Biography about Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Essay Example
Biography about Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Essay Example

Biography about Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Essay Example

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  • Published: May 8, 2022
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on 7th May, 1840 Vyatka region in Russia. He was the second of the six children, had five brothers and one sister. Ilya Chaikovsky, his father, was a mining business executive in Votkinsk. Aleksandra Assier, his mother, was of French and Russian ancestry. At age of five, Tchaikovsky was able to play piano and he enjoyed his mother’s singing and playing. He was educational child and he was traumatized by the death his mother, of cholera in 1854. He went to St. Petersburg School of Law and graduated in 1859, then he worked at the Justice Department of Russian Empire for three years. From 1862 to 1865 he learned music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory under Anton Rubinstein. He became a professor of theory and harmony from 1866 to 1878 at Moscow Conservatory.

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He met Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt who had visited Russia with concert tours.

At that time he wrote his first four Symphonies, The Swan Lake and brilliant Piano Concerto No1, opera Eugene Oneign. Tchaikovsky underwent traumatic personal experiences as a young man. He was attached to Desiree Artot but their engagement was demolished by her mother and she later married another man. In 1876, he wrote to Modest, his brother about his plan to marry whoever will have him. Antonina Ivanovna Milyukova was writing letters of love to him since she was a student at the same Moscow Convertory. She vowed to kill herself if Tchaikovsky would fail to marry her. In the summer of 1877, they married for few weeks which caused him a nervous breakdown. He attempted to commit suicide by trying to himself int

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a river. In 1877, Tchaikovsky separated with Milyukova. She finally ended in an insane asylum where she spent more than twenty years and passed away. Though their marriage was ended legally, He generously supported her economically he died.

Tchaikovsky repurposed some of its material to constitute his subsequent opera after scrapping The Voyevoda. In 1874, Oprichnik, which attained some acclaim when it was done in St. Petersburg at the Maryinsky. Tchaikovsky also earned praise for his Second Symphony at that time. Still the same year, Vakula the Smith got harsh critical reviews yet Tchaikovsky managed to establish himself as a gifted composer of instrumental pieces in B-flat Minorwith his Piano Concerto No.1. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky developed emotional health problems and he was ordered by doctors to leave Russia till his health restored, where he lived Europe for few years. In 1877 to 1878, Tchaikovky settled together with Modest in Switzerland in a village of Clarens. At that time he wrote his popular Violin Concerto in D. He finished his Symphony No. 4 which was stirred by Russian folk songs and devoted it to Nadezhda von Meck. Nadezda von Meck, though she was a widow she financially supported Tshaikovsky from 1877 to 1890, also she had supported Claude Debussy.

She became Tchaikovsky’s devoted pen friend and loved his much so much. They exchanged more than thousand letters in fourteen years but they never met at her insistence. She later ended all communication and support claiming to be bankrupt. The artistic expansion of Sergei Rachmanionoffm was prejudiced by Tchaikovsky who played a vital role in it. Once Rachmaninov was thirteen years, he studied the music of Tchaikovsky under the

instruction of their close friend and also a composer Aleksandr Zverev. Tchaikovsky was one of the members of the Moscow conservatory graduation board. In 1892, he joined many other artists in reference that Rachmaninov was to be given the Gold Medal. Also Tchaikovsky was involved in popularization of Rachmaninov’s graduation work the opera Aleko. Tchaikovsky’s promotion Rachmaninov’s opera Aleko was involved in the repertory and done at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. Tchaikovsky wrote his best Symphonies No.5 and No.6, ballets, The Nutcracker and The Sleeping Beauty, operas Iolanta and The Queen of Spades.

He made a successful conducting tour of Europe appearing in Leipzig, Prague, Hamburg, London and Paris. In 1891, he also went on a two month tour of America where he gave concerts in Philadelphia, Baltimore and in New York. The same year, Tchaikovsky was the conductor in New York on the certified opening night of Carnergie Hall. He became a close friend of Antonin Dvorak and Edvard Grieg. In 1892, he heard Gustav Mahler performing his opera Eugene Onegin in Hamburg and he performed the premiere of his Symphony No. 6 in Russia on 1893. Tchaikovsky died in St. Petersburg in 1893. Though the cause of his death was officially confirmed as cholera, some of his profilers believed that he committed suicide after disgrace of a sex scandal trial.

Works cited

  1. Tchaikovsky, Modeste. The life and letters of Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. The Minerva Group, Inc., 2004.7-23
  2. Vernon, Philip Ewart. Creativity: selected readings. Penguin (Non-Classics), 1970.83-127
  3. Tchaikovsky, Peter Ilich. Letters to his family: an autobiography. Scarborough House, 1981. 14- 36
  4. Yoffe, Elkhonon, LidyaYoffe, and Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky. Tchaikovsky in America: the composer's visit in

1891. Oxford University Press, USA, 1986. 106-118

  • Holden, Anthony. Tchaikovsky: A Biography. Random House Incorporated, 1995. 45-57
  • Kamien, Roger, and Anita Kamien. Music: an appreciation. McGraw-Hill, 1988. 61-72
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