Pyotr IlyichTchaikovsky

At Kamenka on 6 July 1878, Tchaikovsky was explaining to Nadezhda von Meck how he composed. Ideas came to him in the middle of conversations, and he kept them in his head until he could sketch them on the first sheet of paper to hand. He held that waiting for the right mood was no way to work. “Inspiration is a guest who does not like to visit the idle,” he told her. He then stopped for dinner. At two o’clock he resumed, and went on to sketching, orchestration, fair copies and how far a symphony must keep to its traditional form.

1840–⁠66Leaving the Ministry of Justice

He was born in Votkinsk, where his father managed an ironworks. He grew deeply attached to his French governess, Fanny Dürbach, and began piano lessons at the end of 1845. The profession chosen for him was the law. In 1850 he entered the preparatory class of the Imperial School of Jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg. Four years later his mother died of cholera. He graduated in 1859 and took a post at the Ministry of Justice, while giving more and more of his time to opera and concerts.

Anton Rubinstein’s new Saint Petersburg Conservatory gave him a way out of the civil service. Tchaikovsky enrolled in 1862, studied composition with Rubinstein and theory with Nikolai Zaremba, and in 1863 took leave from the ministry, resigning formally in 1867. In 1866 he moved to Moscow to teach harmony at the new conservatory run by Rubinstein’s brother Nikolai. He earned his living by teaching, writing criticism and translating textbooks, and composed in the remaining hours. He remained on the conservatory staff for twelve years.

MoscowRomeo and Juliet and the First Piano Concerto

Balakirev, the leader of the nationalist circle that included Mussorgsky and Rimsky-⁠Korsakov, suggested Romeo and Juliet. He sent forceful advice about its design, and Tchaikovsky revised it repeatedly between 1869 and 1880. A wind chorale represents the Friar. The feud is set in fast string writing. The lovers’ theme is played by cor anglais and muted violas together.

Nikolai Rubinstein was an equally formidable listener. When Tchaikovsky played him the First Piano Concerto at the beginning of 1875, he greeted it with severe criticism. Hans von Bülow took it up and gave the première in Boston that October. The large D♭ major opening tune does not return after the introduction. Swan Lake followed in 1875–⁠76. It was first staged in Moscow in 1877. The Petipa–Ivanov revival of 1895, with Riccardo Drigo’s alterations to the score, established much of the ballet in the form it is now performed.

1877–⁠78The marriage and the letters

In July 1877 he married Antonina Milyukova, who had written to him declaring her love. Tchaikovsky was gay. He hoped that marriage would quieten gossip and give his life an acceptable public shape; Antonina expected a husband who could love her. By the autumn they were living apart. They never divorced. He went abroad, and while the marriage collapsed he continued work on the Fourth Symphony and Eugene Onegin.

Von Meck’s support made a different life possible. A wealthy widow, she began paying him an allowance in 1877, and the following year he was able to give up regular teaching. In her letters she asked him what a symphony meant and how a melody arrived. In Florence on 1 March 1878 he answered her question about the Fourth with a musical example of the opening fanfare: “This is Fate”. The fanfare interrupts the first movement’s uneasy 9/8 dance and returns in the finale, breaking into festivities built partly from In the Field Stood a Birch Tree.

Tatyana writes her letter alone at night, with the orchestra accompanying her. Onegin answers with composure. Later, at her name-day party, the gossip that helps provoke Lensky’s fatal challenge is spread during a waltz. The final Saint Petersburg ball begins with a polonaise. Onegin finds Tatyana transformed and realises, several years too late, that he loves her.

The working yearsKlin, travels and the ballets

After 1878 Tchaikovsky travelled widely and rented country houses near Moscow, settling at Klin in 1892. He wrote the Violin Concerto in Switzerland in 1878, and the String Serenade and the 1812 overture in 1880. After Nikolai Rubinstein died, Tchaikovsky wrote the Piano Trio of 1881–⁠82 in his memory. Its long variation movement builds to a climax, and then the opening lament returns as a funeral march. His operas ranged from Schiller’s The Maid of Orleans to Pushkin’s Mazepa. By the later 1880s he was conducting his music across Europe, and in 1891 he travelled to America for the opening celebrations of Carnegie Hall.

The Fifth Symphony, completed in 1888, brings its opening clarinet motto into every movement and at the end presents it in E major. For The Sleeping Beauty, Petipa supplied a detailed plan of dances and stage action. Tchaikovsky took pleasure in filling it, with the courtly processions, Aurora’s long adagio with her four suitors and the quarrel between Carabosse and the Lilac Fairy. The première was in 1890. In the same year came The Queen of Spades, in which the Countess remembers a French song from her youth while Hermann pursues his secret of the three cards.

1893The Sixth Symphony and Tchaikovsky’s death

He conducted the Sixth Symphony in Saint Petersburg on 28 October 1893. The second movement is in five beats to the bar. The third ends with a loud march, and the finale follows, marked Adagio lamentoso. Its violin melody is divided in fragments between the two violin sections and is heard as a single line. The closing pages move down into B minor and end with the lower strings playing alone.