The Presidential Library marking the 180th anniversary of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

May 7, 2020 marks the 180th anniversary of the birth of the famous Russian composer, conductor, teacher, music critic and public figure Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. The Presidential Library’s portal provides an electronic collection Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), which included digital copies of the composer's autographs, notes and photographs with his dedicatory inscriptions, letters, books and articles about his life and career.

The future composer was born in the small town of Votkinsk in the territory of present-day Udmurtia, where his father Ilya Petrovich was the director of the plant. “The composer's childhood passed in the atmosphere of family comfort and material prosperity. The home education he received, as usual, was imbued with French culture. <...>

From a very early age, Tchaikovsky exhibited exceptional musical abilities. The publication “Days and Years of Pyotr Tchaikovsky” notes: the boy was so gifted that music sometimes caused him pain. “After the evening, which was held in musical entertainment, little Tchaikovsky was excited, cried. When asked what happened to him, he answered: “Oh, this music, music!” But no music was heard at that moment. “Deliver me from her! I have it here”, - the boy said, sobbing and pointing to his head“, - she haunts me”. Nevertheless, the author continues, "Petya ...at the end of the lessons inevitably ran to the piano".

Initially, Tchaikovsky was promised a legal career: after graduating from the Imperial Law School, he enters the service of the Ministry of Justice. But everything changes in 1862. The Conservatory is opened in St. Petersburg and Tchaikovsky becomes its student. He joyfully reports this in a letter to his sister ("Letters to the Family. Vol. 1. 1850–1879" (1940).

In 1866, Pyotr Ilyich wrote the First Symphony (“Winter Daydreams”). In 1875 - the famous First Piano Concert, in 1876 - the ballet Swan Lake.

In the late 1870s, Tchaikovsky announced to his friends the grandiose plan of the opera Eugene Onegin. In the same period, the composer tied the knot of a marriage, short and extremely unsuccessful, during the dissolution of which he received a nervous breakdown and was forced to spend several years abroad in an attempt to regain his ability to live and create.

The real peak of Tchaikovsky’s work was the opera The Queen of Spades. In 1891, he composed his latest opera Iolanthe and the ballet The Nutcracker. Many research musicological works are devoted to the genius Russian composer - he became so unusual in the musical circles of two Russian capitals and Europe. The Tchaikovsky symphony take-off is considered to be the Sixth Symphony (“Pathetic”). The composer constantly turned to small forms. He is the author of 100 romances, which are the pearls of vocal lyrics, as well as more than 100 piano pieces.

So far, overcoming internal crises, Pyotr Ilyich worked on his masterpieces, a social explosion was brewing in the country, the composer was painfully worried about approaching it.

A nobleman of origin and upbringing, Tchaikovsky was imbued with the ideology and moods of the old landowner life; he creates a magnificent poetic monument to her in the opera Eugene Onegin, realizing at the same time the doom of the Cherry Orchards. For example, explaining in his letter to N. F. von Meck on February 17, 1878 the ideological content of his Fourth Symphony, he describes its leitmotif as follows: “This is Fatum, this is the fateful force that prevents the impulse for happiness from reaching the goal that jealously guards so that well-being and peace are not complete and cloudless. <...> There is no wharf ..." - we read in the "Correspondence with N. F. von Meck. 1876-1878".

Concerned about the fate of Russia, realizing that the autocratic system had exhausted itself, Tchaikovsky was by no means with those who wanted to keep it intact. However, he is “scared” of European patterns of reorganizing Russia and is more likely to seek recipes in its ancient cathedral way. “It is very likely,” he writes on January 3, 1882, N.F. von Meck, “that I am a very poor politician. Perhaps everything that I say is very naive and unfounded, but only when it happens to think about everything that is happening with us, I seek and find no way out...” A turn on the revolutionary path of development was alien to him. On February 20, 1880, he wrote to Nadezhda Filaretovna: “All these musical and all other interests of the day came to a halt before the picture of the grandiose disgrace that our poor fatherland represents at this moment. I almost lost my mind... upon receiving news of a new attempt on the life of the sovereign... All this is unbearably painful and bitter".

Following the richest materials in the collection of the Presidential Library Tchaikovsky had the courage to look historical truth in the eye and “sing to himself and his class an amazing waste - “Pathetic Symphony“”. And this is the enormous creative and human power of the brilliant composer.