Tchaikovsky: Music and Melancholy

10/7/2006
Goucher College
with @

Tchaikovsky 1840-1893
started playing piano at 5yo
10yo sent to school at St. Petersburg
14yo- mother died
1863, entered Conservatory
1866, to Moscow for professorship of harmony at a new conservatory
1869, 1st opera The Voyevoda was unsuccessful
1875, Third Symphony and Swan Lake
wealthy widow Nadezhda von Meck, corresponded for 14 years but never met; his financial support
thought marriage might help him, married quickly, but disastrous
nervous collapse, attempted suicide, went abroad
some of his greatest works, Fourth Symphony and Eugene Onegin
1878-84, creative trough
homosexual
1888, Fifth Symphony; note of hysteria in finale
Sleeping Beauth, Nutcraker, The Queen of Spades
1893, Sixth Symphony, performed 10/28 and he died nine days later
death- officially of cholera vs "trial" by old school that he commit suicide for his sexual behavior

Dr. Richard Kogan
Human Sexuality Program
NY Presbyterian Hospital-Cornell
Julliard 6-18yo
Harvard undergrad and med school