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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Part 1: His Early Life 1840 – 1867

ESTABLISH THE 4TH MOVEMENT OF THE 6TH SYMPHONY, THE PATHETIQUE AND WEAVE UNDER THE FOLLOWING

TCHAIKOVSKY:

I am made up of contradictions, and I have reached a very mature age without resting upon anything positive, without having calmed my restless spirit either by religion or philosophy. Undoubtedly I should have gone mad but for music. Music is indeed the most beautiful of all Heaven’s gifts to humanity wandering in the darkness. Alone it calms, enlightens, and stills our souls. It is not the straw to which the drowning man clings; but a true friend, refuge, and comforter, for whose sake life is worth living.

NARRATOR:

We present the Life of Tchaikovsky by Shaun MacLoughlin.

In October 1893 he wrote to his publisher about his Sixth Symphony, the Pathetique:

(BRING UP THE PATHETIQUE AGAIN AND WEAVE UNDER THE FOLLOWING)

TCHAIKOVSKY:

Something strange seems to be happening with this symphony. It’s not that people don’t like it, more that they seem puzzled by it. As for myself I am prouder of this symphony than of anything I have written. Never mind. We’ll soon be able to talk this over, as I’ll see you in Moscow on Saturday.

NARRATOR:

A week later he was dead.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker, the 1812 Overture, his First Piano Concerto, his last three numbered symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin.

Born into a middle-class family, he was educated for a career as a civil servant, but pursued a musical career against the wishes of his family. He entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, where his Western-oriented training set him apart from the contemporary nationalistic movement.

TCHAIKOVSKY:

It is a sad and unpleasant price of fame that that one day people will probe into my thoughts and feelings, into everything that I have so carefully hidden throughout my life.

NARRATOR:

In spite of his suppressed homosexuality and fear of exposure, and his disastrous marriage, his public reputation grew. He was honoured by the Tsar, awarded a lifetime pension and lauded in the concert halls of the world. His sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, but some attribute it to suicide.

One of his greatest exponents, Vladimir Ashkenazy has written:

ASHKENAZY:

It is a terrible irony that so much suffering and torment bequeathed us so much wonderful music.

(BRING UP THE PATHETIQUE AND PLAY OUT AS APPROPRIATE)

NARRATOR:

Like other great composers, Beethoven and Mozart, he was born within sight of mountains. Votkinsk is 1,000 kilometres north east of Moscow at the foot of the Urals. His father Ilya Petrovich Tchaikovsky, a Lieutenant Colonel in the Department of Mines, was a kindly and industrious man. His first wife died leaving Pyotr with one older step daughter, Zinaida.

Within two years Ilya, something of a lady’s man, married Alexandra daughter of the Marquis André d’Assier. Nicolay was their first and Pyotr, born 7th May 1940, their second son. Alexandra was a distant mother, absorbed by her status in small town society and longing to get back to St. Petersburg, whence she had come. However young Pyotr worshipped her and all his life was haunted by her playing the piano and by her large and beautiful hands.

TCHAIKOVSKY:

Such hands do not exist nowadays, and never will again.

NARRATOR:

FANNY:

A daughter, Sasha, followed a year later and in 1843 a third son, Ippolit. This gave their mother, an excuse to visit St. Petersburg, the imperial capital, to search for a governess. She persuaded Fanny Dürbach, a demure and warm hearted, 22 year old French protestant to return to the remote Urals with her. Any apprehensions Fanny had were dispelled by their arrival at Votkinsk.

When at last we reached the house, one moment was enough to show that all my fears were groundless. A crowd of people ran out to greet us; there were joyous embraces and kisses; amid the throng, it was hard to tell family from servants. Monsieur Tchaikovsky came up to me and without a word, embraced and kissed me like a daughter.

NARRATOR:

One day Fanny scolded Petya, as he was nicknamed, and his older brother, Nicolay, for failing to solve a problem and berated them for ingratitude to their father, who worked hard and made sacrifices for them. Nicolay was unmoved, but:

FANNY:

NARRATOR:

Petya remained sombre at supper. I had completely forgotten the incident; but at bedtime, he suddenly burst into tears and insisted how desperately he loved his father. His sensitivity passed all imagining. Truly he was a child of glass.

On a visit to St. Petersburg his father had brought home an orchestrion, which could play airs from Bellini, Donizetti, Weber, Rossini and Mozart.

This primitive instrument fostered a lifelong adoration of Mozart. He later recognised:

It is entirely thanks to Mozart that I chose to dedicate my life to music. He it was who inspired my first efforts, and made me love music above anything else in the world.

NARRATOR:

By the age of six he would rush from orchestrion to the piano and pick out the tunes. Also from the age of seven he wrote poems in French about Joan of Arc, Mother Russia and his guardian angel.

Some moderns doubt that Tchaikovsky remained religious. Here is his Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

(ESTABLISH LITURGY OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM AND THEN PLAY UNDER)

This poem about his guardian angel was in Fanny’s keeping fifty years later.

TCHAIKOVSKY AS A BOY:

Your golden wings fly to me.
You speak to me.
How happy am I,
When you come to me.
Your wings are also white and pure.
Come once more
To tell me of the power of God.

(BRING UP LITURGY OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM AND THEN PLAY OUT AS APPROPRIATE)

NARRATOR:

Petya’s idyllic childhood came to an end the following year, when Fanny left the family. Partly due to his mother’s restlessness, the family moved to Moscow, thence to St Petersburg, thence to Alapaevsk, a bleak industrial town in the Urals. When he was ten it was decided to send him 800 miles away to the prep school to the elitist Imperial School of Jurisprudence in St. Petersburg. It was renowned for its strict discipline and for preparing its pupils to be top flight civil servants.

(ESTABLISH OVERTURE TO GLINKA’S LIFE FOR THE TSAR AND WEAVE UNDER FOLLOWING)

Before depositing him at the school his mother took him to the opera for a performance of Glinka’s Life for the Tsar. It was one of the highlights of his life; but his joy was short lived.

(INTERWEAVE WITH THE MUSIC, THE SOUNDS EFFECTS OF BOY SOBBING, SCUFFLE, WHIP LASH, CARRIAGE MOVING OFF AND BOY FALLING AND SCREAMING – AS DESCRIBED. WEAVE UNDER)

When the time came for his mother to leave him, he sobbed uncontrollably. As the carriage door was closed upon her departure, he refused to let go of the handle. He had to be hauled off by force. As the coachman whipped the horses, he chased after the carriage. Grabbing the backboard, he was dragged along the muddied, cobbled street until shaken off. Years later his brother Modest wrote:

MODEST:

To his life’s end, he could never recall this hour without a shiver of horror. Although he went through many tragic experiences, although he knew disappointments and renunciations, he could never forget the sense of resentful despair as the carriage containing his beloved mother disappeared from view.

(BRING UP LIFE FOR THE TSAR AND PLAY OUT)

NARRATOR:

The next year he wrote to his father.

TCHAIKOVSKY AS A BOY:

I congratulate you, my saintly Papa, on your Saint’s Day, and wish you all good things on earth. I also send good wishes to my lovely, precious Mama.

I like to remember this day last year. We went out on a boat trip. I remember the tent. I remember the boat. I remember the peasant choir. I remember the Ekaterinburg orchestra. I remember the dancing. I remember Sasha, Malya, Polya and me. Finally I remember that poor creature, which has flown from its little nest, which has said farewell to all that it will never see again – I remember Pyotr Tchaikovsky.

NARRATOR:

At twelve he passed the examinations to enter the school proper, where he worked from 6 a.m to 10 p.m six days a week and where public floggings were not unusual. Forty years later his brother Ippolit described the process.

(SOUND OF FLOGGING AS DESCRIBED)

IPPOLIT:

I cannot forget that disgusting experience. When I had to watch and hear the swish of the huge, supple birches, brandished with a run-up by strong soldiers straining one after the other to strike the strongest blow across the boy’s ravaged body, my legs grew weak, my head swam, and I would close my eyes, close to fainting.

NARRATOR:

There is no evidence that the young Pyotr Tchaikovsky was lashed and he seems to have been popular. It is almost certain that in this hot house atmosphere of boys only, he first realised his homosexuality.

Then when he was fourteen tragedy struck. His mother died of cholera.

TCHAIKOVSKY AS A BOY:

She died without having time to say farewell.

NARRATOR:

As his brother Modest said:

MODEST:

All his life he could not mention his mother without weeping.

NARRATOR:

To solace himself, he began, in secret, to compose.

(ESTABLISH ZEMFIRA’S SONG AND WEAVE UNDER THE FOLLOWING)

He wrote Zemfira’s Song as early as 1855, when he was only 15. We hear the gypsy, Zemfira, scorning her harsh elderly husband in favour of her lover, who is ‘young, brave, fresher than spring, and warmer than a summer’s day’.

It was a setting of a verse of Pushkin. Perhaps it was prophetic in that his operas The Queen of Spades and Eugene Onegin were also to contain verses by Pushkin.

He also compensated for his mother’s death by beginning intense life long friendships with Alexy Apukhtin, who later became his lover and whose poems he also set to music. He called him:

TCHAIKOVSKY:

My court jester and best friend.

NARRATOR:

… and with Vladimir Gerard, a forensic orator, who later delivered his funeral oration. While still at school he acquired the lifelong habits of drinking and smoking. As he reflected many years later:

TCHAIKOVSKY:

NARRATOR:

It is said that to abuse oneself with drink is harmful. I entirely agree. Yet it is a poison I cannot do without. I now get drunk every night, and cannot do otherwise. In the first stage of drunkenness I feel a great happiness. I comprehend so much more than when I’m sober. And in truth, I haven’t noticed my health suffers much.

But he remained remarkably out of trouble at school. As one of his schoolmates later recalled:

SCHOOLMATE:

There was definitely something special about him that separated him from the rest of us and made our hearts go out to him. Kindness, generosity, a keen responsiveness to others and a curious light-heartedness were characteristic of him in those days.

(BRING UP ZEMFIRA’S SONG AND PLAY OUT)

NARRATOR:

In 1859 he left the school and became a junior civil servant, working as little as possible and leading a somewhat dissolute social life. As he said of himself:

TCHAIKOVSKY:

When I have money in my pocket I invariably squander it on pleasures. That this is both dishonourable and foolish I know full well. I have huge debts to settle; yet such is my lack of moral strength, that I abandon myself wholly to enjoyment.

NARRATOR:

Yet within two years his musical tastes began to get the upper hand. He also cared for his father and acted in many ways as a surrogate mother to his younger twin brothers, Modest and Anatoly. He wrote to his sister:

TCHAIKOVSKY:

NARRATOR:

My musical talent was discussed at dinner. Papa insists it’s not too late to become an artist. But even if I do have some talent, it’s probably too late for me to develop it. They have made a civil servant out of me and a bad one at that.

However within two years he enrolled part time in the Russian Musical Society, which a year later became the St Petersburg Conservatoire, under the dynamic leadership of Anton Rubinstein, perhaps the greatest Russian pianist of the 19th Century. In 1863 Tchaikovsky resigned his post at the Ministry and became a full time student. He was happy to become less extravagant. His brother Modest wrote:

MODEST:

In a small, narrow room, having space only for a bed and a writing table, he joyfully began his new, arduous life, and sitting through the night over his musical tasks, was completely happy and serene, being assured that he was now set upon his true course.

NARRATOR:

LAROCHE:

NARRATOR:

Anton Rubinstein ran the school like a benevolent despot, setting his students fiendishly difficult exercises. As Herman Laroche, a friend of Tchaikovsky put it:

He inspired us students with unbounded affection, and not inconsiderable awe.

His creative approach was in direct contrast to the doctrinaire approach of Tchaikovsky’s tutor, Nikolay Zaremba. This was the ideal combination to help the young student to find his own voice.

(INTRODUCE THE STORM AND PLAY UNDER)

NARRATOR:

Rubinstein set Tchaikovsky a composition exercise during the summer holidays that he spent enjoying the high life with aristocratic friends in the Ukraine. He chose to write an overture to Ostrovsky’s play The Storm. It was regarded as the finest play by Russia’s leading playwright. In spite of the overture’s originality, fiery temperament and intensity, Rubinstein did not approve of it, and it was never published in Tchaikovsky’s lifetime. However many regard it as the first mature work of the 24 year old composer. It also demonstrates how he was often to need an extra musical stimulus to fire his inspiration.

NARRATOR:

(BRING UP THE STORM AND THEN TAKE UNDER AGAIN)

The play tells the story of Katerina, married to a pallid young man, dominated by his mother. Katerina has fallen in love with another man. When her husband, despite her desperate pleading, journeys to Moscow without her, she succumbs to her passion. After her husband’s return a great storm breaks, and her terror of being struck dead drives her to confess her guilt. Hounded by her mother-in-law, she drowns herself in the Volga.

(BRING UP THE STORM AND PLAY UNDER AGAIN)

Tchaikovsky continued to have an extremely nervous disposition. At his debut as a conductor the following year, he directed the entire performance with his left hand and used his left to keep his head on. Modest described how:

MODEST:

He suffered attacks the like of which were never to recur. The doctor declared him to be “but a step away from madness’. The chief symptoms were the tormenting hallucinations, which so terrified the victim that he lost all sensations in his arms and legs, which became completely paralysed.

(BRING UP THE STORM AND PLAY OUT AS APPROPRIATE)

NARRATOR:

Fortunately he recovered and before he graduated at the St. Petersburg Conservatoire, Anton Rubinstein’s brother Nikolay, (also a pianist), offered him a teaching post at the newly formed Moscow Conservatoire.

Tchaikovsky also moved in to live with him, and was swept up into a world of conviviality that the shy composer did not find entirely to his taste.

Nikolay Kashkin described his feelings about his new setting:

KASHKIN:

NARRATOR:

He revered Moscow’s ancient monuments, and he enjoyed the picturesque views of the Kremlin. But he couldn’t stand the dirty, swampy pavements, and the lack of facilities for citizens of limited means. In all his truest sentiments he remained a son of St. Petersburg.

As well as shyness there was another side to Tchaikovsky.

(INTRODUCE SOUND OF STEAM TRAIN, THEN MIX WITH THE MAZURKA FROM GLINKA’S A LIFE OF THE TSAR AND TAKE UNDER)

At about this time he went on a journey by train with his friend Ivan Klimenko:

KLIMENKO:

Petya began playing about, and doing take-offs of ballet recitatives (he did this wonderfully well), striking all kinds of ballet poses, and then suddenly said to us:

TCHAIKOVSKY:

Gentlemen, would you like me to dance the mazurka before the ladies in the next compartment?

KLIMENKO:

Before anyone could reply, he began with exaggerated passion to sing the mazurka from A Life for the Tsar and dashed boldly on with inspired face, into the neighbouring compartment, danced the mazurka, afterwards saying ‘pardon’ to the ladies, before turning his back on them and returning to us with the same mazurka, keeping a completely serious expression on his face the while. Then, of course, he joined in our quite helpless laughter.

(BRING UP RUSSIAN MALE LAUGHTER MIXED WITH THE STEAM TRAIN AND WITH THE MAZURKA AND PLAY OUT AS APPROPRIATE)

Part 2: The Women in Tchaikovsky's Life 1867 – 1877

Music of the Great Composers

Johann Sebastian Bach

Ludwig van Beethoven

(SOUND OF FLOGGING AS DESCRIBED)

Part 1: His Early Life 1840 – 1867

TCHAIKOVSKY:

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