Historical Period: Romantic
Nationality: Russian
Born: May 7, 1840 A.D. in Kamsko-Votkinsk, Vyatka
Died: Nov. 6, 1893 A.D. in St.
Petersburg
Contemporaries: Johannes Brahms, Camille
Saint-Saens, Antonin Dvorak, Claude Debusey, Gustav Mahler, Edvard, Grieg,
Frederic Chopin, Franz Liszt, Gabriel Faure, Robert Schumann, Richard Wagner,
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Modest Mussrogsky, Cesar Cui, Alexander Borodin, Mily
Balakirev
Specialist
Genres: ballet
music and symphonies
Major
Works: The Nutcracker, Swan Lake,
Sleeping Beauty, Violin Concerto, Piano Concertos, 6 symphonies, 1812
Overture.
Have you ever heard of The Nutcracker? Or Sleeping Beauty? Or even Swan Lake? Most people have, but they may not know much about the man behind the music. The man is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and he was born in Votkinsk, a small town in Russia’s Ural Mountains. Tchaikovsky lived during stirring times: the United States of America was in the Great Depression, Samuel Morse invented “Morse Code”, David Livingstone went as a missionary to Africa, lower and upper China united, Crawford Long uses first anesthetic (ether), Edgar Allen Poe came out with The Raven and Other Poems, and Charles H. Spurgeon impacted England and America with his great sermons from the Bible.
It was
in these tremendous times that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky played the piano and
wrote lots of cool classical music with a Russian twist. Alongside ballet
music, Tchaikovsky wrote symphonies, the
1812 Overture, a violin concerto and piano concertos. Tchaikovsky had what
many composers living in his time did not: “a sweet, inexhaustible,
supersensuous fund of melody.”[1]
His
Life & Music
Pyotr
Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840. From a young age Tchaikovsky had an interest
in music, but his parents wanted him to study law, just like G.F. Handel.
Tchaikovsky was an obedient son and went to law school, but he also kept pursuing
music. Eventually, Tchaikovsky went to
the St. Petersburg Conservatory to study music composition and the piano, which
led him to be considered one of the most popular classical music composers of
all time.
After
the St. Petersburg Conservatory, Tchaikovsky was given the great gift of
marriage, but he did not treasure marriage. Tchaikovsky divorced his wife a few
weeks after they were married, choosing to run away from her and focused on his
music. Music was more important to Tchaikovsky, too bad he did not choose to
love both music and his wife. He did write a lot of beautiful music, symphonies
and piano concertos and a violin concerto and ballet music and tone poems and
more. In 1891, Tchaikovsky even came to America to conduct his music for
people. And in 1884, Emperor Alexander III and even got a pension (money for
retirement). People really like his ballet music, his symphonies and even the
concertos for its beauty, deep emotion, lyricism in the Russian style. As two historians put it, “The music which
this unhappy man created was gorgeously colored, sometimes delicate and
fairy-like, sometimes almost hysterical in its tragic passion.”[2]
Copyright © 2013 Mircea & Daniyela Ionescu. All rights reserved.
