PYOTR TCHAIKOVSKY, A ROMANTIC CLASSICAL COMPOSER

Today, The Grandma has been reading about Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, the Russian composer of the Romantic period.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, in Russian Пётр Ильи́ч Чайко́вский (7 May 1840-6 November 1893) was a Russian composer of the Romantic period.

He was the first Russian composer whose music would make a lasting impression internationally. 

He wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, his First Piano Concerto, Violin Concerto, the Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, several symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin. Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant as there was little opportunity for a musical career in Russia at the time and no system of public music education. When an opportunity for such an education arose, he entered the nascent Saint Petersburg Conservatory, from which he graduated in 1865.

The formal Western-oriented teaching that he received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary nationalist movement embodied by the Russian composers of The Five with whom his professional relationship was mixed.

Tchaikovsky's training set him on a path to reconcile what he had learned with the native musical practices to which he had been exposed from childhood. From that reconciliation, he forged a personal but unmistakably Russian style.

The principles that governed melody, harmony and other fundamentals of Russian music ran completely counter to those that governed Western European music, which seemed to defeat the potential for using Russian music in large-scale Western composition or for forming a composite style, and it caused personal antipathies that dented Tchaikovsky's self-confidence.

More information: Tchaikovsky Research

Russian culture exhibited a split personality, with its native and adopted elements having drifted apart increasingly since the time of Peter the Great. That resulted in uncertainty among the intelligentsia about the country's national identity, an ambiguity mirrored in Tchaikovsky's career.

Despite his many popular successes, Tchaikovsky's life was punctuated by personal crises and depression. Contributory factors included his early separation from his mother for boarding school followed by his mother's early death; the death of his close friend and colleague Nikolai Rubinstein; and the collapse of the one enduring relationship of his adult life, his 13-year association with the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck, who was his patron even though they never met.

His homosexuality, which he kept private, has traditionally also been considered a major factor though some musicologists now downplay its importance.

Tchaikovsky's sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, but there is an ongoing debate as to whether cholera was indeed the cause, and also whether the death was accidental or intentional.

While his music has remained popular among audiences, critical opinions were initially mixed. Some Russians did not feel it was sufficiently representative of native musical values and expressed suspicion that Europeans accepted the music for its Western elements. In an apparent reinforcement of the latter claim, some Europeans lauded Tchaikovsky for offering music more substantive than base exoticism and said he transcended stereotypes of Russian classical music. Others dismissed Tchaikovsky's music as lacking in elevated thought and derided its formal workings as deficient because they did not stringently follow Western principles.

More information: Classic FM

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk, a small town in Vyatka Governorate (present-day Udmurtia) in the Russian Empire, into a family with a long history of military service. His father, Ilya Petrovich Tchaikovsky, had served as a lieutenant colonel and engineer in the Department of Mines, and would manage the Kamsko-Votkinsk Ironworks. His grandfather, Pyotr Fedorovich Tchaikovsky, was born in the village of Nikolayevka, Yekaterinoslav Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Ukraine), and served first as a physician's assistant in the army and later as city governor of Glazov in Vyatka. His great-grandfather, a Zaporozhian Cossack named Fyodor Chaika, distinguished himself under Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava in 1709.

On 16/28 October 1893, Tchaikovsky conducted the premiere of his Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique, in Saint Petersburg. Nine days later, Tchaikovsky died there, aged 53. He was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery, near the graves of fellow-composers Alexander Borodin, Mikhail Glinka, and Modest Mussorgsky; later, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov and Mily Balakirev were also buried nearby.

While Tchaikovsky's death has traditionally been attributed to cholera from drinking unboiled water at a local restaurant, there has been much speculation that his death was suicide.

More information: U Discover Music

 Inspiration is a guest that 

does not willingly visit the lazy.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky