- Born
- 7 May 1840Votkinsk, Russia
- Died
- 6 November 1893Saint Petersburg, Russia · aged 53
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
The composer of “Swan Lake” and “The Nutcracker” loved men – and wrote about his struggles in letters to his brother.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky grew up in the Urals, the son of a mining engineer. He trained as a civil servant, but at 21 began studying music at the new Saint Petersburg Conservatory. (His dates are given in the Gregorian calendar.)
He became the first Russian composer to achieve lasting international fame. His ballets “Swan Lake”, “The Sleeping Beauty” and “The Nutcracker”, his symphonies, his piano and violin concertos and the opera “Eugene Onegin” are among the most popular works of classical music.
Tchaikovsky loved men. In letters to his brother Modest, who was also gay, he wrote about his desires and his fear of discovery. In 1877, partly to silence rumours, he married a former student, Antonina Milyukova; the marriage was a disaster and he fled after a few weeks. For 13 years he was supported by the wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck, with whom he exchanged over a thousand letters but whom he never met. He dedicated his last symphony, the “Pathétique”, to his beloved nephew Vladimir Davydov.
He died in Saint Petersburg in 1893, nine days after the premiere of the “Pathétique”. The official cause was cholera; theories that he took his own life have never been proven.