Tchaikovsky E-Book

John Suchet

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 499

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is one of the most successful composers that Russia has ever produced, but his path to success was not an easy one.A shy, emotional child, intended for the civil service by his father, Tchaikovsky came late to composing as a career, and despite his success he was a troubled character. Doubting himself at every turn, he was keenly wounded by criticism, while the death of his mother haunted him all his life, and his incessant attempts to suppress his homosexuality took a huge toll.From his disastrous marriage to his extraordinary relationship with his female patron, his many amorous liaisons and his devotion to friends and family, Suchet shows us how the complexity of Tchaikovsky's emotional life plays out in his music. A man who was by turns quick to laugh and to despair, his mercurial temperament found its outlet in some of the most emotionally intense music ever written.Tchaikovsky: ­The Man Revealed examines the complex and contradictory character of this great artist, long hidden behind sanitised depictions by his brother and the Russian authorities, and how he came to take his rightful place among the world's greatest composers.

Leseprobe

For my Dad, for making me learn the piano at the age of nine.

For my Mum, who let me buy a Tchaikovsky biography at the age of seventeen.

For my darling wife Nula, who was with me every step of the way.

‘If I am in a normal state of mind, I can say that I am composing every minute of the day, whatever the circumstances. Sometimes I observe with curiosity that unbroken labour which . . . goes on in that region of my head which is given over to music. Sometimes this is some preparatory work . . . while on another occasion a completely new independent musical idea appears and I try to retain it in my memory. Whence all this comes is an impenetrable secret.’1

Tchaikovsky

Family Tree

Author’s Note

Prologue

1 Pyotr, the Fledgling Seagull

2 Upheavals and Loss

3 An Unbearable Farewell

4 Guilt and the Cruellest Loss

5 A Difficult Journey

6 Pyotr Chooses Music

7 Tchaikovsky, Music Teacher

8 The Ladies’ Man

9 A Most Unlikely Affair

10 A Tragic Love

11The Lake of the Swans

12 Unexpected Inspiration

13 Bending the Rules

14 Misery and Defiance

15Swan Lake – and Failure

16 In Love – and Alone

17 A Woman Enters His Life

18 ‘She Is Repulsive to Me’

19 Fate

20 ‘It Stinks to the Ear’

21 A Sort of Freedom

22 The Boulevardier

23 An Impenetrable Secret

24 A Family Crisis

25 A Benefactor Bids ‘Adieu’

26 On Tour and Unhappy

27 A Musical ‘Adieu’?

Postscript

Afterword

Timeline

Select Bibliography

References

Index

TCHAIKOVSKY FAMILY TREE

Tchaikovsky’s sexual proclivities can make for uncomfortable reading in today’s world. Here I am not referring to his homosexuality, which was officially proscribed in his day and is a taboo subject in Russia even now. There is, however, no denying his predilection for youth. We know from his letters his sexual preference was for teenage boys before and after puberty. He describes the scene at a friend’s country estate as a ‘pederastic bordello’.

Tchaikovsky believed that his behaviour was morally wrong and struggled with guilt throughout his life. Our knowledge of his actions is incomplete, hampered by censorship, both unofficial by his brother and then official during the Soviet era. He would, we can be sure, be mortified by the accounts of his sexual conduct that have appeared – and will certainly continue to appear – in biographies and biopics.

The question is whether any of this needs to be discussed when examining Tchaikovsky’s accomplishments as a composer. I would answer emphatically that it does. My aim, in my series of composer biographies, is to reach the human being behind the music, to present ‘the man revealed’. I would go further: it is impossible to separate the man from his music. In Tchaikovsky’s case, a single example – the love theme in the Fantasy Overture: Romeo and Juliet – will suffice. One might as well try to separate Beethoven’s deafness from his late quartets.

While a full account of what we know about Tchaikovsky’s life will inevitably include details that might be disturbing, I believe it is important to include them where they help to create as clear a picture as possible of one of our greatest composers.

In the early hours of 10 October 1893,* Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky arrived in St Petersburg on the train from Moscow. He was met at the station by his brother Modest and nephew Vladimir Davydov, known as ‘Bob’.

Tchaikovsky was fifty-three years of age, but he looked seventy. His face was lined and there were bags under his eyes. His white hair was thinning and his teeth were yellow.1 His character remained youthful, however. Friends frequently remarked on how full of high spirits he was, easily moved to laughter, his eyes sparkling with humour.

The reason for the trip to St Petersburg was for the premiere of his new work, the Sixth Symphony, the Pathétique, which, as was now customary with premieres of his orchestral works, the composer was to conduct himself. He remained cheerful, despite a lack of enthusiasm at rehearsals from the orchestra – a disappointment for which there was no obvious reason.

As usual when visiting St Petersburg, Tchaikovsky stayed at Modest’s top-floor apartment, on the corner of Malaya Morskaya and Gorokhovaya Street. There he would rise early, before his brother, sit at the dining table and make adjustments to the score of the symphony. At the same time he was revising an opera he had written twenty years earlier, Oprichnik, in readiness for a new production.

Evenings were given over to entertainment. There were visits to the theatre, followed by convivial meals at either the Grand Hotel or the Hôtel de France, at which copious amounts of alcohol were consumed. Tchaikovsky, it appears, was the life and soul of the party, always ready with a seemingly endless supply of jokes and stories.

Life in St Petersburg, the elegant Russian capital and seat of the Romanov tsar, continued as it always had for the well-off and the nobility, and for many artists, writers and musicians. They were untroubled by the cholera epidemic decimating the lower classes.

For the privileged minority there were two simple rules for steering clear of the epidemic: avoid intimate physical contact with anyone infected with cholera, and drink only boiled water. Cholera was a fact of life in this unhygienic city surrounded by mosquito-ridden marshland at the mouth of the River Neva.

It was said that the city was built on the bones of tens of thousands of peasants forced into construction work. Foetid marshes, dank alleys and extremes of weather provided fertile ground for disease. St Petersburg’s climate was described as eight months of severe winter followed by four months of unbearable heat.

Modest would later claim credit for suggesting the subtitle for his brother’s new symphony – Pathétique – which he said Pyotr Ilyich had adopted with enthusiasm. The premiere took place on 16 October, a Saturday. It is difficult to gauge exactly how the symphony was received. There was, by all accounts, huge interest ahead of the event, and a packed hall to hear the new work by Russia’s most acclaimed and most popular composer.

Tchaikovsky’s entrance was greeted rapturously, with a prolonged standing ovation. That was not to be repeated, however, at the end of the performance. Unusually for Tchaikovsky, in fact uniquely in his symphonic output, the final bars of the symphony are decidedly downbeat. ‘Melancholy’ and ‘mournful’ are words that have been used to describe it.

Composers of the past, none more so than Beethoven, knew how to inspire applause at the end of a symphony. Tchaikovsky, in his Fourth and Fifth Symphonies in particular, showed he too knew what was needed. Yet he did not follow convention for the Sixth. The final movement, with low notes in the minor key on cellos and bassoons, fades away to nothing.

No doubt expecting the usual final flourish, the audience reacted with bewilderment. This was not the Tchaikovsky they knew. The music critics were similarly lukewarm. There was polite respect, certainly, but no ecstatic praise.

Initially disappointed, Tchaikovsky did not remain depressed for long. He knew he needed to make one or two small adjustments to the score, and he had high hopes for the second performance, which he was due to conduct in Moscow three weeks later.

He also had a tour of Europe planned for the following spring, and was considering invitations from a number of other European cities.

Four days after the premiere, on Wednesday, 20 October, Tchaikovsky met with a lawyer to sign the new contract for the revival of Oprichnik. Negotiations had gone better than he could have hoped, with all his demands regarding royalties and rights being accepted.

He was therefore in a particularly good frame of mind that evening when he attended a performance of The Ardent Heart, a play by Alexander Ostrovsky at the Alexandrinsky Theatre. One of his companions, a twenty-year-old actor by the name of Yuri Yuriev, described him as being ‘in good health and cheerful mood’. In the interval he went backstage to chat ‘lightheartedly’2 with the leading actor, Konstantin Varlamov, in his dressing room.

They discussed spiritualism, which was currently in vogue in Russia. Both dismissed it with mocking laughter. Tchaikovsky described it as a ‘snub-nosed horror’ that would not come to snatch them off just yet. ‘I feel I shall live a long time,’ he said.3

After the theatre, he strolled along the city’s main avenue, the Nevsky Prospekt, with a group of young male friends and relatives. Modest said he would catch up with them a little later. On the spur of the moment Tchaikovsky suggested dinner at one of his favourite restaurants, Leiner’s.

There, according to Tchaikovsky’s youngest nephew, Yuri Davydov, just seventeen at the time, his uncle summoned a waiter and asked him to bring a glass of water. The waiter returned after a couple of minutes to say that there was no boiled water.

According to Yuri, Tchaikovsky reacted impatiently and told the waiter to bring him ‘some unboiled water. Cold.’4 Yuri and the others remonstrated with him, reminding him of the dangers of cholera. Tchaikovsky waved off their protests as so much superstition.

The waiter left to fetch the water, at which point Modest arrived with the actor Yuri Yuriev, Modest congratulating himself on having presumed this was where he would find them. ‘Where else would we be?’ asked his brother, laughing.5

The waiter returned with a glass of water on a tray. When Modest found out that it was unboiled, he immediately became angry and shouted: ‘I strictly forbid you to drink unboiled water!’

Tchaikovsky leapt to his feet. Modest tried to stop him but Tchaikovsky pushed his brother out of the way and drank the water in a single draught.6

This was Yuri’s version of what happened. Modest later gave his own account, which does not refer to unboiled water – at least not to it being drunk in the restaurant. His account initially accords with his nephew’s, with him joining the party in Leiner’s an hour later.

He says he was told Tchaikovsky had eaten macaroni, washed down, as usual, with white wine and soda water. No mention of an incident involving unboiled water. They all left the restaurant at around two in the morning. ‘Peter Ilich was perfectly well and serene,’ according to his brother.7

Modest then takes up the story as only he could know it, since his brother was staying in his apartment. The following morning, Thursday, 21 October, when he saw that Tchaikovsky was not at his usual place at the dining table, Modest went to check on him. He found him still in bed, complaining of not feeling well.

Tchaikovsky told him he had had a bad night with an upset stomach. Despite this, according to Modest, he got himself dressed, and at around 11:00 a.m. went out to go and see Eduard Nápravník, chief conductor of the Mariinsky Theatre. But half an hour later he returned, still feeling unwell.

Modest suggested calling for a doctor, but Tchaikovsky expressly forbade it. Modest says he was not overly concerned, since his brother frequently complained about poor digestion and it had never turned out to be serious. Tchaikovsky resorted to his habitual remedy of castor oil.

At lunch the pair were joined by a young relative, Sanya Litke. Tchaikovsky did not eat, says Modest, but while talking he poured out a glass of water and drank it down in a single gulp.

Modest was alarmed by his brother’s imprudence, since the water had not been boiled. Tchaikovsky waved away his concern, saying he was not in the least bit worried about contracting cholera.

As the day progressed Tchaikovsky’s condition worsened, and Modest called a doctor. The doctor diagnosed cholera. The following day Tchaikovsky seemed to rally, but the improvement did not last.

Kidney failure set in, and there was nothing the doctors – by now there were three in attendance – could do. On the morning of Monday, 25 October, less than five days after the dinner at Leiner’s and four after supposedly drinking the water at his brother’s, Tchaikovsky died.

In his biography of his brother, Modest wrote: ‘At the last moment an indescribable look of clear recognition lit up his face – a gleam which only died away with his last breath.’8

* Dates are given in the Julian calendar, which lagged twelve days behind the Western Gregorian calendar, and was used in Russia until 1918.

In late December 1892, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky – the most famous living composer in the world, now fifty-two years of age but with the nervousness and apprehension of a small boy – stood outside a humble cottage on rue Clémenceau in the small town of Montbéliard in eastern France, close to the border with Switzerland.

Finally he plucked up the courage to knock. The door was opened by a woman of seventy. Tchaikovsky braced himself for tears, hugs and emotion. It did not happen.

[She] made no scenes on my arrival, she did not weep, or marvel at the change in me – it was simply as though we had parted only a year ago.1

In fact it had been forty-four years ago. Tchaikovsky had not seen Fanny Dürbach, the family’s French governess who had looked after Pyotr and his siblings as children, for almost half a century.

The emotional restraint did not last long. Fanny produced letters from many years before, written to her not only by Tchaikovsky and his brother Modest, but also ‘wonderfully sweet letters from Mama’. Perhaps most poignant of all for Tchaikovsky, Fanny showed him exercise books he had himself written as a small child. The memories came flooding back for both of them:

I cannot describe the delectable, magical feeling I experienced as I listened to these tales and read all these letters and exercise books. The past in all its detail arose so clearly in my memory that it seemed I was breathing the air of our [childhood] home. I was listening to the voice of Mama . . . At times I was so carried back into that distant past that it became somehow awesome but at the same time sweet – and all the while both of us were holding back the tears.2

Tchaikovsky had visited Fanny Dürbach reluctantly, only after she had pleaded with him in several letters to pay her a visit. In a letter to Modest, he confessed he had no desire to see her, expecting her to have aged beyond recognition, even become enfeebled, a shadow of the woman who meant so much to him. He even feared – in an irrationally morbid thought – that on seeing her he would wish her dead. Perhaps he expressed that thought in the joy of having found her rational, full of memories, as kind-hearted as he remembered her, and as willing to indulge in nostalgia as he was himself.

A visit he intended to last no more than a matter of hours extended across two days. On the first day he stayed from three in the afternoon until eight in the evening, and he spent the whole of the following day with her. Without a doubt, the least enjoyable part of the visit for Tchaikovsky was when Fanny insisted on taking him to meet two close friends and a relative, no doubt to show him off to them.

In a touching moment, Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother that at the end of the second day Fanny insisted on sending him back to his hotel for dinner, saying it would embarrass her and her sister, with whom she lived, to try to feed him.

And perhaps only someone who had known the great composer as a child would have the nerve to tell him that although she was proud of his musical achievements, she rather wished he had become a poet instead, for he surely would have become another Pushkin.

At the end of the second day, all nervousness gone, the two parted with kisses. Fanny implored Tchaikovsky to continue writing letters to her, and made him promise he would visit her again in Montbéliard.

The return visit was not to be. Ten months later he was dead.

Almost half a century earlier, as autumn turned to winter in 1844, a carriage drew up outside a large house set among trees in the remote settlement of Votkinsk, which lay around six hundred miles east of Moscow in the western foothills of the Ural mountains.*

Three people emerged, with an abundance of suitcases and bags. In charge and directing the others was Alexandra Tchaikovskaya, thirty-one years of age. She was busy checking that her eldest son, Nikolay, then aged eight, had not forgotten anything. The third person was a twenty-two-year-old Frenchwoman she had employed as governess to Nikolay, Fanny Dürbach.

The journey from St Petersburg, where Alexandra had been visiting relatives and had met and employed Fanny, had taken three weeks – plenty of time, Fanny recalled much later, for her to get to know her employer and the boy who was to be entrusted to her care.

She liked what she saw. Mrs Tchaikovskaya was kind and courteous to her, and Fanny was immediately struck not just by Nikolay’s good manners, but by how extraordinarily handsome he was. It boded well, though she confessed to a degree of apprehension. She had yet to meet the head of the family, Ilya Tchaikovsky, and there were two younger children as well. She was also worried about having to adapt to an entirely new way of life hundreds of miles away from home.

The closer she came to Votkinsk, the more her uneasiness grew. But in her own words, ‘when we at length arrived at the house, one moment sufficed to show that all my fears were groundless’.3

The welcome almost literally knocked Fanny off her feet. So many people rushed out to greet them, she was not sure who were members of the family and who were servants. And if she thought that as a stranger she would be welcomed any less than the mistress of the house and her son, she need not have worried.

There was embracing all round, and one embrace – from the most unexpected quarter – so surprised Fanny that she recalled it in detail more than half a century later: ‘The head of the family kissed me without ceremony, as though I had been his daughter.’4 She felt as if she too had returned home.

Fanny, all her misgivings put to rest, began work the next morning. She was employed to teach not just Nikolay, known as Kolya, but also his young cousin Lidiya. She soon found, though, that she had a third willing pupil on her hands.

Kolya’s four-year-old brother Pyotr took a liking to Fanny Dürbach from the moment he set eyes on her. When he discovered that she was to teach Kolya and Lidiya, he pleaded with his mother to be allowed to join the classes. At first Alexandra tried to keep him away, but such was his enthusiasm that Fanny said she was perfectly happy to let him join his elder brother and cousin.

With the natural caveat that Fanny’s recollections were written down so many decades later (in fact in the year following Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s death, by which time he was the most famous composer in Europe), her memories are still invaluable, the sole source of our knowledge of the composer’s earliest years.

Fanny describes how keen Pyotr was to learn – so keen and so naturally talented that he quickly overtook both Kolya and Lidiya. At the age of six, according to Fanny, he could already read French and German fluently. Clearly with a certain amount of hindsight she found ‘something original and uncommon’ in him, and noted that he possessed ‘an indefinable charm [which he exercised] on everyone who came in contact with him’.5

Fanny was not entirely uncritical though, which lends credence to her otherwise suspiciously positive memories. A clever young boy Pyotr might have been, but in some ways he suffered by comparison with his elder brother, whose good looks and outgoing personality had clearly earned Fanny’s approval:

In looks [Pyotr] did not compare favourably with [Nikolay], and was never so clean and tidy. His clothes were always in disorder. Either he had stained them in his absent-mindedness, or buttons were missing, or his hair was only half-brushed, so that by the side of his spruce and impeccable brother he did not show to advantage at first sight.6

But any criticism is tempered by rose-tinted memory:

. . . when the charm of his mind, and still more of his heart, had time to work, it was impossible not to prefer him to the other children. This sympathetic charm, this gift of winning all hearts, Tchaikovsky retained to the last days of his life.7

Since Fanny had just that one single meeting with Pyotr after a gap of nearly fifty years, her description of the laudable qualities he retained ‘to the last days of his life’ is clearly an exaggeration, but surely she can be allowed that.

Fanny’s recollections are particularly useful when it comes to anecdotal accounts of young Pyotr’s behaviour. He was, she recalled, sensitive in the extreme, far more so than the other children. The slightest criticism, or reproof, would hurt him deeply. He was ‘brittle as porcelain’, ‘a child of glass’.8 On one occasion, after the mildest of criticisms, he went up to his room and refused to re-emerge for several hours.

He was also very quick-witted. An anecdote that stayed with Fanny all her life, and that one can imagine her retelling with delight, concerned the extreme love the young Pyotr developed for Mother Russia, to the detriment of the rest of Europe.

She recounted how, on one occasion, during a break between lessons, he was poring over an atlas, turning the pages. He came to a map of Europe. He immediately bent down and covered the vast expanse of Russia with kisses. He then spat on all the other countries.

Fanny was shocked:

When I told him he ought to be ashamed of such behaviour, that it was wicked to hate his fellow-men who said the same ‘Our Father’ as himself, only because they were not Russians, and . . . he was spitting upon his own Fanny, who was a Frenchwoman, he replied at once: ‘There is no need to scold me; didn’t you see me cover France with my hand first?’9*

We know from this little story that the future composer’s love for his home country began early, and it was a passion that he would retain for the whole of his life. In middle age he wrote:

I have never come across anyone more in love with Mother Russia than I . . . I love passionately Russian people, the Russian language, the Russian way of thinking, the beauty of Russian faces, Russian customs . . . ‘the sacred legends of the dim and distant past’ . . . I love even these.10

There was, it seems, music in the house in Votkinsk. Fanny recalls Mrs Tchaikovskaya tinkling on the piano for her children to dance to; she would also sing along. Nothing serious though, according to Fanny, and no one else in the household was any more capable musically.

Things improved when Mr Tchaikovsky returned from a trip to St Petersburg with an orchestrion, a barrel-organ-like instrument that could simulate the sounds of an orchestra. This, Fanny said, transformed Pyotr’s life.

The orchestrion was, it seems, highly sophisticated. Its music rolls included arias from the great Italian operas. In this way the young boy first became acquainted with the music of Bellini and Donizetti, and with the composer he would revere above all others for his entire life, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

All the major arias from Mozart’s opera Don Giovanni were there. This music, and above all Zerlina’s aria ‘Vedrai, carino’, awoke in Pyotr ‘a beatific rapture’.11 Soon, to the surprise and delight of his parents, and of Fanny herself, he was able to recreate on the piano what he had heard on the orchestrion.

“Pyotr’s competence at the piano eventually left Fanny in no doubt as to where his natural talents lay.”

Surprise and delight at least initially, but when this musical activity began to get in the way of more ‘serious’ pursuits, Pyotr’s father put his foot down. Often, his brother Modest wrote, Pyotr had to be forcibly dragged away from the piano. He would then, instead, go to the window and drum the rhythm on the pane with his fingers. On one occasion he was so carried away that he broke the glass and cut his hand badly.12

But Pyotr’s father was not blind – or deaf. Although he allegedly had little musical talent himself, he was astute enough to realise that his youngest son possessed certain unusual qualities. Maybe they should be fostered. And so he engaged a piano teacher, one Mariya Palchikova, to give Pyotr piano lessons.

It was a start, no more than that, but given what was to follow, Palchikova earned her place – albeit a small one – in musical history.* Modest describes her in his memoirs as having only a limited amount of musical knowledge. Within a short time Pyotr could read at sight as easily as she could. Rather witheringly Modest wrote that, later in life, his brother could not remember a single piece she had taught him. Tchaikovsky remained fond of her, though. When she wrote to him thirty-five years later, revealing her financial difficulties, he arranged for money to be sent to this woman, to whom ‘I am very, very indebted’.13

One story Fanny recounted to Modest seems to be at odds with her general tone when describing the child she knew. She noticed that invariably he became overwrought and distressed after spending any time at the piano. This was the case even when it was not Pyotr himself who was playing the instrument.

One evening the Tchaikovsky family, including the children, were giving a musical soirée. At first Pyotr was enraptured with the music, but he quickly became very tired and went off to bed. After a little while Fanny went upstairs to check that he was all right. He was sitting bolt upright in bed with ‘bright, feverish eyes, and crying to himself’. When she tried to find out what was wrong, he sobbed and pointed to his head, saying, ‘Oh, this music, this music! Save me from it! It is here, here, and will not give me any peace.’14

It seems an unlikely reaction from a boy who was already besotted with music. Possibly it is coloured by the fact that Fanny herself had no interest in music and, by her own account, frequently tried to limit the amount of time he spent at the piano. She also made it clear to Pyotr – as she did to Modest all those years later, in correspondence with him following his brother’s visit – that her ambition for Pyotr was that he should become a poet. Her nickname for him was ‘Little Pushkin’.

Despite Fanny’s initial reluctance, Pyotr’s competence at the piano eventually left her in no doubt as to where his natural talents lay. A Polish officer who was a friend of the Tchaikovsky family would come to the house and play a selection of Chopin’s mazurkas on the piano. Pyotr began to look forward to these visits with a passion, to the extent that he learned two Chopin mazurkas himself and played them for the Polish officer, who was so impressed that he kissed the boy. ‘I never saw Pierre [Pyotr] so radiantly happy as that day,’ Fanny recalled.15

By and large Pyotr was a happy child. He adored his governess, enjoyed being taught by her, and was beginning to indulge his love of music. Life in the Tchaikovsky household was comfortable. Ilya had a responsible position as manager of the local ironworks, and was able to provide for his growing family. His income was sufficient for him to employ staff in the house, in addition to a governess.

In fact Ilya’s job was more than responsible; it was prestigious. It brought with it the largest house in the settlement, giving him authority and respect. When a young Alexander Romanov toured the vast country in 1837, including a visit to the Urals and Votkinsk, it was in the Tchaikovsky household that he stayed. Pyotr, born three years after this event, must have heard his father boasting on many an occasion how the future tsar had been his house guest.*

As well as his elder brother Nikolay, two years older than him, Pyotr had a sister, Alexandra, almost two years younger, named for her mother and known as Sasha, and another brother, Ippolit, known as Polya, three years younger than him. Twins Anatoly and Modest would follow, ten years his junior. There was also a much older girl, Zinaida, daughter of Ilya’s first wife, who was approaching the end of her teenage years.

Zinaida’s mother had died when she was an infant. Within two years Ilya had married again. His bride this time was a Russian woman of French descent. Her father’s ancestors had fled to Russia a century and a half earlier, after the repeal of the Edict of Nantes, which revoked Huguenot rights and made Protestantism illegal. Alexandra Tchaikovskaya’s maiden name was d’Assier.

Alexandra’s father had been born in Russia but was a member of the French nobility and retained the title of marquis. His daughter inherited his elegance and cultured taste. Music had played a central part in her life as a child,* and she was talented enough to play the piano and sing as an adult, even if she herself referred to it as little better than tinkling.16 In remote Votkinsk this was something of a rarity, and the Tchaikovsky house was one of the few in the town – quite possibly the only one – to have musical soirées of the kind that had sent young Pyotr to bed early with his head hurting.

In descriptions of Alexandra, which are always complimentary, the one word that seems conspicuous by its absence is ‘beautiful’. ‘Those who knew [our] mother describe her as tall and distinguished-looking,’ writes Modest, ‘not precisely handsome, but with wonderfully expressive eyes. All agreed that there was something particularly attractive in her appearance.’17

Modest goes out of his way to mention in his memoirs that Pyotr was entranced by their mother’s hands, ‘beautiful hands, although by no means small’. He quotes his brother as saying later in life, ‘Such hands do not exist nowadays, and never will again.’18 It is a slightly odd feature to notice, unless you happen to be a pianist yourself.

If we are to believe Modest, Alexandra Tchaikovskaya was a rather unemotional woman, absorbed in her own affairs. He describes her as sparing in shows of affection: ‘She was very kind, but her kindness, in comparison with her husband’s constant affability toward all and sundry, was austere, and was displayed more in actions than in words.’19

If that is true, it did not prevent her second son from openly displaying his affection for her. Pyotr was utterly devoted to his mother, a lifelong devotion that only increased after her early death. We have Modest’s word for this, as well as Pyotr’s.

Modest recounts how, after their mother returned from a lengthy trip to St Petersburg, Pyotr experienced ‘heavenly bliss . . . as he pressed himself against his mother’s breast after the three or four months of separation’. After her death, again according to Modest, ‘for a very, very long time, even as an adult, [Pyotr] could not speak about his mother without tears, to the point where those around him would avoid bringing her up in conversation.’20

In adult life, every year on 13 June, Pyotr Tchaikovsky noted the anniversary of his mother’s death in his diary, often with an added encomium. On the twenty-third anniversary, he wrote:

Despite the triumphal strength of my convictions [that there is no eternal life], I can never reconcile myself to the thought that my mother, whom I loved so much, and who was such a wonderful person, may have disappeared for ever, and that I shall never again have the chance to tell her that, even after twenty-three years, I still love her.21

Two years after that he wrote:

On this day exactly twenty-five years ago my mother died. I remember every moment of that terrible day as though it was yesterday.22

Even after thirty-two years, in went the entry into his diary:

Anniversary of mother’s death.23

Ilya Tchaikovsky’s family was of Ukrainian origin. The family name was rare, though not unheard of. From his time to ours, it has been assumed by Russians and foreigners alike that the name derives from the Russian chai, meaning ‘tea’.

In fact the origin is rather more colourful. An ancestor of Ilya had the knack of imitating birdcalls, especially that of the seagull. The Russian word for ‘seagull’ is chaika. The best-loved composer Russia ever produced, the most naturally gifted melodist in all music, is named for the squawking seagull!*

Although Ilya Tchaikovsky was by all accounts a deeply emotional man, given to romantic outbursts and passionate emotions – witness his extravagant greeting of Fanny Dürbach – it seems (at least according to Modest) that Pyotr was never able to form a close relationship with him.

Th is might have been due to the fact that although he was keen on theatre, Ilya had little more than a passing interest in music – which makes his purchase of the orchestrion all the more commendable. He was not entirely devoid of musical appreciation, though. On occasion he would invite musical friends to play at the house, sometimes joining them on the flute, which he had learned as a youngster although he had not attained a particularly high standard.

Another contributory factor might have been the fact that Ilya was eighteen years older than his wife. He had been forty-five when his second son was born, well into middle age. Perhaps this led to a certain remoteness with Pyotr, a distance he was never able to bridge.

For the moment this was not of concern to the young Pyotr. As he reached his eighth year, he was living a comfortable existence in Votkinsk. He enjoyed lessons with Fanny and, as the family grew and his younger siblings required more attention, he was able to give more and more time to his increasing interest in music.

The idyll, however, was about to come to an abrupt end. Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s childhood would soon be over.

* The settlement of Votkinsk was not officially granted town status until as recently as 1935 (see p. 246). In the 1970s, during the Cold War, it was the site of the production of the Soviet Union’s long-range ballistic missile, the SS-20, and was a ‘closed’ city.

* A telling anecdote, when one considers that the most lastingly popular piece of music Tchaikovsky would ever write concerns those two particular countries – to the detriment of one and the glory of the other.

* In a similar but much more important way, Christian Gottlob Neefe has earned his place as the first competent teacher of young Ludwig van Beethoven.

* Alexander II, known as Alexander the Liberator for his emancipation of the serfs, was assassinated in 1881.

* Her sister went on to become an opera singer of some renown.

* These days there are cafés in Moscow and St Petersburg named ‘Chai-Koffeesky’, or variations on it, in a mistaken attempt at a double pun.

At the tender age of eight, Pyotr Tchaikovsky became a pupil at the local school alongside his elder brother Nikolay. He was a quick learner and displayed a naturally developing aptitude for music. An emotional child, he was about to experience the first major upheaval in his previously happy childhood. It is not an exaggeration to say he never really got over it.

His father, Ilya Tchaikovsky, had his sights set on higher things than managing a local ironworks, even if that appointment earned him prestige and a comfortable living for himself and his family. Ilya was tiring of the provincial life. He was therefore quick to accept what promised to be a very attractive offer of private employment back in Moscow.

He was in no doubt that the future for him and his family lay in that city. He resigned his post in Votkinsk, renouncing the prestigious rank of major-general that came with it, and prepared the family for the move to Moscow.

This involved taking Nikolay and Pyotr out of the school where they were comfortably settled. Far more of a wrench was their governess, with whom they had formed such a close bond, deciding not to accompany the Tchaikovskys. Instead she would remain in Votkinsk and seek work with another family.

The move took some months to organise. Conscious of Pyotr’s emotional fragility and wishing to spare him distress, his parents made the decision – devastating in its effect on the boy – to sneak Fanny out of the house on the day of the move, without any farewells. It was a dreadful miscalculation, resulting in a loss Pyotr was to feel for the rest of his life.

The Tchaikovsky family left Votkinsk in September 1848 and made the six-hundred-mile journey west to Moscow, and a new life. It went wrong from the start. In the intervening months between resigning his post and leaving Votkinsk, Ilya had confided his plans to a friend, only to find that the friend had arrived in Moscow before him and secured the job for himself.

The family was devastated. For Pyotr events had become traumatic. On 30 October he wrote to Fanny back in Votkinsk:

We have been in Moscow more than three weeks now, and every day all the members of our family think of you; we are so sad . . . I mustn’t recall that life in Votkinsk. I want very much to cry when I think of it.1

The stay in Moscow could not have been more unhappy. Ilya was unable to find work, and there was a cholera epidemic in the city. He told his wife to remain in Moscow with the children while he left for St Petersburg, where he was sure he would secure employment.

Alexandra was ill-equipped to cope on her own with four young children, ranging in age from twelve to five. Zinaida, her stepdaughter, moved in to help, but at the age of nineteen and with no experience of looking after children, she was not able to alleviate much of the burden. Life for the Tchaikovsky family was difficult and uncertain.

Modest would later write in his memoirs that at exactly the moment his brother Pyotr required loving and careful attention, with his father absent and his mother too preoccupied and anxious about the future of the family to spare him much time, he was instead completely neglected.

He even suggests that while Zinaida was kind and loving to the other children, she was much less so to Pyotr, singling him out for harsh treatment. Since Modest cannot have known this at first hand, it presumably must have come from Pyotr himself, many years later, suggesting that the hurt had stayed with him. Whether the harsh treatment was genuine or imagined, we have no way of knowing.

The family stayed in Moscow for less than a month, and it can have come only with huge relief when Ilya told them to leave immediately and come up to St Petersburg, even if it meant more disruption. St Petersburg was at least familiar. It was Alexandra’s home city; Ilya knew it intimately, and the family had relatives and friends there. Ilya assured his wife and children they could now settle, since the prospects for employment were good.

As if to underline the family’s new circumstances, Nikolay and Pyotr were enrolled in a private school with a fine reputation, the fashionable Schmelling School. From the parents’ point of view, this brought some stability and a more regular pattern of life. From their sons’ point of view, it was a disaster.

Nikolay and Pyotr had left behind a small school in Votkinsk where they had fitted in easily and had made many friends. They had exchanged that for a class-structured school in the big city, where they stood out because of their provincialism, from their unease at metropolitan ways to the language they used and the way they spoke.

‘Instead of their former companions,’ writes brother Modest, ‘. . . they encountered a crowd of urchins who met them, as newcomers, with the usual bullying and drubbing.’2 Newcomers, outsiders, in a strange school in an unfamiliar place – a situation that causes pain that can last a lifetime.*

“All the children, it seems, were suffering, Pyotr more than any of the others.”

Academically the boys also found themselves at a disadvantage. The move from Votkinsk meant that they had not covered as much of the curriculum as their classmates – something that alienated them from the other boys even further. They had to put in long hours in order to fill in the gaps. They went off to school early, and then, after returning home at about five, spent every evening concentrating on their schoolwork. Sometimes they did not get to bed until midnight, writes Modest. Even if that is an exaggeration, it suggests that Pyotr remembered these schooldays with a shudder.

It should be stressed that everything we know about Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s early life – everything – is courtesy of his younger brother Modest (including Fanny’s later memories, which Modest incorporated into his memoirs). Modest produced three volumes of biography of his elder brother, written fifty years after the events that took place either before he himself had been born or during his infancy. By the time Modest put pen to paper, Pyotr had been dead for several years, and was already revered as Russia’s best-known and best-loved composer.

Everything Modest wrote concerning Pyotr’s early years, therefore, was presumably as told to him by Pyotr and perhaps by his other siblings. Not only does this mean that his accounts are second-hand, but, since he was conscious of writing for posterity, there remains a suspicion that in some areas he might have stretched the truth slightly to show the family in a better light.

To take one example, all biographies of Tchaikovsky relate the story of Ilya losing the job in Moscow to a friend who betrayed his trust and took advantage of the opening for himself. This is taken entirely from Modest’s memoirs. Is it, though, really likely to be true? Would Ilya have resigned his secure and comfortably paid job, employed by the state in Votkinsk, uprooted his large family, taken the children out of school, and moved to Moscow for a job in the private sector that turned out to be no longer on offer because his friend had taken it? It is possible, of course. But I believe it is more likely that Modest is, to an extent, protecting his father’s image. Maybe the offer was made but Ilya’s credentials were found to be wanting. Perhaps he was less qualified for the post than he thought.

This seems all the more likely since, once in St Petersburg, the family’s misfortunes increased. Gainful employment continued to elude Ilya. This, it is easy to imagine, must have caused enormous tension in the Tchaikovsky household, and of all the children it was the emotional and highly sensitive Pyotr who would have felt it most. He was frequently seen in tears, and his behaviour started to become erratic. With increasing frequency he was too unwell to attend school. ‘There was also a moral reaction, and [Pyotr] became capricious, irritable, and unlike his former self.’3

In December 1848 both Nikolay and Pyotr developed measles. Whereas in Nikolay the illness ran its course, barely interrupting his school life, in Pyotr it had a seriously debilitating effect. It increased his nervousness and unpredictable behaviour. Doctors were called in and Pyotr was diagnosed with a disease of the spinal cord. A word that was becoming fashionable in mid-nineteenth-century Europe was ‘neurasthenia’, describing a general lassitude coupled with anxiety and depression. Today we would be more inclined to say Pyotr was exhibiting a psychosomatic reaction caused by the tension and upheaval in his life.

All the children, it seems, were suffering, and Pyotr more so than any of the others. Alexandra, their mother, wrote to Fanny, ‘He has become impatient, and at every word spoken to him that is not to his liking – there are tears in his eyes and a ready retort.’4

So concerned were the doctors about Pyotr’s health that they advised he should not attend school. While this no doubt provided the young boy, now eight-and-a-half years of age, with welcome relief, it alienated him still further, not just from other schoolboys but from Nikolay too, the elder brother to whom he had always looked up. The two boys began to grow apart, and there would soon be a parting that ensured they would never regain their early closeness. Pyotr maintained a certain distance from Kolya for the rest of his life.

By contrast he was developing an ever closer relationship with his younger sister Alexandra. Sasha was just two years younger than Pyotr, and it is possible that even at this early age she saw the emotional fragility in her brother and took it on herself to comfort him and care for him as best she could. Certainly their closeness increased with time, and for the rest of his life Sasha was the sibling Pyotr turned to in order to experience the norms of domesticity, as far as he was able.

Amid the turmoil and tension in the Tchaikovsky household in St Petersburg, there was one bright spot for Pyotr. His father arranged for him to have piano lessons with a professional teacher. The lessons were few and interrupted by illness, but they made a lasting impact. In addition to this, despite family hardships, it seems mother and father frequently took their two eldest sons to the theatre and, of more significance to our story, the opera. Modest later wrote that it was during this stay in St Petersburg that Pyotr truly became familiar with music.

As with the brief sojourn in Moscow, the stay in the Russian capital was to be short-lived. Ilya Tchaikovsky still could not find work. This might seem surprising, given his qualifications and experience, not to mention the contacts he must have been able to call on through family and friends. But that was how it was.

Finally, an offer of employment was made. The post was one for which Ilya was well qualified, as the manager of an ironworks. There was only one small problem. The plant was in the remote town of Alapayevsk, three hundred miles east of Votkinsk, on the far side of the Urals. Yet again it meant huge upheaval for the Tchaikovsky family.

The ironworks was privately owned, and the job less prestigious than Ilya’s previous position in Votkinsk. To compound matters, it came as no surprise to the family to find that Alapayevsk was small and provincial, populated largely by working-class people and almost entirely devoid of cultural activity. It made them pine for Votkinsk, and what they had left behind.

Once again, it was Pyotr who was most affected, for there was something else – or, more accurately someone else – missing from his life. His elder brother Kolya remained in St Petersburg. He was approaching the end of his time at school and, following in his father’s footsteps, had been accepted into the St Petersburg Mining College.

The two brothers had begun to grow apart back in St Petersburg. Th is might have been partly attributable to Kolya’s popularity with everyone he met. We have Fanny’s account of how he charmed her, and in her memoirs Pyotr comes off the poorer in comparison with his elder brother.

Modest is in no doubt about who the star performer among the children was back in those early days: ‘[Kolya was] the most brilliant in appearance . . . Adroit, handsome, refined, a passionate lover of physical exercise.’5 He was also, it seems, making more progress in music than any of his classmates.

Music was not something Kolya was to pursue, but his talent might well have spurred his younger brother on in his own musical activities. It might also have encouraged a certain hero worship of his elder brother to develop into a kind of jealousy, which Kolya’s absence from Alapayevsk now reinforced. Unquestionably Pyotr missed Kolya’s companionship but we can be confident he was relieved no longer to be compared unfavourably with him, even if letters came regularly from St Petersburg saying how well he was doing.

In one area, though, Pyotr now experienced extreme disappointment. His parents no longer seemed so enthusiastic about his passion for music. In the first place, they recalled how musical activities in the past had led to him becoming nervously excited, exacerbating his highly strung nature, frequently leading to tears and exhaustion. They did not want a repetition of that.

In addition, on a more practical level, any thought of a career in music was out of the question. It simply would not be an appropriate profession for a young man from a middle-class family to pursue. Musicians had no social status and the music schools needed to train them had yet to be established. Music was essentially a domestic activity for the gentry, predominantly pursued by women and girls. Professional concerts, ballets or opera were the province of visiting European companies and musicians.6

This time no music teacher was to be engaged, nor, it seems, was Pyotr enrolled in school. Zinaida, his much older half-sister, undertook to educate him. It was a poor decision by his parents. Zinaida had never really liked her younger half-brother, who suffered once again in comparison with Kolya. To compound matters, Zinaida had no experience or qualification as a teacher. She was unsympathetic, frequently reporting to her parents that the boy was lazy and uninterested in learning.

Pyotr was now nine years of age. Votkinsk, and the joy of his early childhood in the company of Fanny Dürbach must have seemed a distant memory, whereas it was, in reality, not that long ago. In that time the family had uprooted first to Moscow, then to St Petersburg, and now to Alapayevsk.

Also in that time he had lost Fanny; he had lost his elder brother, and he had suffered nervous illness. Now there was about to be even more upheaval.

On 1 May 1850 Alexandra gave birth to twin boys, Anatoly and Modest. The family was now made up of one elder half-daughter and six children – five boys and a girl. If neither parent had found much time for Pyotr before, there was even less now, perhaps something for which Pyotr might have felt grateful. If he was denied the music he so craved, he could at least lose himself in books, a lifelong passion.

Soon, though, the parents were to turn their attention back to their son, and his future. They made a decision that would affect the rest of Pyotr’s life. He looked back on it with horror until the day he died, and it marked the point at which his childhood truly came to an end.

Ilya and Alexandra decided that their son should become a civil servant.

* As my brothers and I can testify from our own school experiences a century later.

Pyotr Tchaikovsky, just past his tenth birthday, was enrolled in the prestigious Imperial School of Jurisprudence in St Petersburg. This involved two years of study in the school’s preparatory class, to prepare him for the entrance exams.

More change for the young Pyotr, this time of an even more dramatic nature. For the first time he was to be separated from his family. In all the moves so far – Votkinsk to Moscow, then to St Petersburg and on to Alapayevsk – he had remained with close family members.

Now he was following in his elder brother’s footsteps. He too was about to begin life in St Petersburg, as a boarder at a school 800 miles from his family home. The knowledge that Kolya was already in the city must have been some consolation to Pyotr, even if they would be at different schools and their relationship was not as warm as it had once been. Maybe he even felt a certain amount of pride, a sure sign that he was no longer a child, old enough now to fly the nest? Such a reaction would be understandable in a child such as Kolya certainly, but would be less so in a highly emotional boy easily moved to tears.

Pyotr’s parents were aware of this, and made the decision that Alexandra would accompany her son to St Petersburg. This would mean leaving the three-month-old twins behind, a decision that might seem rather strange to us today but was less so in a country and in an era in which household staff, nannies and wet nurses were common even in middle-class families. Zinaida and Pyotr’s younger sister Sasha would also accompany them.

Anyone who has left home for the first time at a tender age will remember the pit in the stomach that Pyotr must surely have felt. It was no doubt compounded by memories of their last sojourn in the capital city, and his experience at the Schmelling School.

With the twins back in Alapayevsk, Alexandra’s absence might have been expected to be as short as she could make it, but it appears there never was any intention of a swift return. Alexandra was back in the city of her birth, and there were people to see and places to go.

Her priority, of course, was her son, and the desire to see him well settled at his new school. She did not stint as far as her maternal duties were concerned. According to Modest, she visited her son at every opportunity. ‘At first, all his Sundays and half-holidays were spent with his mother . . . so that in the beginning he did not feel the transition from home to school life so severely.’1

One event in particular stayed in Pyotr’s mind. On 22 August he went with his mother to see Glinka’s opera, A Life for the Tsar, which, with its theme of nationalism, much impressed him. He wrote to his mother a year later to remind her of their outing. Decades later he would say that it continued to hold a special place in his heart.

But this is to view the past through rose-tinted glasses. Again, any young school boarder who has known that Sunday-afternoon feeling when a parent says goodbye will identify wholly with the sadness that engulfed the sensitive Pyotr at each parting. Worse was to come, however, with a day that was so traumatic for Pyotr that for the rest of his days he looked back on it with horror.

Alexandra’s departure from St Petersburg could not be put off any longer, and both parents were aware of how difficult it would be for Pyotr to say goodbye. Ilya wrote to his wife from Alapayevsk:

Darling [Pyotr] is accustomed to the caresses of his father and mother, but now will be a long time without this happiness – and as he is sensitive and finds it difficult to part with people, you must naturally instil in him courage.2

This is accurate although slightly curious wording on Ilya’s part. He had never had a particularly close relationship with their second son, showing more interest in his eldest son Nikolay. Pyotr’s younger siblings, born swiftly after him, added to the claims on Ilya’s attention. He was also trying desperately to secure employment, uprooting his family time and time again – something for which it is quite possible Pyotr nursed a deep, if subconscious, resentment.

Until now Pyotr’s relationship with his mother had not been so different, despite his affection for her. Alexandra had a growing family to look after, several moves to plan and put into action. Beyond perhaps keeping an eye out for her second son, encouraging his musical activities as had his father, at least in the early days, she did not seem particularly devoted to him.

‘Caresses’ therefore might be slightly overstating it, given the tenderness the word conjures up, even if Ilya’s description of Pyotr’s sensitive nature is spot on.

That all changed in St Petersburg. Maybe it was the frequent visits by his mother, the exeats from school when she had nothing to distract her from her son, when she was able to devote her entire attention to him, that strengthened the bond between them.

“Tchaikovsky was writing words in a similar fashion to how he would one day write musical notes.”

The day for Alexandra’s departure was set for the end of September, after a sojourn in St Petersburg of almost two months. Pyotr travelled with his mother and two sisters as far as the turn-off for Moscow, where it was traditional for departing friends to be waved off. Also accompanying them was a relative, Ilya Keiser, and a family friend, Modest Vakar, both of whom lived in St Petersburg. The two men would accompany Pyotr back to the city.

If the adults thought Pyotr might take the parting rather badly, they can hardly have been prepared for what happened. We have, once again, only Modest Tchaikovsky’s account, as relayed to him by his brother many years later. The fact that Pyotr recalled it in such detail, and with such horror, tells its own story, even if the passage of time might have lent it extra drama.

In the early stages of the drive, Pyotr sat in the carriage quietly crying and staring through the window into the distance. At the turnpike junction the family dismounted from the carriage. Alexandra and the two girls began their goodbyes. At this point Pyotr totally lost control.

Suddenly Pyotr flung his arms round his mother, clinging to her tightly. The others tried to prise him away but he clung on, crying inconsolably. Nothing they could say or do would convince him. ‘He saw nothing, heard nothing, but hung upon her as though he was part and parcel of the beloved presence.’3

There was no alternative but to use force. The task fell to Ilya Keiser. He grabbed Pyotr by the arms, and physically tore him away from his mother. Pyotr reached out with his hands, trying to hold on to any part of her, but Keiser dragged him away.

Pyotr sobbed uncontrollably as he watched his mother and sisters get into the carriage for Moscow. The driver whipped the horses, and the carriage began to move. With a sudden twist of his shoulders, Pyotr broke free from Keiser. He ran after the carriage, screaming aloud, and hurled himself at it in desperation. But the horses gathered speed and Pyotr watched the carriage draw further and further away through a veil of tears and uncontrollable sobbing.