There was to be a program to this symphony, a mysterious, profoundly personal program. But Tschaikowsky would never tell the world what it was. “Let them guess who can,” he challenged. Amid the beautiful natural scenery of Klin, near Moscow, Tschaikowsky worked at his symphony. Curiously enough, his mood was bright and cheerful for a change. Early in October he left for Moscow to attend a funeral. There he met his friend Kashkin and together they talked jovially of life and death. Tschaikowsky was in excellent spirits and Kashkin assured him that he would outlive them all. Tschaikowsky laughed, and talked excitedly about his new symphony, how he was satisfied with the first three movements, how the finale still needed tinkering.
At length he was in St. Petersburg again. The day of the première of his symphony was approaching. Rehearsals were begun and Tschaikowsky soon found reason to grow morose and pessimistic again. He had counted on the musicians reacting warmly to this new music of his, but he began to notice cool faces, indifferent glances, and—horror of horrors—yawns. This was too much for the hypersensitive Tschaikowsky. He felt his hands suddenly become lifeless, his mind lose its alertness. His confidence ebbed from him. To spare the men any further boredom he cut short the rehearsal. Still, he knew he had written his greatest symphony. At the première of October 28th, the audience received the new symphony coolly, and it was not till shortly after Tschaikowsky’s death that it began to make a mighty, overpowering impression on listeners wherever it was played.
But the symphony had been baptized without a name. Tschaikowsky felt the term “No. 6” was too bald and lonely a title for it. “Programme Symphony” was also ruled out, for the good reason that he refused to divulge the “program.” His brother Modeste suggested “Tragic,” but Tschaikowsky rejected that too. When Modeste left him, he went on casting about for a title. In a flash it came to him. He rushed back to his brother. “Peter,” he exclaimed; “I have it! Why not call it the ‘Pathetic’ symphony.” Tschaikowsky pounced on the proposal eagerly: “Splendid, Modi, bravo—Pathetic!” he shouted. In his brother’s presence Tschaikowsky wrote on the score the name by which the symphony has since been known. Most programs, however, give the title in its French form, Symphonie Pathétique.
Shortly after the conversation with his brother, Tschaikowsky attended a performance of Ostrowsky’s play, A Warm Heart. Later he went backstage to pay his respects to the leading actor, Warlamoff. The talk somehow turned to spiritualism, and again Tschaikowsky showed a lighthearted mood. When Warlamoff laughingly ridiculed “these abominations which remind one of death,” Tschaikowsky agreed jovially. “There is plenty of time before we have to reckon with this snub-nosed horror. It will not come to snatch us off just yet! I feel that I shall live a long time!” Five days later, Peter Ilyitch Tschaikowsky, generally regarded as Russia’s greatest composer, was dead, one of the many victims of the fearful cholera epidemic then raging in St. Petersburg.
If Tschaikowsky followed a definite emotional or philosophical program in the Pathetic symphony, the key to it died with him. Had he lived, the chances are he would have divulged it, since he was not by nature a secretive, unconfiding man. However, many have probed the symphony’s content and concluded it harbored a message of impending death. Yet Kashkin, Tschaikowsky’s close friend, interpreted the fierce energy of the third movement and the abysmal sorrow of the Finale “in the broader light of a national or historical significance.” He refused to narrow down the scope of the symphony to a merely personal experience.
“If the last movement is intended to be prophetic, it is surely of things vaster and issues more fatal than are contained in a purely personal apprehension of death,” he said. “It speaks, rather, of une lamentation large et souffrance inconnue—a large lamentation and unknown suffering. It seems to set the seal of finality on all human hopes. Even if we eliminate the merely subjective interest, this autumnal inspiration of Tschaikowsky’s, in which we hear the whirling of the perished leaves of hope, still remains the most profoundly stirring of his works.”
I think we may safely agree with Kashkin’s judgment, at the same time reserving the right to read into this monumental dirge, for such it unmistakably is, our own individual sense of its profoundly moving theme of tragic resignation. That Tschaikowsky left it as a testament of disillusion and futility is likely. Yet no one can miss the fine vein of tenderness and the flashes of defiance recurring through it. Few artists have bequeathed the world such a candid, soul-searing self-portrait.