The hobby horse tchaikovsky biography

Tchaikovsky was the second of six children born to upper-middle-class parents – his father was at one time director of a technological institute.

He was moved to write down one of his pieces for the first time (before, he just improvised) as a touching eulogy for his dead mother.

He graduated school, and entered the Ministry of Justice in 1959. This leads me on to the next part of this Tchaikovsky biography...

Tchaikovsky Biography Part 2: Growing Reputation

In 1870, Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet was premiered.

This was the beginning of Tchaikovksy's wider fame. Once he had to take six months off school because of a sickness.

His illnesses, anxiety, and sensitivity were problems which would sadly affect him on and off for the rest of his life.

His father, noticing his son's enthusiasm for music, got him good teachers, and an orchestrion (a kind of music box that imitates elaborate orchestral sounds).

Tchaikovsky biography Contents:

Tchaikovsky Biography Part 1: Early Life

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born in 1840 in Votkinsk, a tiny town 1000 miles east of St Petersburg.

Once, when he held this position, a percussionist wasn't playing very well during a rehearsal of Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol (conducted by the composer).

The piece was characteristically "Tchaikovsky", and got the composer's name known in in places as far away as New York and London.

He stayed at the Moscow Conservatory for 12 years in total, composing a good number of pieces.

He now started to feel more comfortable in society. Some of his reviews have quite creatively scathing remarks!

Prince Odoevsky, a generous patron, once gave Tchaikovsky a pair of fine cymbals, since he thought that the composer was "good at introducing them at the right moment" in a piece.

There was no history of musicians in his family, except for a handful of amateur players.

The young Tchaikovsky was bright - he could read and write French and German fluently by the time he was six years old!

He formed a very close bond with his French governess, Fanny Durbach. It wasn't to be, however, as the orchestra was suddenly shocked into obedience by Tchaikovsky's suggestion.

In 1889, he toured around Germany and Switzerland as a conductor.

Suddenly, he covered Russia with kisses, and then spat on all the other countries! He screamed and ran after her carriage as it drove away, but he couldn't catch it. By now he was a national celebrity.

Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality was first discussed by Soviet musicologists in the 1930s, since when he has been stereotyped as a guilt-ridden closet case.

There is continuing controversy as to the cause of his death: cholera, as his brother Modest said, or suicide. The First Piano Concerto had its premiere in 1875, the year that Tchaikovsky’s first ballet, Swan Lake, was commissioned.

But in 1877 he agreed to marry an importunate young woman who threatened suicide if he rejected her; he left her within the year, and she spent her last two decades in a mental hospital. Later, when someone asked him what he had actually done there, Tchaikovsky said he couldn't even remember!

Pyotr Ilyich started studying at the St Petersburg conservatory, where he had two main teachers: Nikolai Zaremba, and Anton Rubinstein.

Rubinstein was quite conservative, and got really angry at one of Tchaikovsky's homework exercises (the symphonic poem The Storm).

His powerful 6th Symphony had its premiere only 10 days earlier.