I have listened/viewed the Youtube of Tchaikovsky’s 6th
Symphony (Pathetique) from time to
time the past several years. Janice sent
several articles about this 6th Symphony trying to educate me. But being an ignoramus in music in general
and in classic music in particular, I found some of the writings too “technical”
to me, such as talking about the second movement, “a ‘limping waltz’ theme boasting the near-miracle of a melody
so smooth you’re hardly aware it’s in 5/4 time and missing a beat.”
Fortunately one doesn’t have to know “Pathetique” is
passionate or pathetic to enjoy it. I
always have a strong conviction that understanding is the key to enjoyment; one
can hardly enjoy thing one doesn’t understand, although some may argue that music is
an exception.
To enhance the enjoyment of Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony,
I tried to read everything about it that I can get my hands on. The readings must have helped as my love of
it deepened.
Complete, by Leonard Berstein
2:35 version
This is Bernstein’s analysis of Tchaikovsky’s 6th
Symphony; it has 3 parts; somewhat lengthy, but it will be worth your while; I
even bookmarked it.
I sometime wonder would they interpret it as a requiem had
the seemingly healthy Tchaikovsky not died nine days after he led the premiere. We read,
“It ended with the
Adagio lamentoso, which leaves the listeners in the most sorrowful mood. In this Adagio the composer is as if bidding
farewell to the living . . . one could hardly find anywhere such a shattering
picture of human grief at the sight of irresistible death, to which one must
submit however burdensome it is to part with life. . . This Adagio served as if
for a ‘Requiem’ for Tchaikovsky himself.”
Boris Asafiev [a Russian musician] wrote,
“He commissioned a
Requiem for himself, for he composes the terribly intense sixth symphony, in
which the tragic battle of the spirit with death unfolds . . . Oh, what a
cruel, what a sharp sorrow Tchaikovsky likely suffered, composing it,
foretelling in music what he was soon experiencing in reality, at the hour of
his death!”
Tchaikovsky died Oct. 25, 1893. Four days prior he drank a glass of unboiled
water and dismissed his brother’s fright over it. Cholera was going on in St. Petersburg then.
It is of interest to read
an article on 5/24/1925 NY
Times with a title of “A Russian composer's
psychology”, in which Kashkin (his
biographer) described a conversation he had with Tchaikovsky after he fled to
Petrograd from his brief marriage with Antonina Miliukova in 1877. Kashkin kept the conversation confidential
until 20 years after his death. Tchaikovsky
was thinking about committing suicide and did try it once, in a way similar to
what he did by drinking the unboiled water in an epidemic area of cholera;
tragically he succeeded this time.
 |
| The newlyweds: Tchaikovsky and wife |
Hidden sources of
action in art based on a conversation between Tchaikovsky and his biographer,
Kashkin, who kept the conversation confidential until 20 years after his death.
Tchaikovsky, after
repeated attempt to accommodate himself to the marital estate, fled to
Petrograd. There, in a condition of almost complete prostration, he was
examined by the psychiatrist, Balinski, who gave his opinion that the composer must
never see his wife again.
Years passed,
Tchaikovsky had taken up his secluded and industrious life in Klin. Kashkin saw much of him there, and
Tchaikovsky, in a rare moment, opened his heart. . . "I sincerely desired
and endeavored to be a good husband, but that proved beyond my power. I cannot describe to you my condition
when I realized that with this being utterly strange to me I was to pass the
rest of my living days. The
sympathy for her that was springing up in me had turned into an aversion. I was
completely aware that I alone was to blame for all this, that the only thing
left was to suffer as long as my strength lasted and to conceal my misfortune
from everybody. I do not
know just what called forth this necessity of secrecy. . .
In the state of minds
it was quite natural to arrive at the conviction that I could be liberated only
by death, which became for me a coveted dream; but I could not bring myself to
an open suicide for fear of striking my aged father, as well as my brothers, too
cruel a blow. I began to
think of a means of disappearing less noticeably and as if from a natural
cause, and one of these means I even tried.
I went for a walk
every evening and for several hours at a stretch aimlessly wandered through out
of the way by streets of Moscow. The
weather was gloomy, chilly, and at night there were light frosts, on one of
such nights I went to the deserted bank of Moscow River and the idea came into
my head of a chance of catching deathly cold. With this purpose in view, unobserved
of anybody in the dark, I entered the water almost up to my waistline, and
remained there as long as I could possibly stand for stinging pain in my body
from the cold. I came out
of the water with the firm conviction that I could not escape death from
inflammation of the lungs or from some other diseases resulting from a
cold. While at home I told
them I had been in a fishing party, and inadvertently fell into the water. However, my constitution proved so
strong that the icy bath passed off without any evil consequence to me. I did not contrive to make other experiments with the same purpose.
May be he didn’t try it again until several days
after he conducted the premiere of the 6th Symphony when he recklessly (or
‘purposely’) drank that unboiled water during the height of cholera epidemic. It makes one wonder.
Nowhere did I find the word of “homosexuality”
in the entire article (this was 1925), but one can tell that was what ‘tormented’
him. The change of view of our society on this topic is no little thing;
it proves the civilization is inexorably progressing.
