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Pyotr (Peter) Ilyich Tchaikovsky (7 May 1840 – 6 November 1893) was
a Russian composer of the Romantic era.
Although not a member of the group of Russian composers usually known in
English-speaking countries as 'The Five', his music has come to be known and loved
for its distinctly Russian character as well as for its rich harmonies and stirring
melodies. His works, however, were much more western than those of his Russian
contemporaries as he effectively used international elements in addition to
national folk melodies.
As biographer Anthony Holden maintains, no indigenous tradition of Russian music
existed before Tchaikovsky's birth in 1840 other than folk-tunes and a cappella
ecclesiastical music. In 1913, 20 years after Tchaikovsky's death, Igor
Stravinsky's The Rite of Spring erupted onto the musical scene, signalling Russia's
arrival into 20th century music. Between these two very different worlds, Holden
concludes, Tchaikovsky's music became the sole bridge.
Tchaikovsky also became the first Russian composer to personally acquaint foreign
audiences with his own works. Mikhail Glinka, considered the first important
Russian composer, had given one concert in Paris during his career. Anton
Rubinstein, who would become one of Tchaikovsky's teachers at the St. Petersburg
Conservatory, had won "citizenship of stages and concert platforms the world over,"
but this was as a virtuoso pianist, not as a composer.
After conquering an initial fear of conducting, Tchaikovsky became a regular
conductor of his works, as well as that of other Russian composers, in Russia,
Western Europe and, on one tour late in his career, the United States.
 Personal
life
Tchaikovsky's homosexuality, as well as its importance to his life and music, has
long been theorized. The contention was suppressed during the Soviet era. However,
as Russian biographer Alexander Poznansky points out, Soviet censorship of
biographical material on Tchaikovsky has been both rigorous and erratic, depending
on the period and the editors involved. Also, the recent controversy over
Tchaikovsky's death has shown, despite all the literature available on Tchaikovsky,
how little we really know about his inner life.
How comfortable Tchaikovsky might have been with his sexuality has been hotly
debated, with a general lack of consensus. One point on which biographers do agree
is, by the mid 1870's, Tchaikovsky was "thinking much of marriage, or some other
stable union." Though Tchaikovsky's motives at this point are debatable, what
followed proved to be the greatest single crisis in Tchaikovsky's adult life—a
disastrous marriage that pushed the composer to the edge of reason.
Apart from a very few among the closest members of his family, the most important
emotional involvement of Tchaikovsky's life was with a woman he deliberately
avoided meeting, and to whom he never spoke. This woman was his patroness and
confidante, Nadezhda von Meck, with whom he was in contact between 1877 and 1890.
From their voluminous correspondence, we may glimpse a good deal of Tchaikovsky's
inner self, but there is more. Tchaikovsky was also prepared to be more openly and
abundantly confiding to his patroness about some of his attitudes to life and about
his creative processes than to any other person.
Source : Some of the information on
this page came from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU
Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Pytor
Tchaikovsky - Projector - Biography
