Piotr Ilitch Tchaïkovski (in) is a Russian Compositeur of the romantic era born on April 25th of the Calendrier Julien/May 7th 1840 with Votkinsk and dead on October 25th of the Calendrier Julien/November 6th 1893 with Saint-Pétersbourg. Although it does not form part of the group of nationalist type-setters called Groupe of the Five, its music is known and admired for its Russian character like for its enjouées rich person harmony and its melodies. Tchaïkovski was an eclectic type-setter. Its work, of an inspiration more Western than that of its contemporaries, incorporates international elements indeed, but those are added with national folk melodies.

Brilliant Orchestrator, equipped with a great direction with the melody, Tchaïkovski composed in all the kinds, illustrating himself particularly by his symphonic works and by its opera S. It is also him which gave its noble letters to the Ballet, adding a symphonic dimension to a kind before considered as " inférieur".

Tchaïkovski is greeted today, in Russia, like elsewhere in the world, one of the major type-setters and its popularity seems from now on durably established.

Biography

Childhood

Resulting from a middle-class family, her life is a permanent contrast between luxury and precariousness, scandal and need for recognition.

Tchaïkovski was born the May 7th 1840 (in the Gregorian Calendrier) with Votkinsk, a small town of the Oudmourtie located in the the Ural, second wire of a father mining engineer, Ilya Petrovitch Tchaikovsky, and of a mother of French origin, Alexandra Andreïevna Assier.

The first musical efforts of Tchaïkovski were attempts at improvisation to the piano. When his/her mother went to Saint-Pétersbourg in September 1844, him and his/her sister composed a song called: Our mother with Saint-Pétersbourg . His/her mother returned with one controlling, Fanny Durbach, which spent four years with Tchaïkovski (she says later that these four years were the happiest period of its life). Piotr, old of four years and half, always asked for the permission to him of attend the lessons of his/her brothers and sisters. Thus, at six years, he very easily spoke French and German.

At five years, it began the piano with Mariya Palchikova. In less than three years, it read the music as well as its professor. In 1850, Piotr enters to the College of Jurisprudence to Saint-Pétersbourg and remained there until in 1858, obtaining an excellent general education and continuing its instruction with the piano with the director of the library of partitions. But its school results degenerated until a certain mediocrity.

In the middle of its studies, in June 1854, his/her mother dies of the Choléra, plunging Tchaïkovski in a very great sadness. During two years, it could not write in Fanny Dürbach in connection with this loss. He remembered this day all the remainder of his life. She had encouraged her musical interests. The immediate reaction of Tchaïkovski following this loss was to turn to the music. It made its first truths efforts to compose.

Of return to Saint-Pétersbourg in autumn, it started to take courses of song with Gavril Lomakin, a famous leader and professor. In 1855, the father of Tchaïkovski financed for his son of the studies with Rudolph Kündinger, a piano teacher of Nuremberg known, and, consulting it one day in connection with the prospects for a musical career for his son, the pianist answered that separately a good musical ear and a good memory, there was nothing at Piotr letting believe that he would be later a good type-setter or even a good interpreter.

Career

Tchaïkovski obtains its diploma of right on May 25th 1859, and is engaged as secretary with the ministry for the Justice, but is devoted already as an amateur to the music. Not testing any interest for its employment with the ministry, he entrusted to his sister in one of his letters “One made ego a civil servant, and a bad civil servant in addition” . Finally, in 1863, against the decision of its family, it gives up this work and undertakes to study the music under the control of Anton Rubinstein.

In 1866, whereas it has just finished its studies of music, the brother of Anton, Nikolaï entrusts a post of professor of musical theory to him (which it will occupy until 1878) in the new whole Conservatoire of Moscow (which bears its name besides since 1940). It is at this period that it composes its first symphony known as “Dreams of winter” . Weaving bonds of friendship with several members of the Group of the Five, it dedicates even its imagination opening Romeo and Juliette to the founder of this group, Mili Balakirev. Tchaïkovski composes its second symphony during the summer 1872 and undertakes the writing of its first concerto for piano in winter 1874. During the summer 1875, it wrote its third symphony.

The year 1876 is marked by its meeting with Nadejda von Meck. This one, large admiror of the type-setter, will pour to him per annum during thirteen years an alimony of 6.000 Rouble S, placing Tchaïkovski in a situation much more comfortable than before. Shortly after the Tsar Alexandre III will pay 3.000 roubles per annum to him. Their relations will however only remain “strictly epistolary”. In 1877, it is with Mrs. Von Meck that Tchaïkovski will dedicate its fourth symphony. In July of this same year, the type-setter will live one of the darkest episodes of his life: to try " guérir" its Homosexuality, it marries Antonia Milioukova, one of its former students who nourishes a great passion for him. This Mariage will be a failure. Quickly, Tchaïkovski, which cannot support the sight of his wife any more, tries to commit suicide while trying to contract a pneumonia. It will separate from Antonia shortly after. Same year, it composes nevertheless its first Ballet, Lake of Swans , which will be a failure because of a setting in inadequate scene (it will have taken twenty years so that the screen of the ballet is definitively fixed), as well as an opera based on a novel of Alexandre Pouchkine: Eugene Onéguine. Of all the type-setters of the 19th century, it is one of only whose homosexuality is very well documented. One of its biographers, Andre Lischke (Beech, 1993), however writes whom it had less problems sometimes than one says it on his sexuality and than it sometimes happened to him of “ to tackle of them the physiological questions with a gaillardise completely deprived of complexes . ” In the same way, the members of its entourage knew the truth very well. Nina Berberova, in the biography of the type-setter whom she writes for Actes Sud, tells his meeting with Praskovia Vladimirovna Tchaïkovski, wife of one of the twins of Piotr Ilitch, Anatole. This one approaches itself the subject of homosexuality while announcing in Berberova: “ I bated a lover to him… With Tiflis… It forgiven to me forever! ”.

Towards 1880, the reputation of Tchaïkovski is reinforced considerably in Russia, and its name even starts to be known abroad, as it can note it at the time of the voyages which it accomplishes this same year. It there gains many successes and meets large the Compositeur S of his time: Johannes Brahms, Antonín Dvořák, etc the Italy where it remained inspired him a certain number of pieces of music among which the Italian Capriccio . Famous the Serenade for cords and the Opening 1812 also go back to 1880. One year later, his/her large friend, Nikolaï Rubinstein dies. Deeply touched, Tchaïkovski composes its superb Trio for piano, part dedicated to his/her friend deceased. It will compose then Manfred (1885), its fifth symphony (1888), its second ballet, Sleeping Beauty (1889), which will be a triumph, as well as an opera based on a short news of Pouchkine: the Queen of spades (1890).

In 1890, its patron Nadejda von Meck encounters financial problems and cannot to any more allocate its pension him. The true reason would be in fact that Von Meck would have been deeply shocked by the discovery of the homosexuality of the type-setter and abruptly would thus have decided to break their correspondence. It is as probable as she wished to marry one of her daughters to the type-setter, project incompatible with the tendencies of this one and that she was to thus give up. This episode strikes Tchaïkovski hard. In 1891, it goes on a journey until the the United States. Its works, which it directs itself during inauguration of the New Yorkean room of Carnegie Hall gain one big hit. In 1892, its third ballet, Nut-cracker , is born, but it does not meet, initially, a success as resounding as the beauty of the music could let it hope. It will have to be waited a few decades so that Casse-Noisette obtains the success which it deserves. It is today one of the most played ballets and certainly one of most appreciated of the public.

Little time before its death, Tchaïkovski, during a displacement from Berlin to Paris, made halt with Montbeliard January 1st, th and 2nd 1893 to re-examine Fanny Durbach (1822-1901) which was its préceptrice and which had been withdrawn in its birthplace.

The November 6th 1893, nine days after the creation of its sixth “Pathetic” symphony, work in which it put all its heart, Tchaïkovski dies of the Choléra after having drunk water of the not sterilized Neva. However, some think, but without solid proof, that following the discovery of the relation of the type-setter with the nephew of noble Russian, Tchaïkovski would have in fact be thorough with the suicide by a court of honor (it is besides the intrigue of a novel of the Academician Dominique Fernandez). At all events, it will profit from national funeral with Saint-Pétersbourg, to which will assist nearly 8.000 people and it will be buried with the Monastère Alexandre-Nevski.

The work of Tchaïkovski is a happy synthesis of Western traditional works and Russian tradition represented in a contemporary way, inter alia, by Modeste Moussorgski and the Groupe of the Five. Its music, reflection of its hypersensitive and tormented nature, is very personal and of an infinite sensitivity. It profits from a rich and varied orchestration. Tchaikovski is today one of the most famous type-setters and certainly the Russian type-setter most popular. Even if its music spends time to leave the borders of Russia, she is now universally listened and appreciated.

The tormented life of Tchaïkovski inspired with Ken Russell the film The Music Lovers (1970). In the same way, Klaus Mann devoted a novel to the type-setter, pathetic Symphonie (1935).

Gallery

|Воевода | Alexandre Ostrovski and the type-setter | February 11th 1869 | Moscow, Theater Bolchoï |- |Ondine |Ундина |Vladimir Sologoub |Ever represented |Ever represented |- |Opritchnik |Опричник |the type-setter | April 24th 1874 | Saint-Pétersbourg, Theater Mariinsky |- |Vakoula the Blacksmith |КузнецВакула |J.P. Polonski | December 6th 1876 | Saint-Pétersbourg, Theater Mariinsky |- | Eugene Onéguine |ЕвгенийОнегин |the type-setter, according to Pouchkine | March 29th 1879 | Moscow, Theater Maly |- | the Maid of Orleans |Орлеанскаядева |the type-setter, according to the tragedy of Schiller | February 25th 1881 | Saint-Pétersbourg, Theater Mariinsky |- | Mazeppa |Мазепа |Viktor Bourénine and the type-setter, according to Pouchkine | February 15th 1884 | Moscow, Theater Bolchoï |- |Tcherevitchki |Черевички |J.P. Polonski | January 31st 1887 | Moscow, Theater Bolchoï |- | the Enchanter |Чародейка |Hippolyte Chpajinski |November 1st 1887 | Saint-Pétersbourg, Theater Mariinsky |- | the Queen of spades |Пиковаядама | Modeste Tchaïkovski and the type-setter, according to Pouchkine | December 19th 1890 | Saint-Pétersbourg, Theater Mariinsky |- | Yolande |Иоланта | Modeste Tchaïkovski, according to Henrik Hertz | December 18th 1892 | Saint-Pétersbourg, Theater Mariinsky |- |}