Who is Tchaikovsky?
- About the Ballet, History, Story Ballet
Meet the Russian composer behind ballet’s most beloved scores
Even at the age of six, Tchaikovsky loved music so much that he was prepared to bleed for it—literally. He practiced piano every chance he had, and when he couldn’t, he would tap out the tune he made up in his head on the house’s windowpanes. One time, he tapped so hard that he broke the window, cutting himself badly on the glass. But nothing could lure Tchaikovsky away from composing.
Born in Kamsko-Votinsk, Russia, on May 7, 1840, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a precocious child, reading Russian, French, and German by the time he was six. After attending boarding school, he studied law and mathematics and worked in the Ministry of Justice as a clerk. After four years, he quit to follow his original passion: music. Soon after he began attending music school to study composition full time, he was invited to teach classes.
The beautiful music that Tchaikovsky created over the next 25 years of his life made him one of the most popular of all the Russian composers. He composed nine operas, six symphonies, four concertos, three string quartets, and numerous songs, suites, and overtures, yet it is his ballet scores that he is most remembered for. Tchaikovsky may have only written three ballet scores, but they are the most famous of all time: Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, and Nutcracker.
Swan Lake
In 1875, Moscow Imperial Theatre director Vladimir Patrovich Begichev commissioned Tchaikovsky to compose the score for Swan Lake. Drawing from established ballet composers Ludwig Minkus, Léo Delibes, and Adolphe Adam, among others, as well as some of his own previous compositions, Tchaikovsky finished the score in just under a year. However, rehearsals did not go smoothly. Choreographer Julius Reisinger dubbed some of Tchaikovsky’s music “undanceable,” and Tchaikovsky had to fight to have the sections put back into the ballet. When the ballet premiered on March 4, 1877, critics wrote that the music was too complicated, noisy, and “Wagnerian.”
the sleeping beauty
In 1889, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky completed the score for The Sleeping Beauty. The ballet premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1890. Based on the fairy tale by Charles Perrault, Tchaikovsky began composing the ballet in 1888 and continued revising the score before it premiered at the Mariinsky Theatre. The project marked his first collaboration with the French ballet master Marius Petipa and Imperial Theatre director Ivan Vsevolozhsky, who envisioned the ballet as a grand tribute to imperial Russian culture. Unlike the more danceable music of earlier ballet composers like Ludwig Minkus, Tchaikovsky’s score introduced a symphonic style that many critics initially considered too complex for ballet. Nevertheless, his symphonic approach transformed the genre and helped establish ballet music as a major art form.
Nutcracker
The iconic score for Nutcracker was composed in bits and pieces. Tchaikovsky traveled across France and the United States in 1891, and orchestrated from January to March of the following year. He was a fan of the Nutcracker story originally penned by E.T.A. Hoffmann, but not as enthusiastic about the Land of the Sweets setting of the ballet that Marius Petipa had envisioned. It was hard for him to compose around it. Still, Tchaikovsky worked through this setback, and the final Nutcracker score is a masterpiece that continues to enchant audiences today, just as when it was first introduced.
Less than a year after the premiere of this ballet, Tchaikovsky died unexpectedly. He was only 53, and had just completed his sixth symphony, which he felt was the best piece of music he ever created. It was in the years after his death that Tchaikovsky’s music became the cultural touchstone that it is today.
