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Tchaikovsky |
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Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on April 25, 1840 in Kamsko-Votkinsk and died on October 25, 1893 in St. Petersburg. From law to musicAlready as a small child Pyotr took lessons in piano, and he carried on with his music studies when his family moved to St. Petersburg in 1848. Like several artists who have enjoyed a world-wide reputation the young Pyotr started to study a more useful subject; law! From different sources we know, however, that the death of his mother (in 1854) was the main reason why Pyotr Ilyich was comforted by music in particular. Step by step he started composing his earliest pieces and spent much time on piano and singing lessons. As a result of several years of law-studies the young Tchaikovsky in 1859 was offered an office in Department of Justice. But at this time it became more and more obvious that music was most dear to his heart. Pyotr started his music studies at the newly created Russian Music Society, but continued after a while his music studies at the brand new Music Conservatory with Anton Rubinstein as director. Encouraged by Rubinstein Tchaikovsky left the Department of Justice in 1863 determined to consentrate on music completely. Symphony and operas as "pupil«s work"For his final exam Tchaikovsky wrote a composition based on Schiller«s text An die Freude - the same work of poetry which is the basis for the last movement of Beethoven«s Ninth Symphony. Pyotr Ilyich moved in 1866 from St. Petersburg to Moscow where he started teaching at the Music Conservatory founded by Nicholas Rubinstein (Anton Rubinstein«s brother). Nicholas, the director, was very positive in his attitude to Tchaikovsky«s music, and very soon one concert-overture by Pyotr was performed. Within the same year he completed his First Symphony. It was first performed in 1868, and the composition received favourable criticism. In this early work the young Tchaikovsky is very inspired by Mendelssohn«s symphonies (the "Italien" and "Scotch" in particular). The contemplation over a landscape which Mendelssohn expresses in his symphonies also characterizes Tchaikovsky«s landscape-painting (of his beloved Russia). Different from most of his predecessors, contemporaries and descendants within the Western classic music, Tchaikovsky threw himself into large musical forms. Within one year - 1868/1869 - this Russian composer completed one symphony and two operas. While the symphony received applause and good reviews, his two operas was no success. These composistions were completed, however, and he used material from his newest opera - Undine - in later works. Balakirev as inspiratorThe year 1869 ended up in many ways to be a "year of destiny" for the still young Pyotr Ilyich. At this time he became acquainted with the great French composer and orchestrator Hector Berlioz. And even more important; Pyotr became strongly influenced by the dominating Russian composer and conductor Milij Aleksejevitj Balakirev (1837-1910). This Russian force on the musical stage in those days performed for the first time Tchaikovsky«s symphonic poem Fatum and persuaded him to start working on Romeo and Julie. This tragedy written by William Shakespeare (1591-95) has formed the basis for several scenic and instrumental works; for instance the operas by til Charles Gounod og Leonard Bernstein (West Side story), and orchestral works by Hector Berlioz, Prokofjev and as mentioned, Tchaikovsky. In addition to the musical language and musical gesture of Balakirev Pyotr was at this time strongly influenced by Franz Liszt og Mikhail Glinka. In spite of this fact, Romeo and Julie is Tchaikovsky«s first masterpiece. The great challenge to the composer was to reconcile a program (action/idea) with one of the classical formal schemes/structures; the well-known sonata form. Indeed, Tchaikovsky succeeded in this already in his early compositions, and his talent is obvious in this aspect in particular in his greatest and most well-known symphonies. In this period, however, Pyotr Ilyich became more and more occupied with Russian folk music, a subject which had fascinated him since early years. He did not feel comfortable with the nationalistic ideas which among others Balakirev shared with the "New-Russian School", and Tchaikovsky can not be described as a "folk-music composer" literally speaking. But he used his experience which he had acquired from the publication of "50 Russian folktunes". This publication - which was made for his friend and publisher Pjotr Jurgenson - made a basis for the integration of Russian folkmusic in his own composition. Like Glinka, Raff, and Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky created brilliant settings of the folk and popular music of other nations, as in his Cappriccio Italien (op. 45 from 1880) or the musical travelogues in the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker. From the late 1860ies and to his death in 1893 Tchaikovsky wrote a lot of songs. These form a distinctive part of his production, and at the best these songs attain a lyricism and an expressive force which make Tchaikovsky equal to Musorgskij. Tchaikovsky as opera-composer - a difficult deliveryAs mentioned earlier, Pyotr«s occupation with the genre of opera did not give an immediate success. In 1868 he started on an opera with a libretto based on his own Vojevoden. Neither this work brought the composer any success. In the year 1868/69 Tchaikovsky wrote one more opera, but he destroyed the score. In 1876 the music for his opera The Smith Vakula was completed, and this work was performed in St. Petersburg. In spite of the fact that this composition won first prize in a competition, the reviewers did not like it. Surprisingly! In this opera Tchaikovsky succeeded in combining his ear for Russian folk music, his humility for and inspiration from Glinka. In addition to this; Pyotr«s knowledge of orchestration and his impressive skill for creating lyric melodies is striking. The ironic and amusing is the fact that Tchaikovsky«s adaption of this opera resulted in one of his masterpieces; Tsjerevitsjki (The Slippers), completed in 1885 and performed for the first time in Moscow in 1887. The Romantic Artists - great individualists - the tragic elementThe key word concerning the Romantic composer, novelist, poet, painter, dancer and choreographer is the intense individualism and subjectivity. One form of this Romantic intensity of feeling has been given the name Weltschmerz, best understood as a feeling of world-weariness with overtones of frustration and as a melancholy which at its extreme can lead to pathological states of nihilism, insanity, and suicide. In music such Romantic pathological despair most often finds expression on the operatic stage - for instance the "mad scenes" in Bellini«s I Putitani and Donizetti«s Lucia di Lammermoor or the suicides in Lucia di Lammermoor, Wagner«s Flying Dutchman and Die Götterdämmerung, and Puccini«s Madame Butterfly. The morbidness, the irrationalism and demonism that distinguishes literature and nightmare paintings parallels the macabre diabolism of Berlioz, Liszt, and Mahler. It is no coincidence that there exists a huge amount of biographies of artists in several fields from this period (particularly 1850-1900); poets, pictorial artists and musicians/composers. As a consequence of this fact, we are not surprised to learn that Tchaikovsky experienced just a short-lived marriage, that he went through (at least) one nervous breakdown and attempted suicide. The fact that Pyotr very early realized his homosexuality could obviously not have facilitated his private situation. As an artist Tchaikovsky of course was sensitive and cautious toward the expressions of opinion and judgments from the society. Sources maintain that despair and contemplate suicide form the basis for the last movement of his Sixth Symphony. In many ways Pyotr Ilyich is "inspired" by Robert Schumann. Not at least we experience the suicidal despair in the concluding song of Mahler«s Das Lied von der Erde. The morbid element and an athmosphere of total pessimism we meet in Tchaikovsky«s three last symphonies in general. Nowadays it is difficult for us to realize the individual artist«s life and social situation in the 1850ies - regardless nationality and reputation. Personally I find it very fascinating and "satisfactory" that these creative people kept at the grind. Even though the art required renunciation, heavy going and hardships, the artists exerted all their strength in expressing their "message". In spite of this fact, a successful composer and conductor - in great excellece - expresses: "I am not a fascist. I hate Tchaikovsky and I will not conduct him. But if the audience wants him, it can have him". (Pierre Boulez). Some facts concerning Tchaikovsky«s most known compositionsThe ballet Swan Lake (Russian original title: Lebedinoe osero). Libretto: V. P. Begitscher og W. Geltzer, choreography: Julius
Reisinger. This ballet is a direct successor of the underwater
ballet in Act IV of DargomØzhsky«s Rusalka. Swan Lake was performed for the first time in Moscow on February 20, 1877.
Pelagia Mikhailovna Karpakova and St. Gillert played important parts. Version 2 of Swan Lake, which consisted of just Act 2, was performed for the first time
in St. Petersburg on February 17, 1894; Pierina Legnani and Pavel Gerdt played the leading parts. Choreography: Lev Ivanov. The ballet The Nutcracker (Russian original title; Sjtsjelkuntsjik). This ballet consists only of two acts based on E. T. A. Hoffmann«s Der Nussknacker und der Mäusekönig. Libretto: M. Petipa, choreography: Lev Ivanov. Performed for the first time in 1892 at the Mariinskij Theatre in St. Petersburg. In Oslo the ballet was performed for the very first time in 1965 (W. Gore). The music is arranged as a suite titled The Nutcracker suite. The ballet The Sleeping Beauty (Russian original title: Spjasjtjaja krasavitsa). This ballet has a prologue and three acts and is based on a fairy-tale by Perrault. The libretto is written by M. Petipa and I. Vsevolosjkij, and the choreography was originally by M. Petipa. The ballet was performed for the first time in 1890 at the Mariinskij Theatre in St. Petersburg. The first Western production took place in 1921 in London by Djagilev«s Ballet Russes. N. Sergejev produced his version for Sadler«s Wells Ballet in London in 1939. The last scene of this ballet is sometimes performed titled Aurora«s wedding. The opera Eugen Onegin (Russian original title: Jevgenij Onegin). The opera, which includes three acts, is by Tchaikovsky himself called "lyric scenes" and is obviously an intentional attempt to write an opera characterized by an intimate atmosphere. The opera is based on a text by the composer himself and K. S. Sjilovskij inspired by the russian author Pusjkin. The composition was performed for the first time in Moscow in 1879 and in Kristiania in 1918. The main parts: Tatjana (soprano), Olga, Lenskij (tenor) og Eugen Onegin (barytone). Tchaikovsky«s symphonies: One sometimes encounters the view that Tchaikovsky«s Fifth Symphony (in e-minor, opus 64) is finer than the Pathetique (his Sixth Symphony), on the ground that it has fewer "tricks". The composer«s orchestration is undoubtedly vivid, and the salient features of the Pathetique are specially ingenious. It is not merely sentimental or biographical reasons that Tchaikovsky«s sixth and last symphony (in b-minor, opus 74) has become the most famous of all his works. Nowhere else has he concentrated so great a variety of music within so effective a scheme; and the slow finale, with its complete simplicity of despair, is a stroke of genius which solves all the artistic problems that have proved most baffling to symphonic writers since Beethoven. Epilogue: One may have one«s own ideas about some of the reviews of the performances of Tchaikovsky«s Swan Lake. The musical motives in the ballet was by some reviwers interpreted as "too symphonic", and the composer«s choose of keys was critized as too "planned". Hopefully it is easier for us today to appreciate and admire Tchaikovsky«s capacity of understanding what kind of music that was suited for "free motion" and melodies which were fitted for dances or for light divertimenti. My piece of advice is: Listen to Tchaikovsky«s music and make up your own mind about this wide-ranging music! |
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Berit Kvinge Tjøme
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