Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky
(1840 - 1893)
by Todd Richmond
365Gay.com Features Editor

Tchaikovsky studied music sporadically early in his life, but took a job as a government clerk. Hating the post, he turned to music and studied at the newly founded music school in St. Petersburg. Here his compositions garnered much attention and Tchaikovsky was hailed as the hope of Russia's musical future. Yet much of Tchaikovsky's early works were harshly criticized by his peers and teachers. But his music usually always found favor with the public.

Among his most popular works is the 1812 Overture, composed in 1880 as part of the celebrations commemorating Russia's defeat of Napoleon.

In 1877, Tchaikovsky received several commissions from a wealthy widow, Nadezhda von Meck, whose continued patronage and financial gifts enabled Tchaikovsky to devote all of his time to composing, and although Madame von Meck and Tchaikovsky communicated almost daily by letters, during their fifteen-year relationship they never once met. One of his most successful and still popular works from this period is the opera Eugene Onegin .

It was also at this time that Tchaikovsky, like so many gay men in the 19th century made the regrettable decision to marry. The union of the neurotic, hypersensitive homosexual and a mentally-disturbed and apparently sexually insatiable young girl was surely destined for disaster. The marriage was dissolved in only three months, after Tchaikovsky's mental breakdown and attempted suicide.

From then on he stuck to male partners and produced some of his best work.

The romantic in Tchaikovsky found its greatest outlet in his three great ballet scores, all of which are eternally popular. The Nutcracker is a perennial Christmas favorite, and the well-known theme of the tragic Swan-Princess from Swan Lake seems to embody the intense, heartfelt, romanticized suffering which Tchaikovsky's music gives voice to so often. 

Nowhere is this sad, yearning quality more in evidence than in the first movement of his Symphony no. 6 in B minor, nicknamed by his brother Modeste "Pathetique". Tchaikovsky hinted that this symphony had a program of some kind, but never made clear what it was. That it is about suffering and tragedy is evident from the melody, one of the composer's greatest, and from the fact that the symphony's finale is in the highly unusual form of a brooding and sad lament. Tchaikovsky died soon after the premiere of the symphony.

Officially his death is listed as cholera. But, conspiracy theorists would have us believe that he died by suicide, forced by the establishment.  Highly unlikely.  In Tsarist Russia, homosexuality was tolerated. Although illegal, few gays were ever arrested, let alone forced to kill themselves. 

For better or worse, Tchaikovsky's music influenced many Russian composers throughout the twentieth century.