P. I. TCHAIKOVSKY
Music for the dance

Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky was born on 7th May 1840, in Kamsol-Wotkinsk, Central Russia. At the age of twenty-three, and after a short career at the Ministry of Finance, he pursues an intensive program of study of music. His mentor is Anton Rubenstein who had established a successful music conservatory in Russia.

After just two years, Tchaikovsky is appointed teacher for Harmonics at the newly opened Moscow Conservatory, a post he maintained for thirteen years. In 1876, already a recognized composer, he marries his former student Antonina Miliukova despite all warnings; a neurotic woman who threatened him with suicide if he declined her. He desperately tries to liberate himself from this "knee-jerk reaction" (as his brother Modest put it). Only one week after his wedding, he allegedly stood for several hours in the freezing Moscow River with the intention of contracting pneumonia.

He suffers a nervous breakdown and travels to Switzerland with his second brother Anatol to restore his health. It is Nadeshda Meck, a wealthy, eccentric widow and passionate about the composer’s music, who changes his fate. From 1877 onwards, she supports him with a generous annual subsidy of 6000 roubles, thus giving him the possibility to dedicate himself completely to his compositions. Tchaikovsky accepts Nadeshda’s offer under the condition they never meet in person, but merely correspond letters; an agreement that she keeps for fourteen years.

This period of financial security is very productive for Tchaikovsky. In addition to many other compositions, he can complete the ballet "Sleeping Beauty", the opera "Eugene Onegin", the Fourth and Fifth Symphony and "The Nutcracker". During a period marked by very strong depressions, he finishes his Sixth Symphony "Pathétique" in St. Petersburg, in 1893. Ten days later after he directs his new masterpiece, he drinks contaminated water, perhaps intentionally.

On the 6th November 1893, Pyotr I. Tchaikovsky dies from cholera.