Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Rayna Cheong
Period 8
Tchaikovsky was born in 1840 during the Romantic Era in a small town near Moscow.
At the age of five, he began piano lessons and soon became as skilled in reading music as
his instructor by the time he was eight years old. Although his parents fully supported his
passion for music at first, when Tchaikovsky was around ten, they enrolled him into the a
school in Saint Petersburg that would prepare him for a career as a civil servant, believing
that becoming a musician would not be beneficial. No public education for music was
available in Russia at the time, and Tchaikovsky came from a family in the lower class. Four
years after the enrollment, Tchaikovskys mother died from cholera, leaving a father who
struggled to support his six children. After graduating the school at nineteen, Tchaikovsky
starts work as a civil servant in the Ministry of Justice. While employed, he often attended
nearby operas, theaters, and concerts; fully realizes his homosexuality; and began to travel
outside of Russia for the first time. Strangers often saw Tchaikovsky as handsome, wellspoken, and charming, however, his closer friends knew that he was timid and reserved by
nature. He often would rather stay slouched in the upper gallery at performances of his own
music just so that others wouldnt recognize him.
After studying harmony and enrolling in a new music school, his life of music officially
begins. The same year of enrollment, Mezza notte, an Italian romance for voice and piano,
becomes Tchaikovskys first of many published compositions. After a few months, he resigns
from the Ministry of Justice in order to focus on his musical studies. Soon, he begins music
composition and theory classes, as well as giving private piano lessons. In 1864, he writes
his first significant orchestral score called The Storm. Much of his music is influenced from
his time in the music school, where he was exposed to European styles of music, therefore
his compositions became known as having distinctively Western principles weaved into the
well-known Russian style and melodies. Tchaikovskys unique style had become a turning
point for other composers in Russia to create their own individual styles.
He graduated in the winter of 1866 then left Saint Petersburg to teach musical theory
classes at the Moscow Conservatory. There, he worked as a teacher, conductor and
composed an innumerable amount of music, including The Voyevoda, his first opera; Piano
Concerto No. 1; and Swan Lake. Nearly ten years later, Tchaikovsky is urged by peers and
family to get married to a woman, and in 1877, he met with Antonina Miliukova, a former
student at the Conservatory, who sent frequent letters to him, desperately telling him to
visit her. She threatened that she would commit suicide unless he proposed to her; and so
he did. In just a couple of months, the aggressive woman and unsociable, shy man were
wedded, and it was far from a happy marriage. Tchaikovsky was just relieved that rumors
about his sexuality had subsided. However, soon, he tries telling his wife that hes queer, but
she never understands, and Tchaikovsky travels to Switzerland in order to recover from an
emotional crisis and attempted suicide.
Antonina never did agree to a divorce, however they stayed away from one another,
and Tchaikovsky lived the rest of his life, composing and conducting around the world. His
name became widely known, and despite his dislike for popularity, he engaged in this
publicity because he felt a duty to promote Russian music around the world. After composing
a final symphony for a close friend of his that had passed away, Tchaikovsky most likely fell

to a wave of cholera that swept across Russia in Saint Petersburg at the age of 53. He
supposedly drank contaminated water a few days before his death, however, medical
reports are controversial and no one may ever know the truth of Tchaikovskys death. No
matter how Pyotr Tchaikovsky died, his compositions have made a substantial impact on the
world of music, and without him, both Russian and Western music will have been unexposed
to each other and vastly different from one another.