Tchaikovsky’s simple life.

Aníbal Acevedo

How many composers have been influenced by Tchaikovsky’s Works? It is perhaps a silly question to ask, knowing it may have no accurate answer, but  think about all performers who  had spent time with his music:  singers staging his operas, pianists playing sonatas, conductors with those amazing symphonies, and pretty much every one that has heard about ballet can point out a ‘Tchaikovsky’ for sure. But what, exactly, is it that a listener thinks about Tchaikovsky’s mind when ‘Nutcracker’ is played around christmas time, or when a musician tries to get into those shoes and be true to the composer’s desires? The more people think about these ‘mighty’ heroes the more we get them away from the fact that they are just human beings like the rest of the people in the world. 

Throughout past few months I’ve been given the opportunity to study many of Tchaikovsky’s major works, having been exposed to amazing and incredible music (with my particular interest in opera). One starts to wonder what kind of personal and public life Tchaikovsky led over the years. Many times, the easy answer is to dive into the composer’s music, but in Tchaikovsky’s case we have a real clear treasure; the great number of letters he wrote over the years to close friends: his benefactor/best female friend, and other composers. These facts are ‘supercharged’ with many answers to questions that might seem implausible, but really were much simpler and honest than all the popular beliefs about to Tchaikovsky’s life.

Letters written around 1884 when a more mature 40-year old Tchaikovsky was working on ‘Mazeppa,’ which is in the Top 3 Best Tchaikovsky Operas of all time gives us an insight of his daily routine. ‘4 May 1884’ Tchaikovsky found himself reading some letter at home, finding some time in the day to play piano for his own amusement, having a festive dinner and having time for his everyday walk, no matter the weather. He was a playing one of his favorite operas at the piano: Mozart’s Magic Flute. It seems like a very boring day in a composer’s life, but more than that… it was real. How can something so simple in his day-to-day life give birth to such amazing music? The answer is very simple:  Tchaikovsky was a man true to himself.

‘May 9 and May 20’ “…Was at church, was late to the church…” Tchaikovsky’s own words about one activity he always enjoyed, and we know for a fact that he was not a very religious man, but he was a simply man that enjoyed simple pleasures and simple activities that anchored him to the real world. He was a man who got sick like the rest and suffered with finding himself in a world that could have hung him if he took his sexual orientation public. I value and treasure the diaries published as I think any scholar would, and perhaps I even value more the ones we would never get to read, because in all of that  information about a simple (and perhaps cranky) man can be found and used to step into his shoes. How can a man who led a simple life without much luxury focus on activities that gave rest to his mind and soul was able to come up with magical, ethereal and out-of-this-world music?

I, for one, have been trying to understand his thoughts about Eugene Onegin’s Tenor Aria, but after countless attempts I’m left with nothing. I guess being always near the tools to create and be ready by the time and idea hit his mind was a simple but effective strategy, but the way his brain was connected is something we might get from listening to his music. Maybe when I get older, I could understand all of which I don’t right now. The way he separated his personal life and kept it on a leash to hand out true musical creations that only few times reflect just tiny moments of his personal life is more than other composers have done.

Tchaikovsky, Pyotr. “Diary Three: April 1884-June 1884.” Chapter 3 in The Diaries of Tchaikovsky. Trans. Wladimir Lakond. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1973.

White, Craig. “The Biographical Fallacy and How to Think Your Way Out of It.” University of Houston Clear Lake: Craig White’s Literature Courses. Accessed Jan. 13, 2020. http://coursesite.uhcl.edu/HSH/Whitec/terms/B/BiographFallacy.htm