MI: LIBRARY: PEOPLE: TCHAIKOVSKY

Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky
April 25, 1840 -to- October 25, 1893

Tchaikovsky’s interests in music were not well encouraged by his family as his parents considered it to have an unhealthy effect on the boy. He studied at an all-boys school and his experiences there led him to a great passion for all things musical. When his mother died he was a mere 14 years of age and thus, between his love for his mother and his father’s indifference to the fact that she was deceased, Tchaikovsky pondered writing an opera for her. Rather, he would write a piano waltz in her memory.

He held a government job as a clerk and it bored him to an extent at which he would often be found eating official documents. It was with this boredom in mind that Tchaikovsky left the position to become a student of music at the new St. Petersburg Conservatory of Music in 1862. At the school he would immediately begin producing renown musical works and he settled in Moscow during the winter of 1866.

He did undergo a mental crisis largely due to his overworking on a composition, but it would not prevent him from writing his wonderfully successful music for Romeo and Juliet in the late 1860’s. Pending a nervous breakdown in the mid 1870’s, Tchaikovsky realized his love was not meant for women, but rather men, and with this he was deemed a sexual outcast. He did, however, marry a woman who threatened to kill herself if he rejected her. Knowing the marriage would fail, Tchaikovsky married anyway. Of course, a separation was soon arranged and Tchaikovsky’s only significant relationship with women from then on would be with a wealthy widow and admirer, Nadezhda von Meck, to whom he often wrote, but never met.

During Tchaikovsky’s last years he produced large numbers of dramatic and beautiful compositions and they were received well everywhere. Near the very end of his life, as he approached another nervous breakdown, Tchaikovsky’s works become more emotional, intense, and depressing. Many of his most famous works came from this time.

Despite his continuing tours, including those in the United States, Tchaikovsky’s mental state continued to deteriorate. It was when Nadezhda stopped corresponding with him that his illness became more severe. The effect this action of hers had on him is clearly supported by the fact that during his last illness he would repeat her name incessantly.

His actual cause of death is still a mystery. During his time it was believed he drank water without boiling it during a cholera epidemic. Modern scholars conclude that he was suicidal and poisoned himself after an accusation regarding a relationship with a male member of the imperial family. The more widespread belief is his suicide was brought after the failure of his final symphony.

Comments

Tchaikovsky, I love his work from the Nutcracker, don't you?

Comments

i hate his singing