved, and grateful to me. Thanks to these it is worth living and laboring.

Its only other production had been by students from the Conservatory. 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, 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 — season. 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 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.

In 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. In November , Tchaikovsky arrived at 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 Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, with 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 as the Belyayev circle, named after a merchant and amateur musician who became an influential music patron and publisher. Nine days later, Tchaikovsky died there, aged We do not know how Tchaikovsky died. We may never find out …..

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. Tchaikovsky displayed an unusually wide stylistic and emotional range, from salon works of innocuous charm to symphonies of tremendous depth, power and grandeur. 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. American music critic and journalist Harold C. Sometimes he used Western-style melodies, sometimes original melodies written in the style of Russian folk song; sometimes he used actual folk songs. The first was due to his ethnic heritage. Like the majority of 19th-century Russian composers, Tchaikovsky possessed a penchant for melody. However, unlike Western themes, the ones that Russian composers wrote tended to be even more self-contained than those in Russian folk songs, even when they were written with broad, multi-phrase structures as Tchaikovsky tended to do.

This, Brown says, was typical of Russian creativity, which functioned with a mindset of stasis and repetition rather than the one of progress and ongoing development that dominated Western creative thought. On a technical level, it made modulating to a new key to introduce a contrasting second theme—literally a foreign concept that did not exist in Russian music—exceedingly difficult.

The second way melody worked against Tchaikovsky was one he shared with the majority of classical composers of his era. Romantic-age developments in widening expressive, timbral and harmonic ranges in their music led to a new and much more significant place for melody than it had occupied with Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven. However, the melodies these composers wrote to accommodate these qualities were not the regular, symmetrical melodic shapes that worked well with sonata form.

All a composer like Tchaikovsky could do with them, Taneyev says, even when modifying them to generate tension, maintain interest and generally satisfy listeners, was essentially repeat them. Harmony was a potential trap for Tchaikovsky, according to Brown. Russian creativity revolved around inertia, he explains, with plays, novels and operas that were essentially a sequence of self-enclosed tableaux, while Western harmony was a study in motion, propelling the music and, on a larger scale, giving it shape.

Modulation, the shifting from one key to another, was a driving principle in both harmony and sonata form, the primary Western large-scale musical structure since the middle of the 18th century. Modulation maintained harmonic interest over an extended time-scale, provided a clear contrast between musical themes and showed how those themes were related to each other.

How he put them into practice without sacrificing his individuality, Brown states, was a potentially great challenge. That flair, added to his Conservatory studies, may have aided Tchaikovsky in employing a varied range of harmony in his music, 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, a practice more typically used by The Five. Tchaikovsky often follows European practice of harmonic progression, according to Brown, such as using the circle of fifths to undergird the love theme of Romeo and Juliet.

Rhythmically, Tchaikovsky sometimes experiments with unusual meters. More often, he uses a firm, regular meter, a practice that serves him well in dance music. At times, his rhythms become pronounced enough to become the main expressive agent of the music. This interaction generally does not take place in Russian music.

For more on this, please see Repetition below. Tchaikovsky struggled with sonata form. Its principle of organic growth through the interplay of musical themes was alien to Russian practice, which placed themes into a series of self-contained sections with no interaction or clear transition from one section to the next. Without organic growth, building a large-scale, evolving musical structure would be daunting, if not impossible. Nor did sonata form take into account the heightened emotional statements that many Romantic-era composers were inclined to make since it was designed to operate on a logical, intellectual level, not an emotive one.

Within this outline, the focus now centered on periodic alternation and juxtaposition. In sonata form, he writes, the first subject enters in the tonic and the second subject follows in a contrasting but related key harmonically. Tension occurs when the music and the listener with it is pulled away from the tonic. In the first movement of the Fourth Symphony, Tchaikovsky introduces the second theme in A-flat minor.

Since the symphony is written in the key of F minor, the second theme should go either to the relative major A-flat major or the dominant C minor. By the time Tchaikovsky establishes the relative major, this theme has finished playing.

This process, according to Brown and Keller, builds momentum and adds intense drama. His use of sequences within melodies repeating a tune at a higher or lower pitch in the same voice could go on for extreme length.

The problem with repetition is that, over a period of time, the melody being repeated remains static, even when there is a surface level of rhythmic activity added to it.

Beneath that surface, nothing really moves or goes anywhere; the effect of that rhythm is decorative, not organic, because no true progress has taken place. Sonata form, on the other hand, operates by progression. Two contrasting themes interact like people in a conversation or an argument. They discuss an issue, agree, disagree, but the conversation goes somewhere; it grows and builds toward some conclusion.

If a conversation, and by extension a musical work in sonata form, becomes static, everything stalls. Tchaikovsky kept the musical conversation flowing while essentially repeating himself by integrating melody, tonality, rhythm and sound color as an indivisible whole, rather than as separate elements, and manipulating different parts of it as needed. Musicologist Martin Cooper calls this practice a subtle form of unifying a piece of music and adds that Tchaikovsky brought it to a high point of refinement.

For more on this practice, see the next section. Tchaikovsky seldom used the European form of theme and variations in his compositions. The second movement of his Piano Trio and the finale of his Third Orchestral Suite are two exceptions. However, Brown states that the principle of variation was very much a part of Russian musical thought and creativity.

Folk songs were extended by a continual series of variations which played behind the melody as it was repeated. This process did not catalyze the music into saying something new; it did not combine or develop these themes toward a final point of argument as in European compositions.

What it did do was consolidate the experience of hearing the music and keep listener interest from flagging. Tchaikovsky was highly familiar with Kamarinskaya. In the First Piano Concerto, Brown explains, this occurs in the development section of the opening movement, immediately before and after the reentry of the soloist, when Tchaikovsky subtly changes the backgrounds for both principal themes but not the themes themselves.

Like other late Romantic composers, Tchaikovsky relied heavily on orchestration for musical effects. Like Glinka, Tchaikovsky tended toward bright primary colors and sharply delineated contrasts of texture.

However, beginning with the Third Symphony, Tchaikovsky experimented with an increased range of timbres. He continued further along this path with the Fourth Symphony and the orchestral suites, especially the Second. The most familiar example of his extreme range of sound is in The Nutcracker. Rimsky-Korsakov, for instance, regularly referred his students at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory to it as a model of how to orchestrate.