PETER ILICH TCHAIKOVSKY
RUSSIAN MUSIC
Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky
FOUR
Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky in the first part of his life held an office in the Ministry of Justice at Petrograd. While he was an excellent amateur performer, he did not think seriously enough of his musical ability to consider music as a career. It was Anton Rubinstein who induced him to take up music as a profession.
Tchaikovsky was born at Votkinsk, Russia, on May 7, 1840. He was the son of a mining engineer, who shortly after Peter was born removed to Petrograd. The boy picked up a smattering of musical knowledge as a law student. Then when he was twenty-two, Rubinstein, the director of the conservatory at Petrograd, persuaded him to enter it as a pupil. Tchaikovsky, therefore, resigned his position in the Ministry of Justice and took up the study of composition, harmony, and counterpoint. Four years later, on leaving the conservatory, he won the prize, a silver medal, for his cantata on Schiller’s “Ode to Joy.”
In 1866 Tchaikovsky became professor of the history and theory of music at the Moscow Conservatory, which had just then been founded by Nicholas Rubinstein, a brother of Anton. For the next twelve years he was practically first chief of this conservatory, since Serov, whom he succeeded, never took up his appointment. While serving in that capacity he wrote text books and made translations of others into Russian.
At Moscow Tchaikovsky met Ostrovsky, who wrote for him his first operatic libretto, “The Voyevoda.” The Russian Musical Society rejected a concert overture by Tchaikovsky, written at the suggestion of Rubinstein. In 1867 Tchaikovsky made an unsuccessful début as a conductor. His star was not yet in the ascendant, for in 1869 his opera, “The Voyevoda,” lived for only ten performances. Tchaikovsky later destroyed the score of this work. The following year his operatic production, “Undine,” was rejected. In 1873, at Moscow, his incidental music to the “Snow Queen” proved a failure. During all this time the composer was busy on a cantata, an opera and a text book of harmony, the last of which was adopted by the authorities of the Moscow Conservatory. He was also music critic for two journals.
Tchaikovsky competed for the best musical setting for Polovsky’s “Wakula the Smith” in a competition, and won the first two prizes. On the production of this in Petrograd, in November, 1876, however, only a small measure of success was gained. A greater success came to the composer with the production of the “Oprischnik.” From 1878 on he devoted himself exclusively to composition.