Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky



Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky by Nikolay Kuznetsov, 1893
 Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky^[1] (, ^[2] ) ( – ) was a Russian composer of the Romantic era. While not part of the nationalistic music group known as "The Five", Tchaikovsky wrote music which, in the opinion of Harold C. Schonberg, was distinctly Russian: plangent, introspective, with modally-inflected melody and harmony.^[3]

Despite the compositional efforts of The Five, Tchaikovsky dominates 19th century Russian music as its greatest talent. While his formal conservatory training instilled in him Western-oriented attitudes and techniques, his essential nature, as he always insisted, remained Russian. This was true both in his use of actual folk song and his deep absorption in Russian life and ways of thought. His natural gifts, especially for melody (what he called the "lyrical idea"), give his music a permanent appeal. However, it was his hard-won though secure and professional technique, plus his ability to use it for the expression of his emotional life, which allowed him to realize his potential more fully than any of his major Russian contemporaries.^[4]

Tchaikovsky's innate Russianness and his love for his country's folk music ensured that he could never become a mere imitator of Western practices and styles, despite the heavy conditioning of his conservatory training. However, this training allowed him to show a remarkable range and breadth of technique. This breadth was fostered by the diverse expressive purposes he sought in his compositions, whether it was to fashion a poised "Classical" form to simulate the elegance of the 18th century Rococo, to plunge into the bold world of the Russian nationalists, or to forge a musical language to serve as a vehicle for his own overwrought emotions.^[5]

Since his death Tchaikovsky's music has gained great popularity. Nevertheless, its emotional directness, founded primarily on its composer's ability to fashion themes of remarkable eloquence and emotive power supported by matching harmony and rich orchestral resource, has often been interpreted as a sign of essential shallowness. Likewise, the way in which Tchaikovsky's realm of strong emotion has been freely plundered by composers of lower intent has proved a detriment to his reputation. However, popular adulation and critical prejudice aside, Tchaikovsky can be seen as a composer of wide range both in genre and type of expression who toiled unceasingly over creative problems and whose professional competence remained the highest.^[6]

Life

The Tchaikovsky family in 1848. Left to right: Pyotr, Alexandra Andreevna (mother), Alexandra (sister), Ippolit, Ilya Petrovich (father)

Childhood

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, a small town in present-day Udmurtia (at the time the Vyatka Guberniya of Imperial Russia). His father, Ilya Petrovich, was the son of a government mining engineer, of Ukrainian descent. His mother, Alexandra, was a Russian woman of partial French ancestry and the second of Ilya's three wives. Pyotr was the older brother (by some ten years) of the dramatist, librettist, and translator Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

In 1843, Tchaikovsky acquired a French governess, Fanny Dürbach. Her love and affection for her charge is said to have provided a counter to Alexandra, who is described by one biographer as a cold, unhappy, distant parent not given to displays of physical affection.^[7] However other writers claim that Alexandra doted on her son.^[8]

Tchaikovsky began piano lessons at age four with a local woman. Musically precocious, he could read music as well as his teacher within three years. However, his parents' passion for his musical talent soon cooled. Feeling inferior due to their humble origins, the family sent Tchaikovsky in 1850 to a school for the "lesser nobility" or gentry called the School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg to secure him a career as a civil servant. The minimum age for acceptance was 12. For Tchaikovsky, this meant two years boarding at the School of Jurisprudence's preparatory school, from his family.

Tchaikovsky as a bureaucrat.

Early manhood

A second blow came on June 25, 1854 with Alexandra's death from cholera. Tchaikovsky felt unable to inform his former governness Fanny Dürbach of this until two years later.^[9] Within a month of her death, he was making his first serious efforts at composition, a waltz in her memory. Several writers have claimed that the loss of his mother was formative on Tchaikovsky's sexual development, and couple this with his experience of the same-sex practices said to be widespread among students at the School of Jurisprudence.^[10] Whatever the truth of this, some friendships with fellow students, such as Aleksey Apukhtin and Vladimir Gerard, were intense enough to last the rest of his life.

While music was not considered a high priority at the Institute, Tchaikovsky was taken to the theater and the opera with classmates regularly. He was fond of works by Rossini, Bellini, Verdi and Mozart. A piano manufacturer, Franz Becker, made occasional visits as a token music teacher and gave lessons. This was the only music instruction Tchaikovsky received at school. In 1855, Ilya Tchaikovsky funded private studies outside the Institute for his son with Rudolph Kündinger, a well-known piano teacher from Nuremberg. Ilya also questioned Kündinger about a musical career for his son. He replied that nothing suggested a potential composer or even a fine performer. Tchaikovsky was told to finish his course work, then try for a post in the Ministry of Justice.

Tchaikovsky graduated on May 25, 1859 with the rank of titular counselor, the lowest rung of the civil service ladder. On June 15, he was appointed to the Ministry of Justice. Six months later he became a junior assistant to his department; two months after that, a senior assistant. There Tchaikovsky remained for the rest of his three-year civil service career.

In 1861, he attended classes in music theory taught by Nikolai Zaremba through the Russian Musical Society (RMS). The following year he followed Zaremba to the new St Petersburg Conservatory. Tchaikovsky followed but did not give up his civil service post until his father agreed to support him. From 1862 to 1865, he studied harmony, counterpoint and fugue with Zaremba. Anton Rubinstein, director and founder of the Conservatory, taught him instrumentation and composition. Rubinstein was impressed by Tchaikovsky's musical talent. However, this did not stop either him or Zaremba from clashing with Tchaikovsky over his First Symphony when he submitted it to them for their perusal. By this time, the young composer had already graduated from the conservatory. The symphony was given its first complete performance in February 1868, where it was well received.^[11]

Tchaikovsky at the time he met The Five.

Dealings with The Five

As Tchaikovsky studied with Zaremba at the Western-oriented St. Petersburg Conservatory, critic Vladimir Stasov and composer Mily Balakirev espoused a nationalistic, less Western-oriented and more locally idiomatic school of Russian music. Stasov and Balakirev recruited what would be known as The Mighty Handful or kuchka (better known in English as "The Five") in St. Petersburg. Balakirev considered academicism to be not a help but a threat to musical imagination. Along with Stasov, he attacked Anton Rubinstein and the Conservatory relentlessly in print as well as verbally at every opportunity.^[12]

Since Tchaikovsky became Rubinstein's best known student, he was initially considered by association as a natural target for attack, especially as fodder for César Cui's criticism.^[13] This attitude changed slightly when Rubinstein exited the St. Petersburg musical scene in 1867. Tchaikovsky entered into a working relationship with Balakirev. The result was Tchaikovsky's first masterpiece, the fantasy-overture Romeo and Juliet, a work The Five wholeheartedly embraced.^[14] When Tchaikovsky wrote a positive review of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Fantasy on Serbian Themes, he was welcomed into the circle despite concerns about his academic background.^[15] His Second Symphony, nicknamed the Little Russian, in its initial form was also received enthusiastically by the group.

He remained friendly but never intimate with most of The Five, ambivalent about their music; their goals and aesthetics did not match his.^[16] He took pains to ensure his musical independence from them as well as from the conservative faction at the Conservatory ? a course of action facilitated by his accepting the professorship at the Moscow Conservatory offered to him by Nikolai Rubinstein.^[17] When Rimsky-Korsakov was offered a professorship at the St. Petersburg Conservatory after Zaremba had left, it was Tchaikovsky to whom he turned for advice and guidance.^[18] Later, Tchaikovsky enjoyed closer relations with Alexander Glazunov, Anatoly Lyadov and, at least on the surface, the older Rimsky-Korsakov.^[19]

Mature composer

Anton Rubinstein's younger brother Nikolai asked Tchaikovsky after graduation to become professor of harmony, composition, and the history of music at the Moscow Conservatory. Tchaikovsky gladly accepted the position as his father had retired and lost his property. At the same time he wrote music criticism and continued as a professional composer. Some of his best-known works from this period include the First Piano Concerto, the Variations on a Rococo Theme for violoncello and orchestra, the Little Russian Symphony and the ballet Swan Lake. The First Piano Concerto suffered an intital rejection by its intended dedicate, Nikolay Rubinstein, as notably recounted three years after the fact by the composer. The work went instead to pianist Hans von Bulow, whose playing had impressed Tchaikovsky when he appeared in Moscow in March 1874. Bulow premiered the work in Boston in October 1875. Rubinstein eventually championed the work himself.^[20]

Turmoil in life and music

The importance of Tchaikovsky's sexuality and its consequences on the personal expression in his compositions is significant. The possibility that Tchaikovsky was gay has been inferred from the composer's own writings as well as those of his brother Modest although some historians consider this evidence scant or non-existent.^[21]

Tchaikovsky with his wife Antonina Miliukova.

Of undoubted significance was Tchaikovsky's ill-starred marriage to one of his former composition students, Antonina Miliukova. Tchaikovsky had decided to "marry whoever will have me" just before Antonina appeared on the scene. His favorite pupil Vladimir Shilovsky had married suddenly in late April 1877.^[22]^[23] Shilovsky's wedding may, in turn, have spurred Tchaikovsky to consider such a step himself.^[24] The brief time with his wife drove him to an emotional crisis.^[25]

Paradoxically, the marriage's strain on Tchaikovsky may have actually enhanced his creativity. The Fourth Symphony and the opera Eugene Onegin could be considered proof of this. He finished both these works in the six months from his engagement to his "rest cure" in Clarens, Switzerland following his marriage. They are arguably two of his finest compositions.^[26] While in Clarens he also composed his Violin Concerto, with the technical assistance of one of his former students, violinist Yosif Kotek. Like the First Piano Concerto, the work would be rejected initially by its intended dedicte, in this case the noted virtuoso and pedagogue Leopold Auer, premiered by another soloist (Adolph Broadsky), then belatedly accepted and played to great public succcess by Auer. In addition to playing the concerto himself, Auer would also teach the work to his students, including Jascha Heifitz and Nathan Milstein. As for Kotek, he would help establish contact between Tchaikovsky and the widow of a railway magnate, Nadezhda von Meck, who would become the composer's patron and confidante (more below).^[27]

While the concerto would eventually enjoy public success, it was hissed at its premiere in Vienna^[28] and denigrated by music critic Eduard Hanslick:

The Russian composer Tchaikovsky is surely no ordinary talent, but rather, an inflated one, obsessed with posturing as a man of genius, and lacking all discrimination and taste.... the same can be said for his new, long, and ambitious Violin Concerto. For a while it proceeds soberly, musically, and not mindlessly, but soon vulgarity gains the upper hand and dominates until the end of the first movement. The violin is no longer played: it is tugged about, torn, beaten black and blue.... The Adagio is well on the way to reconciling us and winning us over when, all too soon, it breaks off to make way for a finale that transports us to the brutal and wretched jollity of a Russian church festival. We see a host of gross and savage faces, hear crude curses, and smell the booze. In the course of a discussion of obscener illustrations, Friedrich Vischer once maintained that there were pictures whose stink one could see. Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto confronts us for the first time with the hideous idea that there may be musical compositions whose stink one can hear.^[29]

Auer later mentioned that Hanslick's comment that "the last movement was redolent of vodka ... did credit neither to his good judgment nor to his reputation as a critic."^[30]

The intensity of personal emotion now flowing through Tchaikovsky's works was entirely new to Russian music.^[31] It prompted some Russian commentators to place his name alongside that of novelist Fyodor Dostoyevsky.^[31] Like Dostoyevsky's characters, they felt the musical hero in Tchaikovsky's music persisted in exploring the meaning of life while trapped in a fatal love-death-faith triangle.^[31] The critic Osoovski wrote of the two, "With a hidden passion they both stop at moments of horror, total spiritual collapse, and finding acute sweetness in the cold trepidation of the heart before the abyss, they both force the reader to experience those feelings, too."^[32]

Nadezhda von Meck, Tchaikovsky's patroness and confidante from 1877 to 1890.

Mme. von Meck

Nadezhda von Meck, wealthy widow of a Russian railway tycoon and an influential patron of the arts, wanted to commission some chamber pieces, and in supporting Tchaikovsky became an important element in his life. She eventually paid Tchaikovsky an annual subsidy of 6,000 rubles. This would also allow him to resign from the Moscow Conservatory in October 1878 and concentrate primarily on composition.^[33] With von Meck's patronage came a relationship that, at her insistence, was mainly epistolary. They exchanged over 1,200 letters, some of them quite lengthy, between 1877 and 1890. In these letters Tchaikovsky was more open to von Meck about much of his life and his creative processes than to any other person.

Von Meck remained a fully dedicated supporter of Tchaikovsky and all his works. She also became a vital enabler in his day-to-day existence. As he explained to her,

There is something so special about our relationship that it often stops me in my tracks with amazement. I have told you more than once, I believe, that you have come to seem to me the hand of Fate itself, watching over me and protecting me. The very fact that I do not know you personally, while feeling so close to you, accords you in my eyes the special status of an unseen but benevolent presence, like a benign Providence.^[34]

Tchaikovsky and von Meck also became related by a marriage. One of her sons, Nikolay, married Tchaikovsky's niece Anna Davydova in 1884. However, after 13 years von Meck suddenly ended the relationship. She claimed bankruptcy. Tchaikovsky, now a success throughout Europe, no longer needed her money. Her friendship and encouragement were another matter. Losing that companionship devastated him.^[35]

Ivan Vsevolozhsky, Director of the Imperial Theatres and a patron of Tchaikovsky.

Later career

Tchaikovsky returned to Moscow Conservatory in the autumn of 1879. He had been away from Russia a year after his marriage disintegrated. Shortly into that term, however, he resigned. He settled in Kamenka yet travelled incessantly. Assured of a regular income from von Meck, he wandered around Europe and rural Russia. Not staying long in any one place, he lived mainly alone, avoiding social contact whenever possible. This may have been due partly to troubles with Antonina. She alternately accepted and refused divorce and at one point exacerbated matters by moving into the apartment directly above her husband's.^[36]^[37] Perhaps for this reason, except for his piano trio, which he wrote upon the death of Nikolai Rubinstein, his best work from this period is found in genres which did not depend heavily on personal expression.^[36]

While Tchaikovsky's reputation grew rapidly outside Russia, "it was considered obligatory [in progressive musical circles in Russia] to treat Tchaikovsky as a renegade, a master overly dependent on the West," Alexandre Benois wrote in his memoirs.^[38] In 1880, this assessment changed practically overnight. During commemoration ceremonies for the Pushkin Monument in Moscow, Dostoyevsky charged that the poet had given a prophetic call to Russia for "universal unity" with the West.^[38] An unprecedented acclaim for Dostoyevsky's message spread throughout Russia. Disdain for Tchaikovsky's music dissipated. He even drew a cult following among the young intelligentsia of St. Petersburg, including Benois, Leon Bakst and Sergei Diaghilev.

During 1884, Tchaikovsky began to shed his unsociability and restlessness. In 1885 Tsar Alexander III conferred upon Tchaikovsky the Order of St. Vladimir (fourth class). With it came hereditary nobility. The tsar's decoration was a visible seal of official approval that helped the composer's social rehabilitation.^[39] That year he resettled in Russia. The tsar asked personally for a new production of Eugene Onegin to be staged in St. Petersburg. The opera had previously been seen only in Moscow, produced by a student ensemble from the conservatory. He had Onegin staged not at the Mariyinsky Theater but in the Bolshoi kamennïy theater. This act served notice that Tchaikovsky's music was replacing Italian opera as the official imperial art. Thanks to Vsevolozhsky, Tchaikovsky received a lifetime pension of 3000 rubles per year from the tsar. This essentially made him the premier court composer, at least in practice if not in actual title.^[40]

Tchaikovsky at Cambridge, 1893.

1885 also saw his debut as a guest conductor. Within a year, he was in considerable demand throughout Europe and Russia in appearances which helped him overcome a life-long stage fright and boosted his self-assurance. He wrote to von Meck, "Would you now recognize in this Russian musician traveling across Europe that man who, only a few years ago, had absconded from life in society and lived in seclusion abroad or in the country!!!"^[41] In 1888 he condicted the premiere of his Fifth Symphony in St. Petersburg, a work that was seen by critics at the time as controversial.^[42] Nevertheless, he continued to conduct the work. Conducting brought him to America in 1891. He led the New York Music Society's orchestra in his Marche Slave^[43] at the inaugural concert of New York's Carnegie Hall.

In 1893, the University of Cambridge awarded Tchaikovsky an honorary Doctor of Music degree.

Death

Monument of the composer in Klin

Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg on November 6, 1893, nine days after the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique. Due to its formal innovation plus the overwhelming emotional content of its outer movements, the work was received by the public with silent incomprehension. The second performance, under conductor Eduard Nápravník, took place 20 days later at a memorial concert^[44] and was much more favorably received. The Pathétique has since become one of Tchaikovsky's best known works.

Tchaikovsky's death has traditionally been attributed to cholera, most probably contracted through drinking contaminated water several days earlier. However, some have theorized that his death was a suicide.

Music

Reception and reputaton

One of Tchaikovsky's prime assets as a composer was what Harold Schonberg termes "a sweet, inexhaustible, supersensuous fund of melody ... touched with neuroticism, as emotional as a scream from a window on a dark night."^[45] This melody helped make the composer famous in Russia and internationally, while the surcharged emotionalism which could accompany it polarized listeners. "From the beginning," Schonberg continues, "most listeners enjoyed the emotional bath in which they were immersed by the composer. Others, more inhibited, rejected Tchaikovsky's message out of hand or despised themselves for responding to it.... For a long time Tchaikovsky, so loved by the public, was discounted by many connoisseurs and musicians as nothing more than a weeping machine."^[46] Eduard Hanslick wrote about the Violin Concerto that he had heard music which stank to the ear.^[47] William Forster Abtrop, normally disinclined toward much contemporary music, wrote more positively about Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony in his notes for a Boston Symphony Orchestra performance of the work:

Tchaikovsky is one of the leading composers, some think the leading composer, of the present Russian School. He is fond of emphasizing the pecular character of Russian melody in his works, plans his compositions in general on a large scale, and delights in strong effects. He has been criticized for the occasional excessive harshness of his harmony, for now and then descending to the trivial and the tawdry in his ornamental figuration, and also for a tendency to develop comparatively insignificant material to inordinate length. But, in spite of the prevailing wild savagery of his music, its originally and the genuineness of its fire and sentiment are not to be denied.^[48]

This sentiment did not stop Abtrop from writing about the same work in the Boston Evening Transcript:

[The Fifth Symphony] is less untamed in spirit than the composer's B-flat minor [Piano Concerto], less recklessly harsh in its polyphonic writing, less indicative of the composer's disposition to swear a theme's way through a stone wall.... In the Finale we have all the untamed fury of the Cossack, whetting itself for deeds of atrocity, against all the sterility of the Russian steppes. The furious peoration sounds like nothing so much as a hoarde of of demons struggling in a torrent of brandy, the music growing drunker and drunker. Pandemonium, delerium tremens, raving, and above all, noise were confounded!^[49]

More recently, Tchaikovsky's music has received a professsional reevaluation, with musicians reacting more favorably to its tunefulness and craftsmanship. His orchestration remains a source for admiration, while the last three numbered symphonies are now considered a successful compromise between the classical-era requirements of the form and the demand for new forms dictated by post-Romantic musical and extramusical concerns. Those three symphonies, along with two of his concertos, his three ballets, the Romeo and Juliet fantasy-overture, the 1812 Overture, the Marche Slave and two of his operas, retain their popularity. Almost as popular are the Serenade for Strings, Francesca da Rimini and the Capriccio italien.^[50]

Creative range

Tchaikovsky sought expressive value in music that was immediately comprehensible and appreciable ? in other words, what was apparent on the surface. He admired Bizet's Carmen for exactly this reason. "This music has no pretensions to profundity, but it is so charming in its simplicity, so vigorous, not contrived but instead sincere, that I learned all of it from beginning to end almost by heart." He felt the high demands of Wagner's music on its audiences conflicted with these ideals, and his objections to Brahms were similar. Tchaikovsky was however fascinated by the music of Mozart, which he felt combined simplicity with profundity.^[51]

Despite his reputation as a "weeping machine," self-expression was not a central principle for Tchaikovsky. In a letter to von Meck dated December 5, 1878, he explained there were two kinds of inspiration for a symphonic composer, a subjective and an objective one:

In the first instance, [the composer] uses his music to express his own feelings, joys, sufferings; in short, like a lyric poet he pours out, so to speak, his own soul. In this instance, a program is not only not necessary but even impossible. But it is another matter when a musician, reading a poetic work or struck by a scene in nature, wishes to express in musical form that subject that has kindled his inspiration. Here a program is essential.... Program music can and must exist, just as it is impossible to demand that literature make do without the epic element and limit itself to lyricism alone.

Costume sketch by Ivan Vsevolozhsky for The Nutcracker.

This meant program music such as Francesca da Rimini or the Manfred Symphony was as much a part of the composer's artistic credo as the expression of his "lyric ego."^[52] Labeling all his works based on literary subjects as confessional music would be unwarranted. The character of Hermann in the opera The Queen of Spades has sometimes been mentioned as an expression of the composer's morbidity and suicidal tendencies. Tchaikovsky's letters and diary entries disprove this notion, showing that he did not identify with Hermann. His diary entry for March 2, 1890, when he had just completed the opera, shows a characteristic mixture of empathy and detachment. "Wept terribly when Hermann breathed his last. The result of exhaustion, or maybe it is truly good."^[53]

There is also a group of compositions which fall outside the dichotomy of program music versus "lyrical ego," where he hearkens toward pre-Romantic aesthetics. Works in this group include the orchestral suites, Capriccio Italien and the Serenade for Strings.^[54] He displays his clearest link to pre-Romantic sensitivities in retrospective works such as the Variations on a Rococo Theme and Mozartiana, a collection of orchestrations based on Mozart piano pieces and a Liszt transcription of a Mozart work. The Violin Concerto also looks back to pre-Romantic aesthetics. While Tchaikovsky does not follow classical practice, most notably in the lack of a double exposition in the first movement, he also does not follow the conventions of other 19th-century violin concertos. It is not written as a virtuosic work for virtuosity's sake, like Paganini's concertos, nor virtuosity used to express a symphonic concept, as in the Brahms Violin Concerto. The tone of the orchestral introduction could almost be considered classicist; the same is true for the transparent orchestration, with the orchestra itself relegated for the most part to background for the soloist.^[55]

Capriccio italien, evoking Italian urban folklore, was the continuation of a tradition begun with Haydn and Mozart.^[55] The Serenade for Strings was intended as a tribute to Mozart. While not copying any style, Tchaikovsky attempts to convert the spirit of the Classical approach into his own compositional idiom. The Serenade's unique tone comes from a subtle balance between Tchaikovsky's lyrical sentimentality and his attention to classical measure and clarity.^[56]

Public considerations

Tchaikovsky believed that his professionalism in combining skill and high standards in his musical works separated him from his contemporaries in The Five. He shared several of their ideals, including an emphasis on national character in music. His aim, however, was linking those ideals to a standard high enough to satisfy Western European criteria. His professionalism also fueled his desire to reach a broad public, not just nationally but internationally, which he would eventually do.^[57]

He may also have been influenced by the almost "eighteenth-century" patronage prevalent in Russia at the time, still strongly influenced by its aristocracy.^[58] Tchaikovsky found no aesthetic conflict in playing to the tastes of his audiences. The patriotic themes and stylization of 18th-century melodies in his works lined up with the values of the Russian aristocracy.^[59]

Tchaikovsky made full use of the emotional and symbolic possibilities of the Russian anthem "God Save the Tsar" in several commemorative works, including two of his most popular compositions, the Marche Slave and the 1812 Overture. Tchaikovsky wrote Marche Slave in support of Pan-Slavism. This was one of the most cherished ideas of imperial Russia. When Serbia rebelled against Turkish rule in 1876, they elicited great support in Russia. Performances of the Marche Slave, with its Serbian folk melodies provoked outbursts of patriotism. The 1812 Overture likewise glorified the greatest military and political victory of the Romanov dynasty, in the Patriotic War against Napoleon.

Compositional style

Melody

Tchaikovsky's range of melody stretches from Western style of an efficient if not first-rate nature to folksong stylizations. He occasionally uses folksongs themselves. He also allows modal practices to influence his melodies repeatedly, though not very strongly, in his original tunes. His most characteristic melodic typea are dance tunes, especially waltzes. These tunes not only fill his ballets but also permeate compositions in other genres except church music. Also prevalent are impassioned cantilenas which often possess strong contours, whose full-blooded emotion is often supported by harmonic support contining complementary expressive tensions.^[60]

Tchaikovsky knew well and sometimes employs the characteristic repetitive trait of certain Russian folk songs which extend themselves by constant variations on a single motif. More usually, however, his repetitions are sequential, reflecting Western practices, and could be extended at immense length. This near-obsessive dwelling on a single phrase could be considered to be conditioned by Tchaikovsky's emotional identification with the expressive properties of that phrase, as well as the release such repetitions could afford; the relentless reiteration of certain tunes fulfilled a similar purpose. While at times these repetitions result in expressive surfeit, they can build into an emotional experience of almost unbearable intensity.^[61]

Rhythm

While Tchaikovsky experimented with unusual meters, he usually applied a very Russian sense of dynamic rhythm to provide a firm, essentially regular meter, as exemplified in his dance tunes. He sometimes employs this regular meter with such elemental vigor that it becomes the main expressive agent in some movements. He also uses a strong metrical drive as a means of synthetic propulsion in large-scale symphonic movements.^[62]

Harmony

Tchaikovsky also revealed a wide range of practice in his harmony. His first two string quartets show how thoroughly he was grounded in Western harmonic and textural procedures. At the opposite extreme are unorthodox progressions in the center of the finale of the Second Symphony; this movement also includes one of the few times in his work that the composer employed the whole tone scale in the bass, a practice more typical of the compositional practices of The Five. More typically, Tchaikovsky bases his harmonic language on relatively conventional progressions such as the circle of fifths in the first love theme of Romeo and Juliet. Frequently such progressions involve a typically Russian liberality in the use of pedals as well as decorative chromaticism which lend it individuality.^[63]

Orchestration

Tchaikovsky wrote most of his music for the orchestra, and his musical textures become increasingly conditioned by the orchestral colors he employed. Despite being grounded in Western orchestral practices, he shows a typically Russian preference for bright and sharply differentiated orchestral coloring in the tradition established by Glinka. A tendency for the musical fabric itself to be conditioned by orchestral sound can be heard in the scherzo of the Third Symphony and in Francesca da Rimini, not only in the tempestuous outer sections but also in the accompaniment figurations of the central passage. This process is carried still further in the scherzo of the Manfred Symphony, with the result being a kaleidoscopic web of delicate sound of remarkable virtuosity. A similar tendency also informs much of The Nutcracker. In these pieces as well as others it is primarily the fleet delicacy of the treble instruments that Tchaikovsky exploits; however, this tendency is balanced by a matching exploration of the darker, even gloomy sounds of the bass instruments.^[64]

Compositions

Operas

Tchaikovsky completed ten operas, although one of these (Undina) is mostly lost and another (Vakula the Smith) exists in two significantly different versions. He also began or at least considered writing at least 20 others. In the West his most famous operas are Eugene Onegin and The Queen of Spades. While the other eight he finished are seldom performed outside Russia, the operas on the whole embody an enormous mass of music considered by some far too beautiful and interesting to be ignored. Moreover, Tchaikovsky's search for operatic subjects, along with his views on their nature and treatment and his own work on librettos, throw considerable light on his creative personality.^[65]

Symphonies

Tchaikovsky's earlier symphonies are generally optimistic works of nationalistic character, while the later symphonies are more intensely dramatic, particularly the Sixth, generally interpreted as a declaration of despair. The last three of his numbered symphonies (the fourth, fifth and sixth) are recognized as highly original examples of symphonic form and are frequently performed.

Ballets

While Tchaikovsky admitted that he could write well in an opera only when he became personally involved with his characters, his rich gifts for melody in general and a specific flair for writing memorable dance tunes, along with his ready response to the atmosphere of a theatrical situation, equipped him ideally as a ballet composer. Nonetheless, his first ballet, Swan Lake, is not a consistently successful piece. In passages where Tchaikovsky focused on dramatic action, he showed his aptitude for music of considerable substance and scale. However, he also had to make concessions to the expectations of the Russian public for decorative spectacle, with lengthy divertissements in two of the ballet's four acts diverting action from the main plot.^[66] Still, while less consistently rich than the music Tchaikovsky would write for The Sleeping Beauty, many parts of Swan Lake showcase his gift for melody. The oboe solo associated with Odette and her swans, which first appears at the end of Act 1, is especially memorable.^[67]

Original cast of Tchaikovsky's ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, Saint Petersburg, 1890

Tchaikovsky considered his next ballet, The Sleeping Beauty, one of his finest works. The structure of the scenario proved more successful than that of Swan Lake. While the prologue and first two acts contain a certain number of set dances, they are not designed for gratuous choreographic decoration but have at least some marginal relevance to the main plot. These dances are also far more striking than their counterparts in Swan Lake, as several of them are character pieces from fairy tales such as Puss in Boots and Little Red Riding Hood, which elicited a far more individualized type of invention from the composer. Likewise, the musical ideas in these sections are more striking, pointed and precise. This characterful musical invention, combined with a structural fluency, a keen feeling for atmosphere and a well-structured plot, makes The Sleeping Beauty perhaps Tchaikovsky's most consistently successful ballet.^[68] The Nutcracker, on the other hand, is one of Tchaikovsky's best known works. While it has been criticized as the least substantial of the composer's three ballets, it should be remembered that Tchaikovsky was restricted by a rigorous scenario supplied by Marius Petipa. This scenario provided no opportunity for the expression of human feelings beyond the most trivial and confined Tchaikovsky mostly within a world of tinsel, sweets and fantasy. Yet, at its best, the melodies are charming and pretty, and by this time Tchaikovsky's virtuosity at orchestration and counterpoint ensured an endless fascination in the surface attractiveness of the score.^[69]

Nikolai Rubinstein, in whose memory Tchaikovsky dedicated his Piano Trio.

Chamber music

Chamber music does not figure prominently in Tchaikovsky's compositional output. Other than a number of student exercises, it consists of three string quartets, a piano trio and a string sextet, along with three works for violin and piano. While all these works contain some excellent music, the First String Quartet, with its famous Andante cantabile slow movement, shows such mastery of quartet form that some consider it the most satisfying of Tchaikovsky's chamber works in its consistency of style and artistic interest.^[70] While the Second String Quartet is less engaging than the First and less characterful than the Third, its slow movement is a substantial and particularly affecting piece.^[71] Some critics consider the Third String Quartet the most impresssive, especially for its elegaic slow movement.^[72]

Also elegaic is the Piano Trio, written in memory of Nikolai Rubinstein?a point which accounts for the prominence of the piano part. The work is in two actual movements, the second a large set of variations including a fugue and a long summing-up variation serving as the equivalent of a third movement.^[73] Had Tchaikovsky written this work as a piano quartet or piano quintet, he would have availed himself of a string complement well able to play complete harmony and could therefore have been allotted autonomous sections to play. With only two stringed instruments, this option was not available. Instead, Tchaikovsky treats the violin and cello as melodic soloists, with the piano both conversing with them and providing harmonic support.^[74]

The String Sextet, entitled Souvenir de Florence, is considered by some to be more interesting than the Piano Trio, better music intrinsically and better written.^[75] None of Tchaikovsky's other chamber works has a more positive opening, and the simplicity of the main section of the second movement is even more striking. After this very affecting music, the third movement progresses at least initially into a fresh, folksy world. Even more folksy is the opening of the finale, though Tchaikovsky takes this movement in a more academic direction with the incorporation of a fugue.^[76] This work has also been played in arrangements for string orchestra.

Solo piano music

Except for a piano sonata written while he was a composition student and a second much later in his career, Tchaikovsky's solo piano works consist of character pieces.^[77] While his best known set of these works is The Seasons,^[78] the compositions in his last set, the Eighteen Pieces, Op. 72, are extremely varied and at times surprising.^[79] Some of Tchaikovsky's piano works can be challenging technically; nevertheless, they are mostly charming, unpretentious compositions intended for amateur pianists.^[80] The difference between Tchaikovsky's pieces and many other salon works are patches of striking harmony and unexpected phrase structures which may demand some extra patience but will not remain unrewarded from a musical standpoint. Many of the pieces have titles which give imaginative pointers on how they should be played.^[81]

Songs

Tchaikovsky's songs are extremely varied and encompass a wide range of genres?pure lyric and stark drama; solemn hymns and short songs of everyday life; folk tunes and waltzes. They are marked by artistic simplicity, artlessness of musical language, perfection of form, variety and originality of melody and richness of accompaniment. The songs helped cross-pollinate the composer's work in other genres, with many of his operatic arias closely related to them.^[82] While "None but the Lonely Heart" may be the one of his finest songs, as well as perhaps the best-known in the West, ^[83] the Six Romances, Op. 65 and the Six Romances, Op. 73 are especially recommendable.^[84]

Tchaikovsky in fiction

Authors, dramatists and film-makers have found Tchaikovsky's life a compelling source of raw material. For discussion of plays, films, operas, and other works incorporating Tchaikovsky as a character, see Tchaikovsky in fiction.

Media

Other media files for the Romeo and Juliet overture, the Violin concerto, and the 1812 Overture can be found in their respective articles.

Notes

Bibliography

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- Abraham, Gerald, "Operas and Incidental Music"
- Alshvang, A., tr. I. Freiman, "The Songs"
- Cooper, Martin, "The Symphonies"
- Dickinson, A.E.F., "The Piano Music"
- Evans, Edwin, "The Ballets"
- Mason, Colin, "The Chamber Music"
- Wood, Ralph W., "Miscellaneous Orchestral Works"
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