Tchaikowsky and His Orchestral Music 1

Tchaikowsky and His Orchestral Music 1

Tchaikowsky and His Orchestral Music

The New York Philarmonic Symphony Society Presents...

 

Author: Louis Biancolli

 

_Tschaikowsky_

AND HIS ORCHESTRAL MUSIC

 

 

Few great names in music spell as much magic to the average

concert-goer as that of Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky. In almost every

musical form will be found a work of his ranking high in popularity.

And quite deservedly so. Tschaikowsky’s music brims with a warm

humanity and stirring drama. The themes and feelings are easy to

grasp. The personal, intimate note is so strong in this music that we

find it natural, while listening to the _Pathetic_ symphony or the

_Nutcracker_ ballet suite, for example, to share Tschaikowsky’s joys

and sorrows. His music seems to take us into his confidence and show us

the secret places of his heart. Although Tschaikowsky’s range of moods

is wide—from the whimsical play of light fantasy to stormy outcries

of anguish—essentially he was a melancholy man, in his music as in

his life. Perhaps it is the genuineness of his music in conveying great

pathos and suffering that has drawn millions to his symphonies and

concertos. A frank sincerity and warmheartedness well from his music.

The best of his melodies linger hauntingly in the mind and heart. So

long as sincere feeling expressed in sincere artistic form can move the

hearts of men, Tschaikowsky’s music will continue to hold a high place

in the concert hall and opera house.

 

Only Beethoven and Mozart can rival Tschaikowsky in the number of

compositions in various musical forms that stand out as repertory

favorites. Tschaikowsky’s violin concerto is as much a “request” item

as Beethoven’s. The _Pathetic_ symphony ranks with the three or four

enduring favorites of the repertory. Tschaikowsky’s _Nutcracker_ ballet

is probably the most popular suite of its kind in music. The opera,

_Eugene Onegin_, a masterpiece worthy to stand beside some of the

best Italian and German operas, is widely loved even outside Russia.

Tschaikowsky’s Piano Concerto, or, at any rate, the big opening theme,

is doubtless known to more people than all other piano concertos put

together. The overture-fantasies, _Romeo and Juliet_ and _Francesca da

Rimini_, rank with the most popular in that form, and the _Overture

1812_ is an international hit with music-lovers of all ages and stages.

Tschaikowsky’s song, _None But the Lonely Heart_, is better known

to many music-lovers than most of the songs of Brahms and Schubert,

and the great String Quartet contains a melody familiar to every

follower of popular song trends. For, of all the classical composers,

Tschaikowsky has been a veritable gold-mine as a lucrative source of

themes for popular arrangement.

 

Yet, this sad and sensitive musical genius who knew so well how to

reach the human soul surprisingly began his career as a clerk in

the St. Petersburg Ministry of Justice. Like other great Russian

composers, Tschaikowsky arrived at music by a circuitous route, almost

by accident. Moussorgsky, one recalls, was long an officer in the

Czar’s Army before he switched to music. And Borodin always regarded

music as a secondary pursuit to his medical practice and his laboratory

experiments in chemistry. Tschaikowsky was first a lawyer. But soon he

found court action and the preparation of briefs tiresome and unsavory

toil, so at twenty-one he returned to his first love, which was music.

 

Born on May 7, 1840, Tschaikowsky had begun to study piano at the

age of seven. When he was ten, his father, a director of a foundry

at Votinsk with next to no interest in music, took the family to St.

Petersburg. There young Peter continued his musical studies, never,

though, with any thought of preparing for a career in music. Yet,

later, even while studying law, he went on playing the piano and taking

part in the performances of a choral society. Although he amused

friends by improvising on the piano, few detected any signs of creative

genius. At twenty-one Tschaikowsky made his crucial break. He abandoned

law, began earnestly to master musical theory, and resolved to risk

poverty and starvation by devoting himself to music professionally.

Today we can only applaud his decision. The repertory would be the

poorer without his music. Besides, it is not likely that the law lost a

great practitioner when Tschaikowsky bade it farewell.

 

His first important step was to enroll in the Russian Musical

Society, later to become the St. Petersburg Conservatory. There

Anton Rubinstein, the renowned pianist and composer, then teaching

composition and orchestration, exerted a lasting influence on him.

At that time Anton’s brother Nicholas was founding the Moscow

Conservatory. Impressed by Tschaikowsky’s brilliant showing at the St.

Petersburg school, he engaged him as instructor in harmony for the

new Moscow organization. Tschaikowsky held the post for eleven years.

The pay was scant, but there were weightier compensations. Nicholas

Rubinstein gave the young man a room in his Moscow house, encouraged

him to compose, introduced him around, and gave him sound advice on

sundry matters. Best of all, he produced many of Tschaikowsky’s early

compositions. Tschaikowsky, loyal and devoted in all his ties, never

forgot his friend. After Rubinstein’s death, he dedicated his Trio, _In

Memory of a Great Artist_, to the great man who had given him his real

start in music and a creative life.

 

During his second year in the Moscow Conservatory Tschaikowsky fell

madly in love with the French soprano Désirée Artôt, then touring

Russia. While the indecisive Russian wasted time weighing the

advantages and disadvantages of marriage, a Spanish baritone named

Padilla came along, made violent love to Mlle. Artôt, and hurried her

off to the altar before she could catch her breath and notify her

Russian suitor. We nevertheless owe the fickle French lady a debt of

gratitude. Without the emotional disturbance Tschaikowsky might not

have been moved to write the _Romeo and Juliet_ overture-fantasy. His

first serious rebuff in love had at any rate paid dividends in art.

 

From then on Tschaikowsky wrote at a feverish pace. Whenever his duties

at the Conservatory could spare him, he retired to his study and wrote

symphonies, overtures, operas, chamber music, songs, and religious

choruses. Sometimes a gnawing doubt in his own talents assailed him. To

his friends he wrote voluminous letters complaining of the strong sense

of inferiority bedevilling his work. There were attacks of bleak gloom

and diffidence lasting weeks. Trips to the country or to Italy and

Switzerland were often needed to restore his damaged nervous system and

jarred self-confidence to normalcy. Unfavorable reviews stung him like

wasps. And while Moscow often evidenced great enthusiasm for his music,

St. Petersburg was harder to please. The press there was often virulent

with abuse.

 

Then Tschaikowsky pinned great hopes on his operas _Eugene Onegin_ and

_Pique Dame_ (“The Queen of Spades”). Both proved fiascos at their

premières, though the public and press later revised their opinions

drastically. Moreover, reports reached him of the cold reception

accorded his _Romeo and Juliet_ in Paris and the catcalls greeting his

music in Vienna. And there was a music critic named Eduard Hanslick in

Vienna who kept Tschaikowsky awake nights wondering what new critical

blast was awaiting his latest Viennese première.

 

Ironically, America and England were the only two countries instantly

attracted to Tschaikowsky’s music. There his prestige rose with each

new symphony or overture. Cambridge University conferred an honorary

doctor’s degree on him in 1893. Europe was soon to be won over,

however. Despite an often hostile press, the music publics of France,

Germany, and Austria began clamoring for more and more of his music,

and conductors were forced to acquiesce. But to the end he remained a

sorrowing and morose man, hypersensitive, even morbidly so, but almost

always the soul of kindliness and punctilio. When, on the invitation of

Walter Damrosch, Tschaikowsky came to America in 1891, he was widely

acclaimed by public and press. While here he gave six concerts in all,

four in New York, one in Baltimore and one in Philadelphia. In New York

he was guest of honor on the programs of the New York Symphony Society

celebrating the opening of the Music Hall, now Carnegie Hall. The

festival lasted from May 5 to May 9, and Tschaikowsky was widely feted

socially and professionally. He conducted several of his own works in

the hall constructed largely from funds provided by the steel magnate,

Andrew Carnegie.

 

The year 1877 is an important one in the chronicle of Tschaikowsky’s

life. He made his one disastrous experiment in marriage with a

romantic-minded young conservatory student named Antonina Miliukov.

The girl had aroused his pity and alarm by her passionate avowals of

love and equally passionate threats of suicide. The story is discussed

below in my account of the Fourth Symphony, which grew partly out of

that distressing episode. Suffice it here to note that the experience

was so shattering to Tschaikowsky that he attempted to end his life by

standing up to his neck at night in the freezing waters of the Neva

River. Antonina eventually died in an insane asylum. Tschaikowsky

formed another alliance that year, one far more profitable and far

less nerve-wracking than his short tie with Mlle. Miliukov. This was

his famous friendship with Nadezhka von Meck, a wealthy and cultivated

widow. Out of profound admiration for his music and a probable romantic

hope to become Mrs. Tschaikowsky, Mme. von Meck settled an annuity

amounting to $3,000 on the destitute and ailing composer. The gift

continued for thirteen years. Many letters about life, music, and

people were exchanged between Tschaikowsky and his Lady Bountiful. The

two never met, however. Tschaikowsky’s Fourth Symphony is dedicated to

this remarkable woman, who was the most famous Fairy Godmother in music.

 

Although Tschaikowsky himself thought of the _Pathetic_ symphony as

his crowning masterpiece, the première on October 28, 1893, in St.

Petersburg proved a disappointment. Tschaikowsky took it bitterly.

Two weeks later, however, the tables were turned. Everybody acclaimed

it warmly. But Tschaikowsky was not there to bow his acknowledgment.

He had fallen victim to the cholera epidemic then raging in St.

Petersburg. Though warned by the authorities, Tschaikowsky drank some

unboiled water on November 2. Four days later he was dead. No symphony

was more appropriately named than this melancholy masterpiece, the_Pathetic_ symphony, the brooding phrases of which sound truly like the “swan song” of a tired and abysmally disillusioned man of genius.