“Tschaikowsky is eclectic, and many cosmopolitan woofs run through the fabric of his music. Italy influenced, then Germany, then France; and, in his later day, he let lightly fall the reins on the neck of his Pegasus and was much given to joyously riding in the fabled country of ballet, pantomime, and other delightful places.”[84]
This is perfectly true, but beyond and above all else Tschaikowsky is Russian.
“Like most Slavs,” writes Ernest Newman, “he drew sustenance more from France than Germany. Brahms he thought dull; Wagner he never really understood. He loved music, he said, that came from the heart, that expressed ‘a deep humanity,’ like Grieg’s. To the delicate brain and nerves of the modern man he added the long-accumulated eruptive passions of his race. He takes the language made by the great Germans and uses it to express the complex pessimism of another culture. The color of life in his music ranges from pale gray to intense black, with here and there a note of angry scarlet tearing through the mass of cloud.”
Peter Ilich Tschaikowsky was born in 1840 in Votinsk in the government of Viatka, where his father was inspector of the government mines, soon removing to Petrograd, where the boy received his education. He studied music, played the piano well, and composed light music; but with him at this time music was merely an accomplishment and a social pleasure. In 1861 he began to study music seriously and gave up his work to face poverty for the sake of art. In 1865 he completed his course at the Conservatory, where he had attracted the admiration of Anton Rubinstein with whom he studied orchestration. As an instance of his industry Rubinstein’s story may be quoted. “Once at the composition class,” said Rubinstein, “I set him to write out contrapuntal variations on a given theme, and I mentioned that in this class of work not only quality but quantity was of importance. I thought perhaps he would write about a dozen variations. But not at all. At the next class I received over two hundred. To examine all these would have taken me more time than it took him to write them.”
When Nicholas Rubinstein organized the Conservatory in Moscow in 1866, he gave Tschaikowsky the chair of professor of harmony. He spent much time in composing and Nicholas Rubinstein brought out his works at the concerts of the Russian Musical Society. Tschaikowsky’s life is in his works. Whether in Petrograd, Moscow, in his country home, in Paris, or travelling, he was always composing; and, consequently, his list of works is long.
TSCHAIKOWSKY
Photograph taken in Petrograd
Although Tschaikowsky wrote light operas, he is chiefly known for his orchestral music—his magnificent symphonies and his symphonic poems. So immense are these works in their effect that the hearer often imagines that Tschaikowsky called for an orchestra with as many additional instruments, new and old, as Richard Strauss. This is not the case, however. For instance, in the Symphonie pathetique he has the Beethoven orchestra with the addition of the bass tuba.
“A remarkable feature of his scoring is the extreme modern effect secured with comparatively modest means. He expressed himself in a language of profound pathos which was in part due to the embodiment of weird and gloomy orchestration. He made prominent use of low woodwind, which were constantly combined with the violas, and he evinced peculiar predilection for clarinets in their low range and bassoons in their upper range.”[85]