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Tchaikovsky redirects here. For the Patter Song by Danny Kaye , see Tchaikovsky (song) Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (n Composer of the Romantic era. Although not a member of the group of nationalistic composers usually known in English -speaking countries as 'The Five' , his music has come to be known and loved for its distinctly Russian character as well as its rich harmonies and stirring melodies. His works, however, were much more western than those of his Russian contemporaries as he effectively used international elements in addition to national folk melodies. EARLY LIFE Pyotr Tchaikovsky was born in Votkinsk , a small town in present-day Udmurtia (at the time the Vyatka Guberniya under Imperial Russia ), the son of a mining engineer in the government mines and the second of his three wives, Alexandra, a Russian woman of French ancestry. Musically precocious, he began Piano lessons at the age of five, and in a few months was already proficient at Friedrich Kalkbrenner 's composition ''Le Fou''. In 1850 , his father was appointed director of the Saint Petersburg Technological Institute . There, the younger Tchaikovsky obtained an excellent general education at the School Of Jurisprudence , and furthered his instruction on the piano with the director of the music library. Also during this time, he made the acquaintance of the Italian master Luigi Piccioli, who influenced the young man away from German music, and encouraged the love of Rossini , Bellini , and Donizetti . His father indulged Tchaikovsky's interest in music by funding studies with Rudolph Kündinger, a well-known piano teacher from Nuremberg . Under Kündinger, Tchaikovsky's aversion to German music was overcome, and a lifelong affinity to the music of Mozart was seeded. When his mother died of Cholera in 1854 , the 14-year-old composed a Waltz in her memory. Tchaikovsky left school in 1859 and received employment as an under-secretary in the Ministry of Justice, where he soon joined the Ministry's choral group. In 1861 , he befriended a fellow civil servant who had studied with Nikolai Zaremba ,who urged him to resign his position and pursue his studies further. Not ready to give up employment, Tchaikovsky agreed to begin lessons in musical theory with Zaremba. The following year, when Zaremba joined the faculty of the new St. Petersburg Conservatory , Tchaikovsky followed his teacher and enrolled, but still did not give up his post at the ministry, until his father consented to support him. From 1862 to 1865 , Tchaikovsky studied Harmony , Counterpoint and the Fugue with Zaremba, and instrumentation and composition under the director and founder of the Conservatory, Anton Rubinstein , who was impressed by Tchaikovsky's talent. MUSICAL CAREER After graduating, Tchaikovsky was approached by Rubinstein's brother Nikolai to become professor of harmony, composition, and the History Of Music . Tchaikovsky gladly accepted the position, as his father had retired and lost his property. The next ten years were spent teaching and composing. Teaching proved taxing, and in 1877 he suffered a breakdown. After a year off, he attempted to return to teaching, but retired his post soon after. He spent some time in Italy and Switzerland , but eventually took residence with his sister, who had an estate just outside of Kiev . Tchaikovsky took to orchestral , his confidence gradually increased to the extent that he took to regularly conducting his pieces. Tchaikovsky visited America in 1891 in a triumphant tour to conduct performances of his works. On May 5 , he conducted the New York Symphony Society's Orchestra in a performance of '' Marche Solenelle '' on the opening night New York's Carnegie Hall . That evening was followed by subsequent performances of his ''Third Suite'' on May 7 , and the A Cappella choruses '' Pater Noster '' and '' Legend '' on May 8 . Just nine days after the first performance of his Sixth Symphony , ''Pathétique'', in 1893 , in Saint Petersburg, Tchaikovsky died (see section below). Some musicologists (e.g. Milton Cross, David Ewen) believe that he consciously wrote his Sixth Symphony as his own Requiem. In the development section of the first movement, the rapidly progressing evolution of the transformed first theme suddenly "shifts into neutral" in the strings, and a rather quiet, harmonized chorale emerges in the trombones. The trombone theme bears absolutely no relation to the music that preceded it, and none to the music which follows it. It appears to be musically a "non sequitur", an anomaly — but it is from the Russian Orthodox Mass for the Dead, in which it is sung to the words: "And may his soul rest with the souls of all the saints." Tchaikovsky was interred in Tikhvin Cemetery at the Alexander Nevsky Monastery in Saint Petersburg. PERSONAL LIFE During his puberty at the School of Jurisprudence, Tchaikovsky discovered his romantic attraction to other boys. As he matured to manhood he continued to engage in affairs with younger men. As a young man he was infatuated with a (female) soprano, but she married another man. One of his conservatory students, Antonina Milyukova , began writing him passionate letters around the time that he had made up his mind to "marry whoever will have me." He did not even remember her from his classes, but her letters were very persistent, and he hastily married her on July 18 , 1877 . Within days, while still on their honeymoon, he deeply regretted his decision. Two weeks after the wedding the composer attempted suicide by wading in a cold river. He later fled to Saint Petersburg a nervous wreck, and was separated from his wife after only six weeks. The couple never saw each other again. Antonina Milyukova died in a mental institution 24 years later. They remained legally married until his death. The composer's Homosexuality has long been generally accepted, as well as its importance to his music. His relationships have been documented by historians such as Rictor Norton, Alexander Poznansky and others. A far more influential woman in Tchaikovsky's life was a wealthy widow, Nadezhda Von Meck , with whom he exchanged 1,200 letters between 1877 and 1890 . At her insistence they never met; they did encounter each other on two occasions, purely by chance, but did not converse. As well as financial support in the amount of 6,000 Ruble s a year, she expressed interest in his musical career and admiration for his music. However, after 14 years she ended the relationship unexpectedly, claiming bankruptcy. It was during this period that Tchaikovsky achieved success throughout Europe and (by his own account), in 1891 , even greater accolades in the United States . In fact, he was the Conductor , on May 5 th, 1891 , at the official opening night of Carnegie Hall . Meck's claim of financial ruin is disregarded by some who believe that she ended her patronage of Tchaikovsky because she supposedly discovered the composer's homosexuality. It is possible she was planning to marry off one of her daughters to Tchaikovsky, as she also supposedly tried to marry one of them to Claude Debussy , who had lived in Russia for a time as music teacher to her family. Also, one of her sons, Nikolay, was married to Tchaikovsky's niece Anna Davydova. Tchaikovsky's life, largely exaggerated and fictionalized, is the subject of Ken Russell 's motion picture '' The Music Lovers ''. Two other motion pictures were based on his life - the low-budgeted, sanitized and highly fictionalized Song Of My Heart , released in 1948, and the 1969 Russian-language "Tchaikovsky" , which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film . His last name derives from the word ''chaika'' (чайка), meaning Seagull in a number of Slavic languages. His family origins may not have been entirely Russian. In an early letter to Nadezhda Von Meck , Tchaikovsky wrote that his name was Polish and his ancestors were "probably Polish ." TCHAIKOVSKY'S DEATH Until recent years it had been generally assumed that Tchaikovsky died of Cholera after drinking infected water. However, a controversial theory published in 1980 by Aleksandra Orlova and based only on oral history (i.e. without documentary evidence), explains Tchaikovsky's death as a suicide. In this account, Tchaikovsky committed suicide by consuming small doses of Arsenic following an attempt to blackmail him over his homosexuality. His alleged death by cholera (whose symptoms have some similarity with arsenic poisoning) is supposed to have been a cover for this suicide. According to the theory, Tchaikovsky's own brother Modest, also homosexual, helped conspire to keep the secret. The suicide theory is hotly disputed by others, including Alexander Poznansky, who argues that Tchaikovsky could easily have drunk tainted water because his class regarded cholera as a disease that afflicted only poor people, or because restaurants would mix cool boiled water with unboiled; that the circumstances of his death are entirely consistent with cholera; and that homosexuality ("gentlemanly games") was widely tolerated among the upper classes of Tsarist Russia. To this day, no one knows how Tchaikovsky truly died. MUSICAL WORKS See also Ballets Tchaikovsky is well known for his Ballet s, although it was only in his last years, with his last two ballets, that his contemporaries came to really appreciate his finer qualities as Ballet Music composer.
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