Tchaikovsky's Pathétique and Russian Culture

Marina Ritzarev

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317046653
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music History & Criticism

Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony (1893), widely recognized as one of the world's most deeply tragic compositions, is also known for the mystery surrounding its hidden programme and for Tchaikovsky's unexpected death nine days after its premiere. While the sensational speculations about the composer's possible planned suicide and the suggestion that the symphony was intended as his own requiem have long been discarded, the question of its programme remains.

Chapter 1
Secrecy¹

Please, don’t tell anybody about this, except Modest; I am purposely sending it to the School, so that nobody else will read the letter.²

The above sentence, which tends to go unnoticed among the more mundane details at the end of the letter (regards to friends and associates, and so on), is taken from Tchaikovsky’s well-known letter to his nephew Vladimir (Bob) Davydov of 11 February 1893. The composer writes here about his conception of the Sixth Symphony, the chief point of which is the existence of a programme, which he will never reveal:

During my journey, the idea of another symphony visited me, this time programmatic but with the programme that will remain a riddle for everybody – let them guess [‘who can’, adds Modest in his brother’s biography];³ and the symphony will be entitled: Programmnaya simfonia (No. 6); Symphonie à Programme (No. 6); Eine Programm-Symphonie (No. 6).⁴

The contents and the tone of the letter indicate its high importance. The reasons for such secrecy remain unknown and could range from the most trivial to the most serious.

To begin with the simplest possibility, it is well known that people (at least in the Russian culture) are often superstitious when something important is about to happen, and they tend to conceal their intentions in order to protect them ‘from the evil eye’. On 29 March 1887, for example, the composer Sergei Taneyev, Tchaikovsky’s former student and then friend, asked him to keep secret the fact that he had begun working on his opera The Oresteia.⁵ Tchaikovsky, who had rung around to tell everybody about writing his own symphony in E♭ major (Life), which he eventually discarded in complete disappointment, may perhaps have learned to be a little more circumspect about his creative plans. Whatever the reason, this was the first time that he kept his brainchild hidden from his milieu. Considering the mysterious aura surrounding this work, its double protection – in content and in the way of conveying the quoted message – deserves our attention.

Indeed, this special precaution to conceal the very existence of the programme is reflected in the composer’s decision to send this particular letter not to Fontanka 24, St Petersburg, where Bob then lived with Modest (uncomfortably close to the St Petersburg Police Department at Fontanka 16), but to Bob’s place of learning. Deliberately available in this way to any curious gaze, as if of little importance, it would have been ignored by secret police agents; whereas had it been sent to Modest–Bob’s home address, there was a good chance that it would have been opened and read on its way to the addressee. The manoeuvre, thus, was to outsmart the house-owner or the secret police, who monitored intellectuals in nineteenth-century Russia only a little less diligently than in the century that followed, especially after the Tsar Alexander II’s assassination in 1881.

If it was such a secret, however, why mention it at all? It is possible, of course, that the simple human temptation to share the excitement was irresistible. Moreover, his decision to initiate his nephew into this secret had its history: a month and a half earlier (16/28 December 1892), Tchaikovsky informed Bob that he had decided ‘to throw out and to forget’ the previous symphony (Life). Besides, in addition to giving Bob financial help, Tchaikovsky was granting him the privilege of being the first to know about this very important creative project. In so doing, he was perhaps trying to balance their asymmetrical relations, for the uncle received less attention from his beloved nephew than he would have wished. His letter begins:

If only you would spit on notepaper and send it to me in the envelope! Zero attention! Well, God bless you, I just wanted to receive a few letters [characters] from you.⁶

A third possible explanation is that of the gambler’s calculated risk: a hint, thrown to a curious audience (whom, he knew, it would reach sooner or later); a small taste, nothing vital, just to intrigue, to whet the appetite.

The paradox is that in this letter Tchaikovsky does in fact give the symphony a title and, just to be sure, he gives it three times: in Russian, in French and in German: ‘

(No. 6)’; ‘Symphonie à Programme (No. 6)’; ‘Eine Programm-Symphonie (No. 6)’. This suggests that he himself was about to publicize the existence of the programme, and as openly as possible. To ask his nephew to keep it secret in the very same letter, and not to notice such an obvious contradiction, was probably related to the state of high excitement that possessed Tchaikovsky in those early days ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Music Examples
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on Abbreviations, Transliterations, Translations and Dates
• 1 Secrecy
• 2 Before 4 February 1893
• 3 Mood Very Close to Requiem, but for Whom?
• 4 Tchaikovsky and Christ
• 5 Russian Culture, Jesus Christ and Compassion
• 6 Behind the Programme
• 7 Four Movements and their Interrelations
• 8 ‘A Skillfully Constructed Novel’
• 9 Intermezzo: Mysterious Waltz
• 10 Great Ambivalence
• 11 A House of Mourning
• 12 Afterword
• Select Bibliography
• Index