Pyotr I Tchaikovsky Biography

1. Pyotr ilich Tchaikovsky Biography & Music Piano Concert #1

2. Pyotr ilich Tchaikovsky (1840- 1893) Tchaikovsky was a russian composer of the Romantic era. He wrote
music across a range of genres, including symphony, opera, ballet, instrumental, chamber and song. He wrote
some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the current classical repertoire, including the ballets
Swan Lake , The Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker , as well as the 1812 Overture , his First Piano Concerto ,
his last three numbered symphonies, and the opera Eugene Onegin. By the end of his fairly short life of 53
years, Tchaikovsky was one of the most recognized classical composers. After his triumphant tour of America,
and being awarded an Honorary Doctorate at Cambridge University , he was accepted as a world figure, not a
merely national composer but one of universal significance.

3. In 1891 the Carnegie Hall program booklet proclaimed him, together with Brahms and Saint-Saëns, to be
one of the three greatest living musicians, while music critics praised him as "a modern music
lord". Within Russia he became even more than that, he was considered a national treasure , and his
music admired and adored by all strata of society. He enjoyed the favor of the Imperial court, where he had a
number of influential protectors (including two Grand Dukes), as well as the personal patronage of Emperor
Alexander III, who had granted him a government pension. His works include 7 symphonies, 11 operas, 3
ballets, 5 suites, 3 piano concertos, a violin concerto, 11 overtures (strictly speaking, 3 overtures and 8 single
movement programmatic orchestral works), 4 cantatas, 20 choral works, 3 string quartets, a string sextet, and
more than 100 songs and piano pieces.

4. Biography Pyotr ilich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840 at Votkinsk, in Viatka Province, located in the
Ural mountains 600 miles east of Moscow. He was the second son of ilia Petrovich Tchaikovsky and Aleksandra
Andreevna. His father was a graduated mining engineer from the College of Mines in Saint Petersburg with a
silver medal. He also held several teaching and administrative posts, some of the latter in the northeast of
Russia. Tchaikovsky's mother Aleksandra (1812–1854) was the younger daughter of Michael Heinrich
Maximilian Acier (1778–1835), who was born in Germany and at the age of 17 was brought from Saxony to
Russia by artillery general Petr Mellisino to teach German and French at the Military school in Saint Petersburg.
Apart from his stepsister Zinaida (1829) and elder brother Nikolai (1838), after Pyotr birth in 1840 the
Tchaikovsky’s had a daughter, Aleksandra (1841), and three more sons: Ippolit (1843), and the fraternal twins
Anatolii and Modest (1850). March Slave

5. Tchaikovsky Father Tchaikovsky Mother

6. Early Years Tchaikovsky's earliest musical impressions came from the family's orchestrina , with its excerpts
from Mozart, Rossini, Bellini, and Donizetti. In September 1844, he made his first documented attempt at
composition "Our Mama in Petersburg", a song written together with Aleksandra (who was then
only three). At the end of 1845 he began taking piano lessons with Mariia Palchikova and became familiar with
the mazurkas of Chopin. In 1848 his family moved first to Moscow and later to Saint Petersburg, where
Tchaikovsky was placed in the private Schmelling School , where he resumed piano lessons. But in May 1849
the family had to return to the Urals where his father was appointed manager of an ironworks in the city of
Alapaevsk, some 300 miles to the east of Votkinsk.
7. The orchestrina or clavecin harmonique is a small keyboard instrument invented by the English builder of
harmoniums and organs, Cheltenham-born W.E. Evans (1810–1884). He patented it on 29 October 1862. The
orchestrina which resembled a harmonium, had stops that allowed it to imitate such instruments as flute,
oboe, clarinet, bassoon, and horn, and was intended to stand in for them in small orchestras lacking the
relevant musicians.

8. This did not prevent the composer's mother from returning with him to Saint Petersburg the following
autumn so that Pyotr was enrolled in the preparatory class of the Imperial School of Jurisprudence . On this
occasion Pyotr saw Mikhail Glinka's “ A Life for the Tsar ” at the Alexandrinskii Theater, which made a lasting
impression on him. By this time Pyotr had successfully passed his entrance exam for the School of
Jurisprudence, where he participated in the school choir under the direction of distinguished Russian
choirmaster Gavriil Lomakin. When Tchaikovsky was 14 years old his mother died from cholera on June 1854 a
very traumatic event for the composer. Hungarian Dance

9. His years in the school of Jurisprudence Tchaikovsky spent nine years (1850–1859) as a boarding student at
the School of Jurisprudence. During this time Tchaikovsky also made his first attempts at composition, among
which were an opera Hyperbola (lost), a waltz for piano, and his first published work, the song Mezza notte . A
month after his graduation on May 1859, Tchaikovsky began working as a clerk in the Ministry of Justice.
Although he remained there for four years, he quickly found the job ill-suited to his talents. In the autumn his
life took an unexpected turn: Tchaikovsky started to attend Nikolai Zaremba's class in harmony offered by the
Russian Musical Society , which had recently been founded by the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna and Anton
Rubinstein, with the purpose of promoting professional music education in Russia.

10. His years at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory When the Saint Petersburg Conservatory was opened on
September 1862, Tchaikovsky was among its first students. There Tchaikovsky studied harmony and form with
Nikolai Zaremba, and orchestration and composition with Anton Rubinstein. Having decided to devote his life
to music, Tchaikovsky resigned from the Ministry of Justice on April 1863. Tchaikovsky spent almost three years
of his life at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory. In addition to his studies of harmony, strict counterpoint,
composition and instrumentation, he also decided to study the flute and organ. The Conservatory's graduation
concert on 10 January 1866 included a performance of Tchaikovsky's ambitious cantata Ode to Joy , on the text
of Schiller's ode An die Freude (upon which Beethoven did the Finale of his Ninth Symphony). Waltz – Eugen
Onegin

11. To Tchaikovsky’s surprise, he also received the silver medal (since the gold medal was not awarded at that
time) which happened to be the highest student award offered to students. Tchaikovsky moves to Moscow
When He was 25 years old Tchaikovsky moved to Moscow on January 1866, where Nikolai Rubinstein
welcomed him, providing him not only with accommodation in rooms in his own apartment, but also
introducing him to his circle of friends, which included writers, musicians, and publishers. At the end of
November, his Symphony No. 1, entitled "Winter Daydreams" , Op. 13, was complete and was
heard for the first time in February 1868 with Nikolai Rubinstein conducting. In the autumn of 1869
Tchaikovsky met in Moscow with Balakirev, who encouraged the composer to begin a new tone-poem based
on Shakespeare's tragedy Romeo and Juliet , that was heard for the first time at a concert in Moscow on 16
March 1870, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein.
12. Composing his master works While staying at Kamenka during the summer of 1872, he began to work on
his Symphony No. 2, later dubbed the "Little Russian." The new symphony was presented and
received enthusiastically in February 1873. In November 1874 Tchaikovsky began working on his First Piano
Concerto, a complete draft of which he had completed by January 5 1875. He decided to dedicate it to the
famous German pianist Hans von Bülow, who gave the first successful performance of the concert in Boston on
October 25, 1875. Tchaikovsky spent the summer of 1875 with his sister's family at Kamenka. Here Tchaikovsky
composed his Third Symphony, this time in five movements, two of them in dance style. In August, Tchaikovsky
began work on what was to become the first of his famed trilogy of ballets. The Swan Lake which was
commissioned by the Imperial Theatres in Moscow. The premiere of this ballet took place on March 4, 1877.
Waltz – Swan Lake

13. Nadezhda Von Meck, patroness and confidante At the end of 1876, Tchaikovsky met Nadezhda Von Meck,
the widow of a wealthy railway magnate. She had heard and admired some of Tchaikovsky's music, and when
she found out that he was encountering financial problems, she began to commission pieces from him. This
money allowed him to dedicate full time to his creative work. Both agreed on the one condition, that they
should never meet. Their strange relationship, expressed through over 1200 letters, was to last for almost
fourteen years. Tchaikovsky’s relationship with Nadezhda von Meck, despite their obvious eccentricities,
occasional frustrations and their gradual deterioration, can be considered to have been among the most
gratifying experiences of the composer’s life.

14. By January 1878 Tchaikovsky had finished his Fourth Symphony, the first of his mature symphonic works,
which he dedicated (secretly) to Nadezhda Von Meck. The other major work which occupied him during this
period was Evgenii Onegin . At first the opera made a modest impression on the audience, and it took several
years to achieve the public acclaim it deserved. One other masterpiece also emerged from this period was the
Violin Concerto, written in Switzerland. In the autumn of 1879, he began a Second Piano Concerto. Later he
travelled to Rome, where he composed the Italian Capriccio . Tchaikovsky then returned to his homeland,
where he spent much of 1880 in the country. There he completed the Serenade for String Orchestra, and the
piece most often associated with his name, the Overture 1812 , a commemoration of the historic Russian
defeat of Napoleon's army. Italian Capriccio

15. In February 1884 He had hardly spent three weeks in the French capital before he was summoned back to
Russia to appear before Alexander III and He received an official decoration, the Order of Saint Vladimir (4th
class). By the end of November 1888 Tchaikovsky travelled to Prague, where he conducted a successful
performance of Evgenii Onegin . In December he retired to Frolovskoe for six weeks in order to compose a
ballet, The Sleeping Beauty , based on a French fairy tale and commissioned by the directors of the Saint
Petersburg Theaters and in the summer of 1889 He finished the main works of this ballet. The first
performance of The Sleeping Beauty took place on 15 January 1890 in a splendid production, choreographed
by Marius Petipa. The day before Alexander III had expressed his approval of the ballet at a gala rehearsal
attended by the imperial court.

16. On January 1890 Tchaikovsky went to Florence, where he began work on another opera, The Queen of
Spades , Op. 68 and on December of that year he attended a very successful production of this opera in Kiev. In
September 1890 he received a letter from his patroness Nadezhda Von Meck, informing him that she was on
the brink of ruin , and therefore unable to continue either his allowance or their correspondence. The
suddenness of these news wounded him deeply, and left he depressed for some time. His satisfaction with The
Queen of Spades led Tchaikovsky to accept two more commissions from the Imperial Theatres for an opera “
Iolanta” and a ballet “ The Nutcracker ”. In the meantime, however, Tchaikovsky accepted an invitation to
conduct his own works in America on the occasion of the grand opening of Carnegie Hall in New York .
Tchaikovsky sailed from Le Havre on 18 April 1891 and landed in New York eight days later. Waltz – Sleeping
Beauty

17. He spent one month in America and then he sailed back to Hamburg , feeling fully gratified with his tour.
Back home, Tchaikovsky returned to the composition of the ballet The Nutcracker , based on Hoffman's fantasy
story but in the adaptation by Alexandre Dumas. This he finished in early July, whereupon he immediately
commenced work on the one-act opera Iolanta , the story of a blind princess, set in medieval Aix-de-Provence.
At the beginning of March 1892 Tchaikovsky travelled to Saint Petersburg where he conducted the first
performance of the suite from The Nutcracker , which was received with immense enthusiasm. On December
18, both the Iolanta Opera and the Nutcracker Ballet were given splendid productions at the Mariinskii
Theatre, in the presence of Alexander III and the imperial court.

18. 1893 the last year in the life of Tchaikovsky Tchaikovsky started work on his Symphony No. 6 in B minor . He
worked so vigorously, that in the week after his arrival, the first movement of the symphony was already
complete, and the rest was clearly outlined in his head. On March 23, Tchaikovsky arrived in Kharkov for a
scheduled concert appearance three days later, at which Tchaikovsky conducted his Second Symphony “ The
Tempest ” and the overture 1812 . His performance surpassed all expectations: the hurrahs and bravos seemed
to continue on without end and as soon as famous man appeared in the doorway he was lifted up and carried
to his coach. In April Tchaikovsky began to compose the Eighteen Pieces Op. 72 for piano, commissioned by
Jurgenson, and Six Romances Op. 73, to the text of the poet Daniil Ratgauz. Overture 1812

19. On May 25, the composer set off for England to formally receive an honorary degree of Doctor of Music
honoris causa from Cambridge University, which had been conferred upon him earlier. In early September,
Tchaikovsky finally came up with the title of his new symphony "Apassionata". The passionate
overtones of the Russian title are not adequately conveyed in its better-known French equivalent
"Symphonie pathétique", with its connotations of suffering and sorrow. In September he worked
on his Third Piano Concerto, and started to consider the possibility of writing a new opera. On the night of
November 1st, after returning from a late dinner at Leiner’s restaurant, the one most frequented by the
composer and his brother, Tchaikovsky experienced an upset stomach .

20. By the morning it had worsened, his brother Modest brought the renowned Petersburg physician Lev
Bertenson, who immediately diagnosed Asiatic cholera , in its severe or algid stage. By the morning of
November 3, Tchaikovsky’s condition had greatly improved, but Doctor Lev Bertenson had to leave Saint
Petersburg and he was replaced by two other doctors, Aleksandr Zander and Nikolai Mamonov. On November
5th, his condition became so critical , the kidneys had by then ceased their function and throughout the day
Tchaikovsky repeatedly lost consciousness and succumbed to delirium; towards the evening his pulse began to
weaken and his breathing became inhibited.