Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Tchaikovsky was a Russian composer of the Romantic era. Tchaikovsky 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.
Born into a middle-class family, Tchaikovsky was educated towards a career as a civil servant, despite the musical precocity he had demonstrated. Against the wishes of his family, he chose to pursue a musical career, and, in 1862, he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, graduating in 1865. The formal, Western-oriented training he received set him apart from the contemporary nationalistic movement embodied by the influential group of young Russian composers known as The Five, with whom Tchaikovsky sustained a mixed professional relationship throughout his career.
Although he enjoyed many popular successes, Tchaikovsky was never emotionally secure, and his life was punctuated by personal crises and periods of depression. Contributory factors were his suppressed homosexuality and fear of exposure, his disastrous marriage, and the sudden collapse of the one enduring relationship of his adult life, his 13-year association with the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck. Amid private turmoil Tchaikovsky’s public reputation grew; he was honored by the Tsar, awarded a lifetime pension and lauded in the concert halls of the world. His sudden death at the age of 53 is generally ascribed to cholera, but some attribute it to suicide.
Although perennially popular with concert audiences across the world, Tchaikovsky’s music was often dismissed by critics in the early and mid-20th century as being vulgar and lacking in elevated thought. By the end of the 20th century, however, Tchaikovsky’s status as a significant composer was generally regarded as secure.
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