Tchaikovsky gets Browned off
Daily Comfort ZoneThe standard work on the Russian composer for the past four decades has been the four-volume study by David Brown, an English musicologist at the University of Southampton. Brown was a proponent of the narrative that Tchaikovsky died not, as officially decreed, of cholera, but by poison or suicide to suppress a homosexual scandal.
A new book by Simon Morrison, ‘Tchaikovsky’s Empire’, subtitled ‘A new life of Russian’s Greatest Composer’, dismisses Brown’s theory. He ‘presumably contracted (cholera) at one of the restaurants he frequented with family and friends’. Morrison treats Brown with disdain, pummeling him in footnotes, barely mentioning him in the text. He seems determined to reconstruct the gloomy-looking Tchaikovsky as a gregarious, fun-loving man about time.
Fashions come and go in musicology. Morrison, a professor at Princeton, writes with unassuming authority. He’s highly credible. The only problem is that weasel-word ‘presumably‘. We do not yet know for certain what killed Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Some day soon, there will be another tall story.
I’m convinced Pyotr Ilyich was fun-loving, there is so much playfulness in the Nutcracker, in some of the scherzi in his symphonies, but if you look at his facial expression in the final photograph taken days before his death, it is truly haunting. I see in his eyes total despair. But it’s great to see a fresh angle, where equal weight is given to the lighter episodes of his life.
Ed, this isn’t the photo with him leaning on the balcony with a cigarette in his hand, is it? Funnily enough, given what NL says about David Brown, that’s the photo which is on the spine of the Victor Gollancz 1992 paperback reissue of volumes 3&4 of his biography.
If so, current thinking is that this photo isn’t actually Tchaikovsky: https://en.tchaikovsky-research.net/pages/Photographs#/media/File:Not_Tchaikovsky.jpg
I’m sure you’re right that Tchaikovsky was a much jollier character than he’s often been portrayed; as you say, the music suggests a different narrative. (And as to the 6th Symphony, it’s always struck me that deeply depressed people are unlikely to write deeply depressed music – they tend to write nothing.)
Richard Taruskin must be credited with a lot of the tackling of the Tchaikovsky myth which is rooted in homophobia and, behind it, misogyny. His brilliant essay ‘Pathetic Symphonist’ offers a tour of reception history which explores how old-fashioned ideas of the hysterical homosexual needed Tchaikovsky to be overwrought and overemotional. Thank heavens for Taruskin’s work, and also for the work of Alexander Poznansky, Roland John Wiley and Philip Ross Bullock, the latter two especially good on Tchaikovsky’s adept handling of his audiences and commitment to an approachability in music we underestimate at our peril.
Deeply depressed composers often write deeply-depressed music, but with hindsight, or foresight: between the valleys of mood.
And suffering from deep depressions does not exclude the possibility of jolly moods when the clouds are temporarily lifted. (I see that regularly with my PA.)
A deeply depressed and morose ancestor of mine was a successful comedian on early BBC radio broadcasts (and also on the theatre circuit as a double act.) I’m reliably informed that this cheeky cockney sparrow made his family home life a total misery.
Interesting, yes that is the photo I had in mind, and now you mention it the facial features are quite different to other photos of Tchaikovsky. That certainly changes the narrative!
But I thought there was enough circumstantial evidence to suggest it was not cholera.
The suicide story because of a scandal is equally unlikely for various reasons, given the rather decadent customs among cultural and political elites at the time.
The suicide possibility just because he was Tchaikovsky and Russian, and suffering from unrequitted love of whatever kind, and being depressed in general about things, like von Meck’s sudden silence, and feeling out-of-tune with ‘the world’, seems more likely. He was a very neurotic character, now we would call him a HSP, Highly Sensitive Person, where stimuli would have a much stronger effect than in normally-adapted people, like Boris Johnson.
For Westerners it is often difficult to believe that someone can take his life because of emotional problems, in spite of so much general knowledge of emotional trauma. And then, Russians are used to cultivating emotional trauma – they like it. It’s in their culture and history.
In my study days, a Russian biographical movie had come-out from Russian super film studios with newly built-up drama and oppulent indulgence, like an over-the-top but clumsy imitation of Visconti. It was screened in Rotterdam with a gala reception, including the usual silly people from the Russian embassy. It was a ridiculous dragon of a movie where from the first shot the entirely unfounded depressed melancholia was laid-on super thick, with long stretches of views of birk forests supported by one of T’s melodramatic adagios. And every character in the story looked around with great pathos as if it were the last day before the Final Judgment and one’s papers were definitely very bad. The main role was a perfectly groomed Tchaikovsky looking as if suffering from incurable hemoroids. But it was a very Russian production.
“Russians are used to cultivating emotional trauma”… Which Russians? There are 150 million of us, spanning almost 100 different ethnicities, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, geeks, sporty types, entrepreneurs, family-types, creatives, engineers, conservatives, liberals… Which Russians are you talking about?
Good question. I’m talking about the Russians who love depressed drama and indulge in passive nostalgia, creating a fantasy world of pathos and victimhood. You find them among any community, even in the Kremlin.
I’d put your spell check on danger money if I were you.
To begin with I have not read the Brown or Morrison books on Tchaikovsky. However, decades ago I became friends with a renown Russian -Soviet musician. since passed away I feel it is not appropriate to share his name. But if I did everyone who know who I am speaking of. he was the best of friends with Prokofiev and Shostakovich. Over the years he shared with me many many stories of being a musician in the Soviet Union. I have never found any contradiction to any item of any story he had shared with me. I share this information only to say that he once told me that it was factually accurate and know to all that Tchaikovsky did indeed commit suicide due to a scandalous homosexual relationship that he had with the son of the Czar.
Yes I heard that Tchaikovsky regularly climbed through a window of the Winter Palace at night and often got lost in the labyrinthal corridors on his way to the bathroom, and had to ask the guards to lead him into the right direction. Also they installed a ladder to prevent the famous composer from falling-down from the rainwater pipe. I have this story from a princess Obolensky, decendent from the family who fled the revolution of 1917 and settled in the USA.
If you’re not going to name the person that told you this then it’s just gossip.
The irony is that committing suicide is the opposite of hiding something and avoiding scandal…
Is Morrison suggesting Tchaikovsky was not gay, or that he did not commit suicide? The Soviets/Russia has promoted the former. Morrison apparently supports the latter. Tchaikovsky dedicated his Sixth Symphony to his nephew Vladimir Dadydov, with whom he had a close relationship and who had died by suicide. It is his most heartfelt and passionate work, ending with fully spent finality. He conducted the premiere in October 1893 and died nine days later. We may never know how or why Tchaikovsky died. It may never matter.
There is no ambiguity in the book’s cover statement that Chaikovsky/Tchaikovsky is “Russia’s Greatest Composer.” Fans of Shostakovich may disagree, as do I.
Tchaikovsky was RUSSIA’S greatest composer.
Shostakovich was the SOVIET UNION’g greatest composer. (Of course, I disagree with that…it was Prokofieff!)
I guess you missed that I referred to both.
Prokofiev was a master of orchestral color. Shostakovich was a master of human expression. Just compare their fifth symphonies. And then, Tchaikovsky’s 5th.
Fashion? Huh?
“Morrison, a professor of music and Slavic languages and literatures at Princeton University in New Jersey, has unearthed material from several Russian archives over the past 10 years that had not been consulted before by music historians.”
https://www.theguardian.com/music/article/2024/aug/04/tchaikovsky-was-not-tragic-but-had-a-monty-python-sense-of-humour-says-biographer
Alexander Poznansky’s “Tchaikovsky’s Last Days” was published ca 28 years ago. He explores the death from every angle. He gives satisfactory attention to Tchaikovsky’s sexuality. It’s fascinating, well written, from a major publisher. How did you miss it? Poznansky closed the case.
I’d like to read Morrison’s book, but such fussiness is irritating. “Methuselah died presumably of old age.”
What makes you think Morrison is fussy if you haven’t read the book?
About forty years ago in Los Angeles, I asked Nikolas Slonimsky about the forced-suicide-due-to-homosexual-scandal story. He frowned and dismissed it. Although he acknowledged Tchaikovsky’s homosexuality, Slonimsky stated the infectious disease that was around at the time was the cause of death. He added that he had contacted Grove’s Dictionary and told them this as well.
To me the suicide explanation seems possible, but it would require more than hearsay to believe it. The story is plausible, however, and not only because Tchaikovsky had previously attempted suicide. It’s plausible due to the toxic and sometimes murderous homophobia that persists to this day–in Putin’s Russia, in the Islamic world, in other dictatorial and/or theocratic regimes, and even in non-authoritarian societies.
The mindless intolerance of certain religions perpetuates homophobia. No use trying to persuade them with reasoning or science. They prefer their superstition and ignorance.
Would this be a better world without Tchaikovsky, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Oscar Wilde, Copland, Britten (possibly Schubert and Ravel also), and many others?
How far have we come since Tchaikovsky’s day?
For many people, nature is still utterly mysterious in her intentions.
But what I read gave the strong impression that in 19C Russia, within intellectual and artistic elites, people did not mind very much, as long as you did not started rainbow flag waving and initiated pride parades, which would wake-up the authorities.
Also it seems that even in the most suppressive societies like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, people find their ways around public insanity.
Maybe if the Romans had behaved a bit better, Christianity and Islam did not have had to react so strongly.
I’m not sure what’s weasely about ‘presumably’. According to my dictionary it mean something that is commonly asserted but is not known for sure. Seems like the right word for this situation to me…
Uns8bstantiated bashing of musicology is fashionable here. Th9s is not a presumption.