Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

• May 7, 1840 – November 6, 1893

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky- Life

• Born in Votkinsk, Russia

• Age 4- Began piano

• Complex relationship with his

• family, esp. women

• Age 10- Boarding school

• Age 14- Death of mother

• Establishment of sexuality

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky- Life

• Graduation- Worked a Civil Servant

• Composition with Rubenstein

• Studied at St. Petersburg Conservatory

• Employment at Moscow Conservatory

• Romantic relationships with students

• Marriage to Antonia Milyukova

• Brief and traumatic

• Wide-spread popularity

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky- Life

• 1876-1890- Received patronage from Nadezdha von Meck

• Money allowed him to concentrate on music
• Emotional relationship through letters
• 1890: communication cut off abruptly

• 1893 Death, possibly suicide

Ballets

• The Nutcraker

• Sleeping Beauty

• Swan Lake

• Popular works, but not definitive

Instrumental Works

• Piano Concerto No. 1

• Symphony No. 4, 5, & 6

• Deeply personal

• Vehicles of expression

• Possibly programmatic

Symphony No. 4

• Dedicated to Meck

• “Fate motive” throughout:

• “The fatal power which prevents one from attaining the goal of happiness. There is nothing to be done but to submit to it and lament in vain”

Symphony No. 5

• Motive throughout from Glinka’s A Life for the Czar Opera- “Turn not to sorrow”

• Funeral treatment of motive in first movement

• Transformation to optimism in final movement

Symphony No. 6 “Pathetique”

• Admitted to program

• Considered using the title “Program”

• “Pathetique” translates in Russian to “passionate” or “emotional”

• Predicts death

Symphony No. 6

• “Just as I was starting on my trip, the idea for a new symphony came to me, this time a program symphony, but with a program that shall remain unknown to all. Let them try to figure it out—the work will be called simply "A Program Symphony (No. 6)." The program for it is subjective through and through, and during my trip, as I composed it in my mind, I often actually wept. When I returned and set to work on my sketches my work went so rapidly that the entire first movement was finished in less than four days and the shape of the remaining movements was quite clear in my mind. There will be much that is novel in the form. The finale, for example, will not be a great allegro, but an extensive adagio.” -Feb. 22, 1893

• “…I am confident in considering it the best and, above all, the "most genuinely sincere" of all my works. I love it as I have never loved any of my other musical offspring. “ –August 18, 1893