Pyotr ilyich tchaikovsky biography summary organizer

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky () was a Russian composer whose works included symphonies, concertos, operas, ballets, and chamber music.

Life and Music
Tchaikovsky was born on May 7th in Votkinsk, a small town in the Russian Empire.

He displayed exceptional musical ability from an early age, improvising at the piano and composing his first song in , aged four.

Tchaikovsky persuaded his father that music was his future and he began composition lessons with Anton Rubinstein in

Between and he produced a series of great works, including Swan Lake () and the First Piano Concerto (), which established him as Russia’s leading composer.

Following his ill-fated, short-lived marriage in , he made a failed attempt at committing suicide.

saw Tchaikovsky compose perhaps his most famous piece, the Overture - cannons at the ready!

By , he was conducting his own music to great acclaim and producing such works as the Sixth Symphony, the 'Pathetique' in (the year of his death) and the ballets The Sleeping Beauty () and The Nutcracker ().

His death in in St.

Petersburg was believed to be as a result of a decision made by a ‘court of honour’ following revelations that Tchaikovsky had formed a relationship with a male member of the Russian aristocracy; it was apparently decided that the only course of action open to the composer was for him to commit suicide.

Pyotr ilyich tchaikovsky biography summary organizer He was the first Russian composer whose music made a lasting impression internationally. Tchaikovsky wrote some of the most popular concert and theatrical music in the classical repertoire, including the ballets Swan Lake and The Nutcracker , the Overture , his First Piano Concerto , Violin Concerto , the Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy, several symphonies , and the opera Eugene Onegin. Although musically precocious, Tchaikovsky was educated for a career as a civil servant as there was little opportunity for a musical career in Russia at the time and no public music education system. The formal Western-oriented teaching Tchaikovsky received there set him apart from composers of the contemporary nationalist movement embodied by the Russian composers of The Five , with whom his professional relationship was mixed. Tchaikovsky's training set him on a path to reconcile what he had learned with the native musical practices to which he had been exposed from childhood.

It is more commonly attributed to cholera, however.

Did you know?
The day Tchaikovsky’s mother left him at boarding school was so traumatic that it remained in his memory to the end of his days. He had to be torn away from her, and even then he clung on to the wheels of her carriage to stop her leaving. It’s little wonder, given his sensitive nature, that his music is imbued with such a strong sense of emotion and despair.

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