Tchaikovsky was born in the Russian countryside, the son of a mining inspector, but the family moved to St. Petersburg when he was eight. In nineteenth-century Russia, a serious musical education and career were not accorded the social approval they received in Germany, France, or Italy. Many of the famous Russian composers began in other careers and turned to music later in life, when driven by inner necessity.

Tchaikovsky was fortunate in this respect, for after working as a government clerk for only a few years, he was able to enter the new St. Petersburg Conservatory, founded by another Russian composer, Anton Rubinstein. At the age of twenty-six he was made a professor at the Moscow Conservatory. Once Tchaikovsky got started, after abandoning the civil service, he composed prolifically — six symphonies, eleven operas, symphonic poems, chamber music, songs, and some of the most famous of all ballet scores: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, and The Nutcracker. Listen to a dance from The Nutcracker in Listening Exercise 8.

Though his pieces may sometimes sound “Russian” to us, Tchaikovsky was not as devoted a nationalist as some other major Russian composers of the time (see page 284). Perhaps because of this, he had greater international renown than they. Of all the nineteenth-century Russian composers, Tchaikovsky had the most success in concert halls around the world. His famous Piano Concerto No. 1 was premiered in 1875 in Boston, and he toured America as a conductor in 1891.

Tchaikovsky was a depressive personality who more than once attempted suicide. He had been an extremely delicate and hypersensitive child, and as an adult he worried that his homosexuality would be discovered and exposed. In an attempt to raise himself above suspicion, he married a highly unstable young musician who was in love with him. The marriage was a fiasco; in a matter of weeks, Tchaikovsky fled and never saw his wife again. She died in an asylum.

For many years Tchaikovsky was subsidized by a wealthy, reclusive widow named Nadezhda von Meck. She not only commissioned compositions from him but actually granted him an annuity. By mutual agreement, they never met; nevertheless, they exchanged letters regularly over the thirteen years of their friendship. This strange arrangement was terminated, without explanation, by Madame von Meck.

By this time Tchaikovsky’s position was assured, and his music widely admired. In a tragic mishap, he died after drinking unboiled water during a cholera epidemic.

Chief Works: Symphonies No. 4, 5, and 6 (Pathétique); a very popular Violin Concerto and Piano Concerto ◼ Operas: The Queen of Spades and Eugene Onegin, based on works by the Russian Romantic poet Alexander Pushkin ◼ Symphonic poems: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Overture 1812 (about Napoleon’s retreat from Russia in that year) ◼ Ballet scores: Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker

Encore: After Romeo and Juliet, listen to The Nutcracker; Symphony No. 4; Violin Concerto.

Image Credit: Bettmann/CORBIS.