At first sight, this symphony arouses no “cherchez la femme” mystery.
Seemingly, the lady is not far to seek. In fact, Tschaikowsky throws
off the search in his dedication. The lady is Madame Nadia Filaretovna
von Meck. She was his loyal confidante and benefactress. The least
Tschaikowsky could do was to dedicate a symphony to her. Comfort and
encouragement in the form of checks and adulatory letters from Mme. von
Meck saw the sorrowing Slav through many bleak periods.
The association has been called “the most amazing romance in musical
history.” That the “romance” was purely platonic does not make it any
the less “amazing.” Whatever Mme. von Meck’s secret hopes and longings,
Tschaikowsky shrank from carrying the liaison beyond epistolary scope.
Mme. von Meck resigned herself to an advisory role of patroness-friend,
and played it nobly. The world reveres her for it. “_Our_ symphony,”
Tschaikowsky wrote to her, communicating his intention to dedicate the
Fourth to her. “I believe you will find in it echoes of your deepest
thoughts and feelings.”
What Tschaikowsky meant, of course, was “_my_ deepest thoughts and
feelings.” The plural possessive, “_ours_,” is gallant rather than
collaborative. Even so, he could with more truth than courtesy have
written to another woman, Antonina Ivanovna Miliukov, in similar
style. Antonina was Tschaikowsky’s wife in a domestic farce lasting
two weeks. The whole episode—spanning a wild sequence of engagement,
marriage, flight in the night, attempted suicide, separation—nestles
snugly in the period of the symphony’s origin. Antonina would have
understood the words “_our_ symphony.” Only fate and brother Anatol
saved it from becoming Tschaikowsky’s obituary. Not that it was
Antonina’s fault. Far from it. But no psychological analysis of the
Fourth can be complete without her.
The girl was a conservatory pupil. Tschaikowsky’s music acted like
magic on her. Through it she came to a slavish worship of the composer.
Next followed written avowals of love sizzling with passion. At first
Tschaikowsky was amused, then alarmed, finally haunted. The girl was
persistent. Her pleas grew piteous. To make matters worse, Tschaikowsky
was immersed in his romantic opera _Eugene Onegin_ at the time. He had
just composed music for Tatiana’s impassioned love-letter to Onegin.
Antonina’s plight was too much like the spurned Tatiana’s to be lost on
Tschaikowsky’s sensitive nature. Onegin’s cold disdain had virtually
wrecked the girl’s life. Antonina might even kill herself. Tschaikowsky
saw himself as another and more heartless Onegin. The situation
probably stroked his vanity, too.
He made a naïve offer of friendship. It only stirred up more trouble.
He finally granted a meeting. Antonina had won. The girl was deaf
to his self-depiction as a morose, ill-tempered neurotic who would
assuredly drive her mad. Antonina knew better. No, there was only
one way out—marriage. Tschaikowsky became engaged. He repented at
leisure. Attempts to break the engagement proved futile. Antonina was
bent on becoming Mrs. Tschaikowsky. They were married. A few days later
Tschaikowsky fled for his sanity. They were reconciled. There followed
two hellish weeks of tragi-farcical life together in Moscow. One night,
in a wild daze, Tschaikowsky fled again. He wandered about wildly and
reached the Moscow River. He had made up his mind. He stood neck-deep
in the water, hoping to freeze to death. He was rescued in time.
Though for long he “bordered on insanity,” somehow he came through
the crisis with most of his mind. His brother Anatol took him to
Switzerland. Slowly Tschaikowsky got back to normal. He never saw
Antonina Ivanovna again. The clinical aspects of the case have been
thoroughly aired in recent years. The publication of long-withheld
letters throw fresh light on Tschaikowsky’s temperament. Antonina and
he were mentally and physically incompatible. Despite the fearful
suicidal state into which his marriage plunged him, Tschaikowsky never
made a harsh reference to his wife. Antonina, for her part, graciously
cleared him in her memoirs. “Peter was in no way to blame,” she wrote.
[Illustration: The house at Votinsk, in western Russia, where
Tschaikowsky was born and where he spent the early years of his life
before his family moved to St. Petersburg.]
[Illustration: Mme. Nadeshka von Meck, Tschaikowsky’s life-long
benefactress, whom he corresponded with but never met.]
During this period, which extends from May to September, 1877,
Tschaikowsky worked on his Fourth Symphony. Just how much of his
private woes were transmuted into symphonic speech cannot be
determined, even from Tschaikowsky’s own written confidences. Possibly,
the symphony was an avenue of escape from his mounting anxieties.
Anyway, his completion of the sketch coincides with his engagement to
Antonina in May. The orchestration of the first movement took up a
month, from August 11 to September 12—the breathing spell between his
two flights from Antonina. Then followed the nerve-racking fortnight
in Moscow. The other three movements were completed in the Swiss Alps,
where, thanks to his brother, he regained his full sanity and working
tempo. A passage in a letter to Mme. von Meck, during the Antonina
regime, suggests an explanation of Tschaikowsky’s abstract talk of Fate
in connection with his Fourth: “We cannot escape our fate, and there
was something fatalistic about my meeting with this girl.” In January,
1878, when the whole dismal affair was safely locked away in the past,
he wrote to Mme. von Meck that he could only recall his marriage as a
bad dream:
“Something remote, a weird nightmare in which a man bearing my name,
my likeness, and my consciousness acted as one acts in dreams: in a
meaningless, disconnected, paradoxical way. That was not my sane self,
in possession of logical and reasonable will-powers. Everything I
then did bore the character of an unhealthy conflict between will and
intelligence, which is nothing less than insanity.”
Tschaikowsky wrote to the composer Taneieff that there was not a single
bar in his Fourth Symphony which he had not truly felt and which
was not an echo of his “most intimate self.” He frankly avowed the
symphony’s “programmatic” character, but declared it was “impossible
to give the program in words.” Yet, to Mme. von Meck, who insisted on
knowing the full spiritual and emotional content of the symphony, he
wrote out a detailed analysis which has long been familiar to concert
audiences. In reading it the listener usually does one of three things:
takes it literally; regards it as irrelevant to the music as such;
relates it to Tschaikowsky’s private life. There is the fourth choice
of combining all three. In that choice lies the synthesis of mind,
emotion, and external stimuli which is regarded as the very stuff of
art.
“Our symphony has a program,” he writes. “That is to say, it is
possible to express its contents in words, and I will tell you—and
you alone—the meaning of the entire work and its separate movements.
Naturally I can only do so as regards its general features.
“The Introduction is the kernel, the quintessence, the chief thought
of the whole symphony. This is Fate, the fatal power which hinders one
in the pursuit of happiness from gaining the goal, which jealously
provides that peace and comfort do not prevail, that the sky is not
free from clouds—a might that swings, like the sword of Damocles,
constantly over the head, that poisons continually the soul. This might
is overpowering and invincible. There is nothing to do but to submit
and vainly to complain.
“The feeling of despondency and despair grows ever stronger and more
passionate. It is better to turn from the realities and to lull
oneself in dreams. O joy! What a fine sweet dream! A radiant being,
promising happiness, floats before me and beckons me. The importunate
first dream of the Allegro is now heard afar off, and now the soul
is wholly enwrapped with dreams. There is no thought of gloom and
cheerlessness. Happiness! Happiness! Happiness! No, they are only
dreams, and Fate dispels them. The whole of life is only a constant
alternation between dismal reality and flattering dreams of happiness.
There is no port: you will be tossed hither and thither by the waves
until the sea swallows you. Such is the program, in substance, of the
first movement.
“The second movement shows another phase of sadness. Here is that
melancholy feeling which enwraps one when he sits at night alone in
the house exhausted by work; the book which he had taken to read has
slipped from his hand; a swarm of reminiscences has arisen. How sad it
is that so much has already _been_ and _gone_! And yet it is a pleasure
to think of the early years. One mourns the past and has neither the
courage nor the will to begin a new life. One is rather tired of life.
One wishes to recruit his strength and to look back, to revive many
things in the memory. One thinks on the gladsome hours when the young
blood boiled and bubbled and there was satisfaction in life. One thinks
also on the sad moments, on irrevocable losses. And all this is now so
far away, so far away. And it is also sad and yet so sweet to muse over
the past.
“There is no determined feeling, no exact expression in the third
movement. Here are capricious arabesques, vague figures which slip into
the imagination when one has taken wine and is slightly intoxicated.
The mood is now gay, now mournful. One thinks about nothing; one gives
the fancy loose rein, and there is pleasure in drawings of marvellous
lines. Suddenly rush into the imagination the picture of a drunken
peasant and a gutter-song. Military music is heard passing by in the
distance. These are disconnected pictures which come and go in the
brain of the sleeper. They have nothing to do with reality; they are
unintelligible, bizarre, out-at-elbows.
“Fourth movement. If you had no pleasure in yourself, look about you.
Go to the people. See how they can enjoy life and give themselves up
entirely to festivity. The picture of a folk-holiday. Hardly have
we had time to forget ourselves in the happiness of others when
indefatigable Fate reminds us once more of its presence. The other
children of men are not concerned with us. They do not spare us a
glance nor stop to observe that we are lonely and sad. How merry and
glad they all are. All their feelings are so inconsequent, so simple.
And you still say that all the world is immersed in sorrow? There still
_is_ happiness, simple, native happiness. Rejoice in the happiness of
others—and you can still live.”