We celebrate the 180th anniversary of the great Russian composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky
“Oh, Petya, Petya, what a scandal! You are giving up the world of law for some reed pipe!”, told Tchaikovsky’s uncle in despair when the future genius left his position at the Ministry of Justice to focus solely on music. The stern relative could hardly imagine what benefit such change of trade would bring to the entire humanity for centuries ahead.
It may appear that we know everything about the life and work of Pyotr Tchaikovsky, one of the most famous Russian composers. Yet his figure remains covered in a mystery up to this day.
Composer
Tchaikovsky’s life lasted only 53 years, and he was actively writing music for a little more than three decades. However, the result of this activity is quite impressive: three ballets, seven symphonies, ten operas, more than a hundred romantic songs, as well as piano cycles and pieces, symphonic concertos, choral works and a lot more. Few other composers left such abundant creative heritage to their descendants.
Tchaikovsky began to write music while still studying at the Conservatory in Saint Petersburg which he entered in 1861. Among his first works were The Storm overture based on eponymous play by Alexander Ostrovsky, and Characteristic Dances for symphony orchestra. Through these works, the 25-year-old Tchaikovsky became known as a composer for the first time: the public performance of Characteristic Dances took place on August 30, 1865 in Pavlovsk. The orchestra was conducted by another great composer, the Austrian “king of waltz” Johann Strauss. Later, Characteristic Dances became part of The Voyevoda opera under the name of Dances of the Hay Maidens and premiered in January 1869 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. “This opera is a warrant of Tchaikovsky’s bright future… The performance was a success, Tchaikovsky was called on stage several times,” wrote Prince Vladimir Odoyevsky, the founder of Russian musicology, in his diary at that time.
In that same year of 1869, Tchaikovsky wrote the overture Romeo and Juliet. His next work based on Shakespeare’s play was the symphonic fantasy The Tempest which appeared in 1873. At that time, Tchaikovsky was one of the youngest professors of the Moscow Conservatory. He taught students, travelled around Europe, worked as a critic and, of course, continued to compose music. The 1870s were a very fruitful decade for the composer. In 1872, he finished Symphony No. 2, also nicknamed the “Little Russian” symphony, and Symphony No. 3 was completed the next year. In October 1875, Piano Concerto No. 1 for piano and orchestra was performed for the first time. The premiere was held in Boston, where the great German pianist Hans von Bülow played the main part to the accompaniment of an orchestra under the baton of Benjamin Lang. In 1876, Tchaikovsky wrote the iconic ballet Swan Lake which premiered at the Bolshoi Theatre in 1877.
An accidental conversation with the opera diva of that time, Yelizaveta Lavrovskaya, led to the creation of one of Tchaikovsky’s major masterpieces. The composer himself wrote about it to his brother: “Lizaveta Andreyevna kept silent and smiled good-heartedly, and then she suddenly said: “And what if you took on Eugene Onegin?” This thought seemed strange to me at first, and I did not answer anything. Then, when I was having lunch alone in the tavern, I remembered Onegin, reflected on it, and then I began to consider Lavrovskaya’s thought as possible, then got carried away and by the time the lunch ended, I made my decision. I immediately ran to find Pushkin’s work. I barely managed to find it, went home, re-read it with delight and spent a completely sleepless night which resulted in the script of a charming opera with Pushkin’s text”. The premiere of opera Eugene Onegin was held in Moscow in 1879.
By the 1880s, Tchaikovsky had already been globally recognized as an outstanding composer. He toured a lot and continued to compose music. Three symphonies, the Slavonic March, concertos and multiple piano pieces were all created in the 1880s. Finally, in 1889 he composed the ballet The Sleeping Beauty based on a fairy tale by Charles Perrault, in 1890 created the opera The Queen of Spades based on a story by Alexander Pushkin, and in 1892 appeared the great ballet The Nutcracker adapted from E.T.A. Hoffmann’s story.
Human
Tchaikovsky, the great Russian composer, and Tchaikovsky, the citizen of the world, are two personalities that coexisted within one person. He had more than just Russian blood in his veins. The composer’s maternal grandfather was a French sculptor Michelle-Victor Acier who lived in Germany and worked as a “model maker” at the Royal Porcelain Factory in Meissen. Tchaikovsky’s great-grandmother was Maria Christina Eleonora Wittig, daughter of an Austrian officer. The composer owes his love of music to his French governess Fanny Dürbach. She was the one who encouraged the hobbies of young Pyotr. His first teacher in Saint Petersburg was a Russified German pianist Rudolph Kündinger, who, however, could not find much talent in his student. “If I could have foreseen what would become of that law student, I would have kept a diary of our lessons,” he wrote later. But the proud young man definitely felt the teacher’s disbelief in his success.
Italy, America, Switzerland — it is difficult to list all countries that Tchaikovsky visited, countries where the audience applauded his genius. At the same time, Russia was his main affection throughout his life. “Among these majestically beautiful views and impressions of a tourist, I rush to Russia with all my soul, and my heart clenches when I imagine its plains, its meadows and groves …” — writes Tchaikovsky in his diary from Switzerland in 1873. “What happiness it is to be home! What a bliss to know that no one will come, no once will interfere with my studies or reading or walks! I have finally understood that my dream to settle for the rest of my life in a Russian village is not a passing whim but the real need of my nature,” — and this is a quote from a letter to Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky’s friend and patroness, written in 1885 at Maidanovo estate near Klin.
Tchaikovsky was also representative of romanticism in music and a deeply tragic figure. After contracting measles as a child, he suffered complications in the form of nervous seizures throughout his life. In his teenage years, the future composer became ill with scarlet fever, and although he himself recovered, he infected a five-year-old son of the friends of his family. The child died, and Tchaikovsky blamed himself for this tragedy his whole life. In 1854, the composer’s mother Alexandra died of cholera. It was a tremendous blow for 14-year-old Pyotr. It was as if he could apprehend that the same terrible disease would eventually take his own life. From the moment his mother passed away, the composer lived with a feeling that his days are numbered.
Brand
Tchaikovsky has long become synonymous with Russia. The composer’s fame keeps growing wider and wider. Tchaikovsky ranks 5th in the list of the most performed composers in the world, trailing only to Mozart, Beethoven, Bach and Brahms. He even has a crater on the planet Mercury named after him. Every young musician in the world dreams of participation in the International Tchaikovsky Competition that has been held in Moscow since 1958. A bust sculpture of Tchaikovsky can be found as far as the Providencia commune in Chile, while memorial plaques dedicated to him are located in Venice and Florence. Opera and ballets written by Tchaikovsky are the highlights in the repertoires of most musical theatres around the world. “Let The Sugar Plum Fairy’s Month Begin!” — this is how the New York Times once announced the beginning of December. The Nutcracker staged by George Balanchine has been performed by the New York City Ballet since the 1930s, and tickets are still sold out a year in advance. San Francisco Ballet, Vienna Opera, La Scala in Milan, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow — The Nutcracker has always been and still remains the most popular ballet in all those iconic venues.
“From century to century, from generation to generation goes our love for Tchaikovsky, for his beautiful music. This is the secret of its immortality”.
These words of Dmitry Shostakovich, another musical genius, are true not only for the Russians, but for people from other countries as well.
Evgeniya Gurevich