Tchaikovsky page Home Life Person Work CD Gallery Links	Tchaikovsky in person

 
Tchaikovsky's life seems to have been, even more than most lives, a curious mixture of success and failures, the failures mostly due to his morbid subjection to moods and his tendency to leap before he looked, the successes due to his sincerity, intelligence, modesty, and candour"

His desire to give an external expression to his inner despair enabled him to deflect any thoughts of seeking death as an escape: "I have not yet said everything I can and want to say before my time arrives to step over into eternity", he was to claim.

"That fateful force", Tchaikovsky wrote, " which impedes the impulse toward the happiness of reaching one’s goal, which jealously ensures that prosperity and peace are never complete and cloudless which hangs overhead like a sword of Damocles and steadily and continually poisons the soul. It is invincible and you will never overpower it. All that we can do is subject ourselves to it and vainly lament".

Yet, Tchaikovsky asked, was it not the purpose of a symphony "to express everything for which there are no words, but which surges out of the soul and demands expression?"

The composer once confided to Mrs von Meck that if it were not for music, he would go mad. It acted for him, albeit temporally, as an escape valve and pressure release enabling his anguish, joys and fears to escape before they consumed him.  Only music, he claimed "clarifies, reconciles, and consoles. But it is not a straw just barely clutched at. It is a faithful friend, protector, and comforter, and for its sake alone, life in this world is worth living. Who knows, perhaps in heaven there will be no music. So let us live on the earth while we still have life!"

"A chilling and gloomy look, his cheeks flushed with excitement, a bitter smile on his lips - this is how I shall always remember Peter Iliych during that visit to Paris."
                                                                                                                                                   Modest Tchaikovsky /brother/

"It seemed as though he had become the victim of some blind force which drove him hither and thither at will."
                                                                                                                                                  Modest Tchaikovsky

"Neither the triumph of Pique Dame nor the profound sorrow caused by the death of his beloved sister, nor even his American triumphs seemed to soften the blow she /N. von Meck/ had inflicted."
                                                                                                                                                  Modest Tchaikovsky

"This mysterious force had its origin in an inexplicable, restless, despondent condition of mind which sought appeasement in any kind of distraction."
                                                                                                                                                   Modest Tchaikovsky

From Tchaikovsky' s diaries: May 1, 1884: "Played duets with my darling, the incomparable, enchanting, ideal Bob, to his immense enjoyment." May 22: "As soon as I do not work or walk (and that is also work for me) I begin to crave Bob and get lonesome without him, Frightful how I love him." May 31: After dinner was inseparable from my wonderful, incomparable Bob; first he was lolling on the balcony, on the little bench, languishing charmingly and chattering about my compositions. June 3: A strange thing: I've a terrible wish not to leave here. I think it all has to do with Bob.