Flawed Man, Musical Genius

the pecadillos of tschaikovsky

Markand Thakar

He was a talented child, whose music became beloved around the world. An odd duck, he was a passionate person who roamed the world seeking affirmation. He entered into a loveless marriage of convenience to cover up questionable contact with young men, and he passed from the world after consuming a known dangerous substance in what was surely a death wish. His funeral service was packed beyond capacity, with tens of thousands turned away.

This is the story of one of the greatest of all composers. Of course not Michael Jackson, (didn’t you know this is the Maestro’s Musings?): it’s Pyotr Il’ich Tchaikovsky.

Like Jacko, Tchaikovsky was a deeply sensitive man attempting to straddle multiple worlds. Unlike Michael, his parents didn’t encourage their son’s musical talent. Instead they sent him to learn clerking at the School for Jurisprudence, a veritable den of adolescent homosexual activity. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In fact, contrary to what one might assume, 19th-century Russia had a relatively relaxed view toward sexual peccadilloes of all sorts (relative, to…say…Victorian England, or Jacksonian America…no not that Jackson…Andrew Jackson whose pre-wedding relationship to his then-wife Rachel nearly killed his electability). And Tchaikovsky, whose brother Modeste was also homosexual, comported himself rather openly with a coterie of gay friends. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Caligula’s Rome, however, it wasn’t, and when a student came to profess her love for him he did the right thing and married her. (huh?) The realization of what he’d done drove him to a near breakdown, and a convalescence in Switzerland. (Ladies, the easiest catches are not necessarily the best.) In 11 days there he sketched a monumental violin concerto, one of the most beloved works of its genre.

Personal difficulties aside, Tchaikovsky also straddled two worlds of music. He came along at a time when the Russian ethos was rejecting centuries of Western inferiority complex. Classical musicians were taking up Russian peasant songs, rough Russian rhythms, uneven Russian phrase structures, and Tchaikovsky’s inherent predisposition toward Germanic structure and orderliness cost him dearly among his compatriots.

This story does get pulled together. Nearing 50, Tchaikovsky fell in love with a man. No problem. It was a young man. O..K…? It was his nephew Bob. Ouch! And Bob returned the affection. Yikes! Likely sexually. Oh dear…

That’s just plain wrong, no matter how you slice it, and Tchaikovsky knew it. In a fury of passion, he poured his heart and soul into his final, most highly structured, and likely his finest composition, the searingly passionate Symphony no. 6 “Pathetique,” dedicated —’fraid so—to Bob. And then he died, after knowingly drinking a glass of unboiled water during the height of a cholera epidemic.

But there is good news: on September 26 you can hear the Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra at the DECC in an all-Tchaikovsky program. With our sensational concertmaster Erin Aldridge we perform Tchaikovsky’s immortal Violin Concerto written in devastating throes of that destructive marriage. And we close the concert with the Symphony no. 6, “Pathétique.” The guy couldn’t moonwalk, but what a composer!

Markand Thakar is Charles A. & Carolyn M. Russell Music Director, Duluth Superior Symphony Orchestra; music director, Baltimore Chamber Orchestra; principal conductor, Duluth Festival Opera and co-director of the graduate conducting program, Peabody Conservatory.