_Foreword_
Included in this little book are analyses and backgrounds of most of
Tschaikowsky’s standard concert music. A short sketch of Tschaikowsky’s
life precedes the section devoted to the orchestral music. Yet,
the personal outlook and moods of Russia's great composer are so
inextricably bound up with his music, that actually the whole booklet
is an account of his strangely tormented life. In the story of
Tschaikowsky, life and art weave into one closely knit fabric. It is
hoped that this simple narrative will aid music lovers to glimpse the
great pathos and struggle behind the music of this sad and lonely man.
_Tschaikowsky_
AND HIS ORCHESTRAL MUSIC
Few great names in music spell as much magic to the average
concert-goer as that of Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky. In almost every
musical form will be found a work of his ranking high in popularity.
And quite deservedly so. Tschaikowsky’s music brims with a warm
humanity and stirring drama. The themes and feelings are easy to
grasp. The personal, intimate note is so strong in this music that we
find it natural, while listening to the _Pathetic_ symphony or the
_Nutcracker_ ballet suite, for example, to share Tschaikowsky’s joys
and sorrows. His music seems to take us into his confidence and show us
the secret places of his heart. Although Tschaikowsky’s range of moods
is wide—from the whimsical play of light fantasy to stormy outcries
of anguish—essentially he was a melancholy man, in his music as in
his life. Perhaps it is the genuineness of his music in conveying great
pathos and suffering that has drawn millions to his symphonies and
concertos. A frank sincerity and warmheartedness well from his music.
The best of his melodies linger hauntingly in the mind and heart. So
long as sincere feeling expressed in sincere artistic form can move the
hearts of men, Tschaikowsky’s music will continue to hold a high place
in the concert hall and opera house.
Only Beethoven and Mozart can rival Tschaikowsky in the number of
compositions in various musical forms that stand out as repertory
favorites. Tschaikowsky’s violin concerto is as much a “request” item
as Beethoven’s. The _Pathetic_ symphony ranks with the three or four
enduring favorites of the repertory. Tschaikowsky’s _Nutcracker_ ballet
is probably the most popular suite of its kind in music. The opera,
_Eugene Onegin_, a masterpiece worthy to stand beside some of the
best Italian and German operas, is widely loved even outside Russia.
Tschaikowsky’s Piano Concerto, or, at any rate, the big opening theme,
is doubtless known to more people than all other piano concertos put
together. The overture-fantasies, _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Francesca da
Rimini_, rank with the most popular in that form, and the _Overture
1812_ is an international hit with music-lovers of all ages and stages.
Tschaikowsky’s song, _None But the Lonely Heart_, is better known
to many music-lovers than most of the songs of Brahms and Schubert,
and the great String Quartet contains a melody familiar to every
follower of popular song trends. For, of all the classical composers,
Tschaikowsky has been a veritable gold-mine as a lucrative source of
themes for popular arrangement.
Yet, this sad and sensitive musical genius who knew so well how to
reach the human soul surprisingly began his career as a clerk in
the St. Petersburg Ministry of Justice. Like other great Russian
composers, Tschaikowsky arrived at music by a circuitous route, almost
by accident. Moussorgsky, one recalls, was long an officer in the
Czar’s Army before he switched to music. And Borodin always regarded
music as a secondary pursuit to his medical practice and his laboratory
experiments in chemistry. Tschaikowsky was first a lawyer. But soon he
found court action and the preparation of briefs tiresome and unsavory
toil, so at twenty-one he returned to his first love, which was music.
Born on May 7, 1840, Tschaikowsky had begun to study piano at the
age of seven. When he was ten, his father, a director of a foundry
at Votinsk with next to no interest in music, took the family to St.
Petersburg. There young Peter continued his musical studies, never,
though, with any thought of preparing for a career in music. Yet,
later, even while studying law, he went on playing the piano and taking
part in the performances of a choral society. Although he amused
friends by improvising on the piano, few detected any signs of creative
genius. At twenty-one Tschaikowsky made his crucial break. He abandoned
law, began earnestly to master musical theory, and resolved to risk
poverty and starvation by devoting himself to music professionally.
Today we can only applaud his decision. The repertory would be the
poorer without his music. Besides, it is not likely that the law lost a
great practitioner when Tschaikowsky bade it farewell.
His first important step was to enroll in the Russian Musical
Society, later to become the St. Petersburg Conservatory. There
Anton Rubinstein, the renowned pianist and composer, then teaching
composition and orchestration, exerted a lasting influence on him.
At that time Anton’s brother Nicholas was founding the Moscow
Conservatory. Impressed by Tschaikowsky’s brilliant showing at the St.
Petersburg school, he engaged him as instructor in harmony for the
new Moscow organization. Tschaikowsky held the post for eleven years.
The pay was scant, but there were weightier compensations. Nicholas
Rubinstein gave the young man a room in his Moscow house, encouraged
him to compose, introduced him around, and gave him sound advice on
sundry matters. Best of all, he produced many of Tschaikowsky’s early
compositions. Tschaikowsky, loyal and devoted in all his ties, never
forgot his friend. After Rubinstein’s death, he dedicated his Trio, _In
Memory of a Great Artist_, to the great man who had given him his real
start in music and a creative life.
During his second year in the Moscow Conservatory Tschaikowsky fell
madly in love with the French soprano Désirée Artôt, then touring
Russia. While the indecisive Russian wasted time weighing the
advantages and disadvantages of marriage, a Spanish baritone named
Padilla came along, made violent love to Mlle. Artôt, and hurried her
off to the altar before she could catch her breath and notify her
Russian suitor. We nevertheless owe the fickle French lady a debt of
gratitude. Without the emotional disturbance Tschaikowsky might not
have been moved to write the _Romeo and Juliet_ overture-fantasy. His
first serious rebuff in love had at any rate paid dividends in art.
From then on Tschaikowsky wrote at a feverish pace. Whenever his duties
at the Conservatory could spare him, he retired to his study and wrote
symphonies, overtures, operas, chamber music, songs, and religious
choruses. Sometimes a gnawing doubt in his own talents assailed him. To
his friends he wrote voluminous letters complaining of the strong sense
of inferiority bedevilling his work. There were attacks of bleak gloom
and diffidence lasting weeks. Trips to the country or to Italy and
Switzerland were often needed to restore his damaged nervous system and
jarred self-confidence to normalcy. Unfavorable reviews stung him like
wasps. And while Moscow often evidenced great enthusiasm for his music,
St. Petersburg was harder to please. The press there was often virulent
with abuse.
Then Tschaikowsky pinned great hopes on his operas _Eugene Onegin_ and
_Pique Dame_ (“The Queen of Spades”). Both proved fiascos at their
premières, though the public and press later revised their opinions
drastically. Moreover, reports reached him of the cold reception
accorded his _Romeo and Juliet_ in Paris and the catcalls greeting his
music in Vienna. And there was a music critic named Eduard Hanslick in
Vienna who kept Tschaikowsky awake nights wondering what new critical
blast was awaiting his latest Viennese première.
Ironically, America and England were the only two countries instantly
attracted to Tschaikowsky’s music. There his prestige rose with each
new symphony or overture. Cambridge University conferred an honorary
doctor’s degree on him in 1893. Europe was soon to be won over,
however. Despite an often hostile press, the music publics of France,
Germany, and Austria began clamoring for more and more of his music,
and conductors were forced to acquiesce. But to the end he remained a
sorrowing and morose man, hypersensitive, even morbidly so, but almost
always the soul of kindliness and punctilio. When, on the invitation of
Walter Damrosch, Tschaikowsky came to America in 1891, he was widely
acclaimed by public and press. While here he gave six concerts in all,
four in New York, one in Baltimore and one in Philadelphia. In New York
he was guest of honor on the programs of the New York Symphony Society
celebrating the opening of the Music Hall, now Carnegie Hall. The
festival lasted from May 5 to May 9, and Tschaikowsky was widely feted
socially and professionally. He conducted several of his own works in
the hall constructed largely from funds provided by the steel magnate,
Andrew Carnegie.
The year 1877 is an important one in the chronicle of Tschaikowsky’s
life. He made his one disastrous experiment in marriage with a
romantic-minded young conservatory student named Antonina Miliukov.
The girl had aroused his pity and alarm by her passionate avowals of
love and equally passionate threats of suicide. The story is discussed
below in my account of the Fourth Symphony, which grew partly out of
that distressing episode. Suffice it here to note that the experience
was so shattering to Tschaikowsky that he attempted to end his life by
standing up to his neck at night in the freezing waters of the Neva
River. Antonina eventually died in an insane asylum. Tschaikowsky
formed another alliance that year, one far more profitable and far
less nerve-wracking than his short tie with Mlle. Miliukov. This was
his famous friendship with Nadezhka von Meck, a wealthy and cultivated
widow. Out of profound admiration for his music and a probable romantic
hope to become Mrs. Tschaikowsky, Mme. von Meck settled an annuity
amounting to $3,000 on the destitute and ailing composer. The gift
continued for thirteen years. Many letters about life, music, and
people were exchanged between Tschaikowsky and his Lady Bountiful. The
two never met, however. Tschaikowsky’s Fourth Symphony is dedicated to
this remarkable woman, who was the most famous Fairy Godmother in music.
Although Tschaikowsky himself thought of the _Pathetic_ symphony as
his crowning masterpiece, the première on October 28, 1893, in St.
Petersburg proved a disappointment. Tschaikowsky took it bitterly.
Two weeks later, however, the tables were turned. Everybody acclaimed
it warmly. But Tschaikowsky was not there to bow his acknowledgment.
He had fallen victim to the cholera epidemic then raging in St.
Petersburg. Though warned by the authorities, Tschaikowsky drank some
unboiled water on November 2. Four days later he was dead. No symphony
was more appropriately named than this melancholy masterpiece, the
_Pathetic_ symphony, the brooding phrases of which sound truly like the
“swan song” of a tired and abysmally disillusioned man of genius.