The Incomparable Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Vyatka region. His father was a civil servant, as was his father’s father. Indeed, Tchaikovsky himself was trained to become, and worked for a time as a clerk in the Ministry of Justice. But, of course, music was his true passion.

While not a child prodigy, Tchaikovsky’s love of music began early. In a telling biographical detail, at six the future composer ran to his room after the family was treated to a piano recital by a visiting musician. His nanny, Fanny, later looked in on him and found him hysterical. “Oh, the music, the music,” he cried. “Save me from it, Fanny, save me! It’s here ... in here,” – striking his forehead – “and it won’t leave me in peace.”

The second eldest in a family of five brothers and one sister, Tchaikovsky had very close relationships with most of his immediate family, but especially with his two younger brothers—Modest and Anatoly—who were twins. It would be Modest who would preserve much of the composer’s legacy for posterity, particularly his home and his papers (which, during his lifetime, he censored to prevent personal aspects of Tchaikovsky’s life—namely his homosexuality—from becoming public).

In his early twenties, Pyotr Ilyich courageously abandoned his father’s dream for his life and turned to a life of music—a profession without standing in Russia at the time, but one which Anton and Nicholas Rubinstein “created” through their founding of the Russian Music Society. Indeed, Tchaikovsky was one of the charter students of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, which Rubinstein founded. At 26, he became one of the first professors at their Moscow Conservatory. As is often noted, Tchaikovsky was Russia’s first professional composer—all who had gone before made their living off other professions.

It was not easy blazing this trail. (The composer’s uncle reportedly reproached him later: “Oh Petya, Petya, why did you have to swap jurisprudence for the flute?!”) Pyotr Ilyich had to make ends meet through teaching and writing music critiques and textbooks. It did not help that he was a notorious spendthrift and excessively generous with his money. In fact, it was not until the age of 31 that Tchaikovsky was able to afford living in his own apartment.

As a composer, Tchaikovsky was distinguished by the versatility of his talent—the ability to compose everything from grandiose operas and sweeping symphonies to chamber music and liturgical music. He was an artist deeply affected by the public reaction to his work, and greatly jealous of his creations. It would be enough for a critic to pan his work for Tchaikovsky to hold a grudge for life against this critic, though this was not always publicly expressed.

One of the greatest obstacles Tchaikovsky overcame as a composer was the contempt in which the “Moguchaya Kuchka” [Powerful Bunch] of St. Petersburg “nationalist” composers held him. This group, which included Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov and the less accomplished composers Cui, Balakirev and Borodin, held that true Russian music was only that based on folk song. Their hold over critical opinion in the capital notwithstanding, Tchaikovsky went on to far eclipse them all with his superior talent and works that had more universal appeal, to say nothing of artistic merit.

By any measure, Tchaikovsky’s body of work is impressive: 6 symphonies, over 20 major orchestral works, 10 concertos and pieces for solo instruments and orchestra, 9 operas, 3 ballets and over a dozen pieces of chamber music, to say nothing of many other songs and pieces composed for special occasions. And all of this in barely 30 years, during which he did a great deal of traveling, teaching and writing.

Unlike most artists, Tchaikovsky was able to enjoy some of his fame while still alive, traveling the world in his later years to conduct his works (including at the opening of Carnegie Hall in 1891, where he took New York by storm). Yet his work has risen and fallen in critical favor since his death in 1893. As Professor Richard Taruskin demonstrates in the accompanying essay, there have been many interconnected reasons for this, most of them telling us more about the interpreter than the work. Yet, over the past century, Tchaikovsky has retained incredible popular appeal. Many Americans would be surprised to learn that the definitive musical work for the 4th of July—The 1812 Overture—was written by a Russian, or that it was this same Russian who gave us one of our most cherished Christmas traditions: The Nutcracker ballet.

Yet, for some, this incredible outpouring of work, the international durability and popularity of which is only perhaps matched by Beethoven and Mozart, must be devalued: they insist that Tchaikovsky is too emotional, too Russian, too populist. In recent years there has even been heightened interest in the composer’s homosexuality and his mysterious death (and worst of all, on unsubstantiated theories that the two are somehow linked). It is just more of the same, i.e.: “if Tchaikovsky had not been so tormented by his sexual preferences, so insecure, the raw emotion and power of his works would not have been so great.” One wishes these critics could cease with their endless analysis and analysis of analyses and simply sit back and enjoy the music.

Perhaps Mikhail Pletnev, founder of the Russian National Orchestra (and a piano virtuoso who won the Sixth Tchaikovsky Competition in 1978) put it best. In his introduction to the RNO’s masterful recording of Tchaikovsky’s six symphonies he wrote: “It is music that has a truly universal appeal; music which is above all addressed to individuals at all times, a music that will always find listeners.”

Our chorus of articles devoted to the 160th birthday of Tchaikovsky includes a visit to the town he called home in the last years of his life, an interview with the present director of Tchaikovsky’s house-museum, and a thought piece on the great composer by one of America’s most respected music scholars. Hopefully, these will introduce you to some little known sides of this great artist, and spur you to study him more. For that, we have included a sidebar “For Further Study.”

— The Editors