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The Composer


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Somewhere (where?) I read that Tchaikovsky, broken hearted by rejection of his affections by a young man, had wandered around the city in the winter, not appropriately dressed for the weather, caught pneumonia and died... I want to say I read this in Balanchine's Tchaikovsky but I loaned that book out to a much admired non-native-english speaking accompanist and it somehow never returned... Does anyone have a copy and could check? Or does this version ring a bell with any of you?

Balanchine says that Tchaikovsky "tried to catch cold, to chill himself to death, and that's not the same thing as committing suicide" when he was married. As to his actual death later on, Balanchine speculates on the story that Tchaikovsky drunk a glass of unboiled tap water in a restaurant during a cholera epidemic. This may have been a "kind of Russian Roulette," a "playing with fate." He says he believes the composer had thought about his death for a long time, that though he was devout and certainly thought suicide a sin, he wrote in a letter that he didn't believe in a punishing God, and that he wrote the "Pathetique "as a kind of suicide note."

With all due respect to Balanchine, I'm wary of looking at the Pathetique as Tchaikovsky's swan song. I read Brown's bio of Tchai., and I think he convincingly writes about how the composer was in the midst of really enjoying his success, his place in life, his own skin - so suicide was the last thing on his mind. He was, argues Brown, a man content in the present & optimistic about the future. (Edited too add: "Suicide was the last thing on his mind" - and this is how Brown supports the theory of Tchaikovsky being forced to commit suicide. You'll have to read the book to get the juicy details.)

I guess composers' last symphonies have a tendency to be seen as farewells to life, especially if they pass on [during] or shortly after, like Mahler's last one. But I remember reading in the journal of the International Gustav Mahler Society (can't locate the article; I get their journal approx. twice a year) that Mahler's last was more a farewell to love, not of life. H. de la Grange has found info. that supports the fact that Mahler was recovering from Alma & was ready to move on with his life without her. Grange also discounts those characterizations of Mahler that made him sound very weak and frail - instead, Grange has found that Mahler was quite robust & relatively healthy, and he certainly didn't expect to expire during the time before he died.

Mahler was looking towards the future & had everything to live for - the same could be argued for Tchaikovsky. Therefore, the Pathetique is a farewell to love (for his nephew "Bob."), if one is convinced of that theory.

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I'm working without notes here, but if I recall correctly, Tchaikovsky was trying all sorts of self-destructive behaviors short of suicide during his marriage to Antonina Miliukova. These more or less ended when he went away to Switzerland for a "rest cure". I really believe that he was trying to figure out ways to keep away from her. The poor woman was already socially difficult before they married, and during their time together, she seemed to get ever more neurotic, but then, we have to remember that most of our documentation of her is from the Tchaikovsky family and circle of friends. He was kind of batty, too, and must not have been any easy sort to be around.

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