Composer Profile - Activefolio

108 Chapter 9
twenty years of her life. That marriage in 1877 was fraught with problems from
the very first night, and after a very short time, Tchaikovsky ran away from that
entire relationship and never saw her again. He thought his “tendencies” were
some form of sickness, and his entire life was spent trying to fight them and
dreading his secret might be discovered.
Tchaikovsky was a very sensitive and delicate child. He fell in love with
music at an early age, but the law was chosen for him as his career. Once he
started as a clerk in the Ministry of Justice, he was totally unhappy, and lacked
any sort of ambition to make the law his life’s work. When he started studying
composition, his energies returned and becoming a proficient musician motivated
him greatly.
His first great work was completed in 1869, Romeo and Juliet. From that,
Tchaikovsky gained an ardent supporter in the patroness Nadezhda Filaretovna
von Meck. For thirteen years she and Tchaikovsky wrote letters of admiration
for each other, under the stipulation from von Meck that he never attempt to
contact her. With his unease around women, this was the perfect relationship
for him. They would occasionally meet in a concert hall, but officially, they kept
the relationship a very distant one. She supported him, and he found the inspiration
and the encouragement he needed. He was able to confide in her his
most secret torments and she was able to appease his financial worries. Madame
von Meck even went so far as to pay some of the requested money that
Tchaikovsky’s estranged wife was asking from him.
Tchaikovsky’s music however, was boldly dramatic, and is considered some
of the finest Russian music ever composed. He is not considered a nationalist,
but his music is definitely Russian in flavor and mood. He was influenced and
encouraged by the Russian Five composers, even though they were at odds
most times about nationalism and how to promote Russia’s music in the best
fashion. Tchaikovsky, the Russian Five claimed, was too influenced by
the culture of the West, his works too sophisticated, and did not represent the
brutal realism found in true nationalistic Russian music.
His sixth symphony is regarded as biographical in nature, and ends with
one of the most somber moods of any symphony ever written. In the low brass
and timpani can be heard the dying heartbeat of Tchaikovsky himself. It was
said that Tchaikovsky composed it as a last will and testament, and as a requiem
for his own funeral. In it can be found a premonition of his death in a
certain hidden phrase from a well known Russian melody “And Rest Him with
the Saints.” Only days after Tchaikovsky himself conducted its premiere on October
28, 1893, the great Russian master died of cholera, just as his mother had.
With a raging epidemic of cholera in full swing, it is only supposition that when
he drank the tainted, unboiled water, he was attempting to commit suicide one
more time. No one knows for sure, but his life of great sorrow and fears was
finally put to rest. On November 6th of that same year he passed away, with a
great funeral procession celebrated by people from all over Russia.
Some of Tchaikovsky’s most famous pieces were: Capriccio Italien, six symphonies,
the symphonic poems Romeo and Juliet, Francesca di Rimini, 1812 Overture
(commissioned in 1880), Marche Slav, and famous concertos for violin and
piano. Tchaikovsky set the standard for late Romantic dance music with the
ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker.
The last of the great symphonists in the late Romantic period was undoubtedly
Gustav Mahler. Though some of his symphonies date from the early twentieth century,
Mahler’s works represented the culmination of the Romantic ideals. He breathed new
life into symphonic works with his nine symphonies (a tenth symphony was unfinished
at his death), and to this day his grandiose second, third, and eighth symphonies are
unmatched in their scope and sentimentality. His 1st Symphony, The Titan, was said to