By this time it will be clear enough that this was no puling complainer, but a delicate, high nature of great emotional intensity, subjected to a cruel interaction of temperament and circumstances, and yet capable of nobly constructive artistic work. His life, candidly examined, reveals modesty, dignity, elevation of ideal and of character. Yet it does illustrate, too, in many ways, that lack of emotional balance which underlies the peculiar quality of his music.
His mere method of approaching his art, in the first place, is significant. All his early efforts, as we have seen, were operas; he wrote altogether ten operas, and the Pathetic Symphony is the last fruit of a genius dramatic rather than symphonic. At thirty Tschaïkowsky was unable to read orchestral scores with ease, and preferred to study the classics through four-hand arrangements, while his distaste for the purest form of music was so great that he protested he could hardly keep awake through the performance of the masterly A-minor Quartet of Beethoven. This attitude toward the string quartet, which is in music what engraving or etching is in representative art, is very anomalous in a young composer, and shows so disproportionate an interest in the merely expressive side of music that it is hard to understand how Tschaïkowsky ever became so great a plastic master as his last two symphonies, for all their freight of passion, show him to be.
He never, in fact, wholly outgrew certain peculiarities which are direct results of his emotional instability, his slavery to mood. His persistent use of minor keys, for example, is, as the doctors say, symptomatic. The minor is naturally the medium of vague, subjective moods and fantasies, of aspiration, longing, and doubt; it is the vehicle of morbidly self-bounded thoughts, whose depressing gloom is equalled only by their seductive and malign beauty. Such thoughts we find too often in Chopin, Grieg, and, it must be added, in Tschaïkowsky. Of the first thirty songs he wrote, seventeen are in the minor mode. Of course too much should not be argued from a detail of this sort, but the major system is so naturally the medium of vigorously objective thought that we instinctively suspect the health of a mind which harps continually upon the minor. By a somewhat similar tendency towards self-involution, the natural result of intense emotionality, Tschaïkowsky inclines to monotony of rhythm; he gets hypnotized, as it were, by the regular pulsation of some recurring meter, and he continues it to the verge of trance. An example is the long pedal-point on D, in the curious 5-4 measure of the second movement of the Pathetic Symphony. This is like the wailing and rocking of the women of a savage tribe over the death of a warrior; it is at once wild and sinister. But perhaps the most striking evidence of this servitude to passion we are trying to trace in Tschaïkowsky is his constant use of climax. It seems to be quite impossible for him to preserve a mean-tone; he is always lashing himself into a fury, boiling up into a frenetic fortissimo, after which he lapses into coma until some phrase of melody or impulse of rhythm jostles his imagination again, and he presses on toward a new crisis. The effect of these cumulative whirlwinds of passion is often tremendous, is unique, indeed, in music; yet one longs sometimes in the midst of them for a less turbulent attitude, for the equable beauty of Bach or Mozart. The atmosphere is surcharged. One feels that this noble but willful spirit has sat too long in the close chamber of personal feeling, that one must throw wide the windows and let in the fresh winds of general human existence.
Yet, after all, the imperfections of Tschaïkowsky's music are due rather to the overwhelming richness of his emotions than to any shortcomings of mind; his case is an artistic embarrassment of riches, and his critic must avoid the fallacy of supposing, because his constructive power is sometimes inadequate, that it is ever meager. On the contrary, he is a man of great intellectual force. It is too bad to be so busy with Tschaïkowsky the pessimist that one forgets Tschaïkowsky the artist. His melodic fertility alone is enough to rank him with the great constructive musicians. His devotion to Mozart, and to the Italian opera-writers, was no accident; by the spontaneity and beauty of his melodies he has «approved himself their worthy brother.» Few more inspiring tunes can be found anywhere than the opening theme of his B-flat minor Piano Concerto, with its splendid and tireless vigor, or the broad, constantly unfolding cantilena of the second theme in the Fifth Symphony. His pages are plentifully scattered with phrases of rare grace, of a fresh and original charm. His harmony, too, for all its radicalism, is generally firm and well controlled, and his rhythm, however monotonous at times, is never vague. In polyphony (the simultaneous progress of different melodies) he is a powerful master, as any one may see by examining, for example, the masterly variations in his Orchestral Suite, opus 55. He is probably, on the whole, a greater master of general construction than any of his contemporaries except Brahms.
It is evident, then, that this curiously paradoxical personality was gifted with an intellectual strength that went far toward dominating the turbulent passions which, on the whole, it could not quite dominate. But one needs, after all, no careful statistical proof of the rationality of Tschaïkowsky's music. The fact that it survives, that it is widely listened to and loved, proves a priori that, however tinged it may be with personal melancholy, it is not ultimately pessimistical or destructive in effect. For it is the happy fortune of art that it cannot fully voice the destructive forces of anarchy and despair. Its nature precludes the possibility, for anarchy is chaos, despair is confusion, and neither can be the subject of that clearly organic order which is art. The artist may, of course, express sadness; his work, if it is to be comprehensively human, must be reflective of the ebb as well as the flow of vital power. But it cannot mirror complete dejection, the absolute lapse of power; for without power there is no organization, and without organization there is no art. The melodic invention, the harmonic grasp, the rhythmic vigor, in a word the powerful musical articulation, everywhere present in Tschaïkowsky's best work, remove it far from the inarticulate moanings of despair. Such faculties as his are anything but disintegrating or decadent; however much individual sadness may attend their exercise, they are upbuilding and creative. Tschaïkowsky commands our admiration more than our pity because, in spite of the burdens of his temperament and the misfortunes of his experience, he contributed to beauty, and beauty is the standing confutation of evil.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. —Much of Tschaïkowsky's early work was for piano, but most of his piano pieces are light if not trivial in character. They are amusing to play over, but do not fairly represent his genius. Seventeen of them are to be had in an album in the Collection Litolff. The Sonata, op. 37, on the other hand, in spite of its marked resemblance to Schumann's F-sharp minor Sonata, is one of the finest of modern sonatas for piano. The Concertos are masterly, but very difficult. Most of the important orchestral works are arranged for four hands. The most interesting are the Pathetic Symphony, the Fifth Symphony, which should be equally well known, the Orchestral Suites, particularly the third, op. 55, with its charming Tema con Variazioni, and the Overture, Romeo and Juliet. Of the chamber-works, the third String Quartet, op. 30, and the Trio, are especially good. Twenty-four of Tschaïkowsky's songs are published in an album by Novello, Ewer & Co., and many separately by G. Schirmer and others.
FOOTNOTES:
[E] Since the present paper was written, the biography of Tschaïkowsky by his brother has shown that in this unhappy marriage the only fault we can attribute to the composer was a quixotic chivalry in marrying a young woman who had declared her love for him. He married her from sympathy without loving her. Of course such a step could lead to nothing but misery; but however unwise, it was at least generous and honorable.
[F] This lady, according to the new biography, was Frau von Meck, the widow of a wealthy railway engineer. Her interest in Tschaïkowsky's work, and her generous gifts of money, were of great value to him all his life.