Tchaikovsky biography Personal life

St. Petersburg 2nd Krasnoarmeyskaya St. In his heritage there are operas and symphonies, music for ballets and cantata, more than a hundred romances and other works. The first symphony composed by the composer was called "Winter Dreams", the opera - "governor". The whole world knows his “Waltz of Flowers”, “Dance of Little Swans”, “Slavic March”, the cycle “Seasons”. One of the ancestors of musical romanticism, Tchaikovsky forever remained a playwright-psychologist, a genius of a new direction in musical art.

Now it is a large industrial city in Udmurtia, and the museum works in the house where Peter Ilyich was born. They grew up with his elder brother Nikolai, younger sister Alexandra, younger brother Hippolytus and Gemini Anatoly and Moddest. The grandfather of the paternal line, Pyotr Fedorovich Chaika, was a doctor, fought with the Turks. Returning from the Russo-Turkish war, he decided to “ennoble” his surname and began to introduce himself to Tchaikovsky.

Having received the nobility, he served the mayor in the city of Glazovo Vyatka province until his death. Material Grandpa, Michael Henry Maximilian Assee, came to Russia from France as a teacher of French and German. Having accepted the Russian citizenship soon, changed the name and surname and began to be called Andrei Mikhailovich Assier. He served at customs, at the Ministry of Finance, received the rank of real state adviser.

The father of the future composer, Ilya Petrovich graduated from the Mountain Cadet Corps of St. Petersburg and received an engineering specialty. His first wife died early, leaving his daughter Zinaida in the care of his widower. Soon, the family moved to the Vyatka province, since the head of the family received the post of head of the Kamsko-Votkinsky steel plant. Guests often gathered in their large house, including foreign ones.

Both father and mother loved music - both played musical instruments: he is on a flute, she is on the harp. Talking about himself, Tchaikovsky recalled how he reached for music: my tendency to music appeared at four years old. Mother, noting that I have the greatest joy, listening to music, invited the teacher who taught me the musical foundations. Soon I played the piano quite well, so I could master all possible fashionable gizmos.

My rapid advance, which was also expressed in musical improvisations, could not but cause surprise in a cramped family circle in the stagnant, provincial place of the Vyatka province in the Urals, where the years of my childhood passed. This continued - and my natural abilities for music did not attract the special attention of my parents who intended me to the career of the official.

Also in childhood, Peter composed poems in French, but still his main love was playing music. When the boy was ten years old, his parents took him to St. Petersburg, where they determined the Imperial School of Law. There he studied for nine years and did not seriously engage in music. But at the end of his studies, the father found for Peter the tutor, the pianist Rudolf Kundinger.

It was to him that Tchaikovsky was grateful for helping him to understand his true calling. Education and the path to music when Tchaikovsky was 14 years old, mother died from cholera. Father infected his funeral, was at death, but recovered. The grief of the loss shocked Peter's young soul, at that moment he realized that his childhood had passed.

After graduating from the school and received the rank of titular adviser, the young man began to serve in the Ministry of Justice, was engaged mainly in the affairs of the peasants and was sure that sooner or later he would change his service to music. During his studies, and then the Tchaikovsky services regularly visited the Opera Theater. Later, the composer admitted who had the greatest influence on him in the perception of music: I was sixteen years old when I heard Mozart for the first time Don Juan.

This was a revelation for me: I am not able to describe the vast majority of impressions I tested. Probably, due to this circumstance of all the great composers, I have the most tender love for Mozart. It seems to me that the aesthetic pleasures experienced in youth leave a mark on the rest of their lives and have a huge impact on the relative assessment of works of art even in the later years.

This coincidence of the same kind, I think, explains why, of all the existing operas, after the Don Juan, I most love Glinka’s “Life for the Tsar”-yes, “life for the king, and not for Ruslan! The last opera was first given in May, on a wonderful spring evening. And here the pleasure delivered to me by the music of Judith always merges with some uncertain spring sensation of warmth, light, revival!

On the advice of his father, Tchaikovsky began to combine service in the department and music classes. He was one of the first students of the St. Petersburg Conservatory, based on the basis of music classes of the Russian Musical Society. His teacher, in his composition and instrumentation, Anton Rubinstein advised him to concentrate on something one, and in the year Tchaikovsky left his service, completely devoting himself to music.He was not afraid of the poverty in which he had to live - he finally gained freedom.

In the year, Peter graduated from the conservatory with honors. Tchaikovsky’s work to earn a living, Tchaikovsky scored lessons for 50 rubles a month. He could not rely on his father’s money - Ilya Petrovich’s affairs went worse. Soon, Peter Ilyich moved to Moscow. He was invited there by Anton Rubinstein, Nikolai, who offered a novice composer to become a teacher at the Moscow Conservatory, who was just created.

Every year, about a hundred students entered the training of a strict, but fair professor. Then, from March to November, he wrote his first symphony “Winter Dreams” and presented it at a concert of the Russian Moscow Musical Society. Having met the playwright Alexander Ostrovsky, who, like Tchaikovsky, was visited by an aristocratic club, he suggested writing a libretto to the opera based on the play “Thunderstorm”, as he had previously wrote an overtur.

But Ostrovsky said that the work on the opera is already being carried out, and suggested in return to compose music for the comedy “The governor, or a dream on the Volga”. The premiere of the opera took place in January of the year at the Bolshoi Theater and was warmly adopted by the public. But after a series of critical notes in the press, Tchaikovsky destroyed the entire score. Around the same period, on the advice of a member of the unification of the composers, the “powerful pile” Milia Balakirev Petr Ilyich began to write instrumental works.

The new overture on the plot of the tragedy of William Shakespeare “Romeo and Juliet” he composed in a couple of months the first version was completed in the fall, but the final was presented to the public only in, then went on a trip abroad. In Germany and Italy, the composer wrote the plays “Humoreska” and “Noktyurn”, devoting them to his student Vladimir Shilovsky, the organizer and philanthropist of the trip.

In Bavaria, the composer saw a wonderful Neuschwanstein castle, standing on Lake Schwanzee of letters. Inspired by what he saw, Peter Ilyich wrote for a narrow family circle the children's one -act ballet “Lake Lebede”, from which the quadruple ballet “Swan Lake” was later born. Tchaikovsky himself at that time had financial difficulties. Therefore, returning to Moscow, he began to write critical articles about musical works for “Russian Vedomosti” and “Modern Chronicle”.

In the early seventies, Tchaikovsky composed the opera Oprachnik, which he tried to put on the stage of the Mariinsky Theater for several years. Meanwhile, the composer arrived in St. Petersburg, where in front of the members of the “mighty pile” he performed his “second symphony” he was advised to create another symphony based on Shakespearean works. So the “storm” was written for this symphonic fantasy of Tchaikovsky awarded with a laurel century and a silver cup.

In April, the premiere of the “Armor”, which had a stormy success of the public, took place on the stage of Mariinsky. The author, present in the hall, was escorted by fans from the theater, to the hotel where he lived. But in the year, a government ban was imposed on the opera - “revolutionary ideas” were found in it. From the year, Tchaikovsky wrote the cycle “Times of the year”, 12 piano works about life in the Russian estate, created by the order of the publisher Nikolai Bernard, who issued the native magazine “Nunwood”.

Nowadays, the “Seasons” are perhaps the most commonly performed by the works of the great composer. However, the production failed, critics wrote crushing reviews. However, the indignation concerned directly to the choreography of the music "Swan Lake"-the best ballet that I have ever heard. According to the dance "Swan Lake", perhaps the most boring, official and poor ballet of those that are given in Russia.

In extreme nervous excitement, Peter Ilyich and his brother went to Switzerland. Fate sent him salvation in the form of friendship and material support from Nadezhda von Mecc, philanthropist and admirer of Tchaikovsky's talent. She paid for his travels around the world, and a little later she began to pay six thousand rubles each for the composer annually, which exceeded his salary in the conservatory by half.

Thanks to this, Peter Ilyich left his job and focused on art. In Switzerland, he managed to finish Evgeny Onegin, set about the fourth symphony, musical reflection on the role of fate in human life. After the premiere of Evgeny Onegin, March fame fell on Tchaikovsky. He continued to work hard: he composed the Opera of the Orleans Virgin, the overture of the Year, for which he was awarded the Order of St.

Vladimir of the IV degree. In the year of Tchaikovsky, he was accepted as members of the board of directors of the Russian Musical Society, he became the head of his Moscow branch. Then the composer bought the Maidanovo estate near the wedge near Moscow. There he wrote the operas “Cherevichka” and “Sorceress”, the Symphony “Manfred” soon the composer went on tour in Europe, after which he decided to live a little in Italy.There, according to Alexander Pushkin’s novel “The Queen of Spades”, he wrote the opera of the same name, taking advantage of his brother’s idea: ...

my brother Modest began to compose a libretto for the plot of “Peak Ladies” at the request of a certain Klenovsky, but this latter refused to compose music, for some reason without having to withdraw with his task. Meanwhile, the director of the theaters Vsevolozhskiy was carried away by the thought that I would write to this very plot of the opera and, moreover, for the next season.

He expressed this desire to me, and since it coincided with my decision to flee Russia in January and engage in composure, I agreed. To some episodes, Peter Ilyich independently wrote the words, like the Aria of Herman. The opera was represented in December in St. Petersburg, in the Mariinsky Theater. In January of the same year, the composer introduced the ballet “Sleeping Beauty” to the audience, which caused a large stir.

The audience frantically applauded the premiere, the hall shook from the screams of Bravo. A year later, Tchaikovsky went on tour to the States and gave a concert at the opening of Carnegie Hall. Returning home, the composer created new works - the opera of Joland and the ballet Nutcracker, another of the most recognizable works of the composer. The last masterpiece of Tchaikovsky was the sixth symphony, which he dedicated to his nephew Vladimir Davydov.

Despite the fact that the admirers of his talent took her quite coolly, Peter Ilyich himself considered her a culmination of his work, which he wrote about in one of his letters and diaries: during the trip I had the idea of ​​another symphony ... with such a program that will remain for everyone a mystery ... The program is the same, and often during the wandering, I am very mentally composing it, I am very composed Crying ...

Something strange happens to this symphony! It’s not that she didn’t like it, but she made some bewilderment.