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How did Tchaikovsky really die?

Discussion in 'Entertainment and Technology' started by jsmurf, May 27, 2012.

  1. jsmurf

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    "His tormented life, as we currently understand it: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Russia. His childhood was miserable. Ilya Petrovich Tchaikovsky (1795-1880), his father, was a civil servant and member of the lesser nobility; his mother, Alexandra Andreyevna (1813-1854), hated living in a backwater town, and her unhappiness influenced young Tchaikovsky enormously. Shortly after the family moved to Moscow in 1848, they were ruined financially. Always an extremely sensitive and introspective child, by age nine he was uncomfortable around other people, had no self-confidence, and clung neurotically to his mother. Her death from cholera was a crushing blow to the 14-year-old Tchaikovsky, and was arguably one source of the depressions that affected him (and his music) for the rest of his life.

    He was enrolled in the Imperial School of Jurisprudence, which prepared boys for civil service, engineering, and the military. There was certainly a great deal of adolescent experimentation with homosexuality at the all-male school; Tchaikovsky became aware that his own sexual preferences ran in that direction, and this apparently filled him with self-loathing.

    Tchaikovsky later said that attending a performance of Mozart’s Don Giovanni made a great impression on him, and influenced his decision to pursue a career in music. He enrolled in the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1862, graduated in 1866, and moved to Moscow to join the brand new Moscow Conservatory. Moscow was not as sophisticated as Saint Petersburg, and was by one biographer's account “violently homophobic.” Though he was uncomfortable in Moscow, his music career flourished, and he quickly rose to fame. His first important success was the Overture in F, in 1866; his first symphony received its premiere in 1868, followed by the iconoclastic Piano Concerto No. 1 in 1872.

    At this stage, Tchaikovsky believed that his homosexuality was a “correctable deviance” and that marriage would “cure” or “redeem” him. In 1869, he fell deeply in love with Eduard Zak, a 15-year old student. (Throughout his life, Tchaikovsky's lovers tended to be around this age.) Zak is generally believed to be the inspiration for the love theme from Romeo and Juliet (1869). Zak was one of the great loves of Tchaikovsky’s life; his suicide at age 19 devastated Tchaikovsky. In 1887, 14 years after Zak’s death, Tchaikovsky wrote in his diary how he missed Zak, had never loved anyone as much, and wept for him.

    Musically, Tchaikovsky remained very productive, despite (or perhaps because of) his neuroses and constant bouts of depression. He told his younger brother Anatoly (1850-1915) that his homosexual tendencies caused “an unbridgable gulf between the majority of people and myself. They impart to my character ... a sense of alienation, fear of others, timidity, excessive shyness, mistrustfulness – which make me more and more unsociable." Accordingly he turned inward, where, according to Professor Robert Greenberg of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, he “found a world of self-expression that he might never have discovered had he felt less alienated from society.”

    In 1875 Tchaikovsky met the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), who also was gay. The two liked to dress in drag and dance together.

    As he began to understand that his homosexuality was not going to go away, Tchaikovsky grew to feel that marriage would at least provide him with superficial social respectability. He wrote to his brother Modest (1850-1916) that he would marry “anyone.” Anyone turned out to be Antonina Milyukova (1849-1917), a former fellow music student, whom he married in 1877. He proposed a platonic relationship, a marriage for the sake of public appearance, but she doesn’t seem to have understood that he was gay. Arguably she was just dim; but in fairness, such discussions were not explicit in those days, and she might simply not have been worldly enough to understand what he was getting at. In any case, the marriage was a total disaster, and led him to an unsuccessful (and not very convincing) suicide attempt: ever the romantic, he reportedly waded out into the Moscow River, hoping to catch pneumonia.

    Pyotr and Antonina separated just months after the wedding. Infidelity was the sole grounds for divorce in Russia at the time, which Antonina of course could not prove. They remained technically married for the rest of their lives, although they saw each other only rarely. Antonina was at best mentally unstable, and ultimately was committed to a lunatic asylum, where she spent the last 20 years of her life.

    Meanwhile Tchaikovsky's renown as a composer continued to grow: during this period he produced much of the greatest and best-known music of his career, including Swan Lake (1877), the 1812 Overture (1880), Capriccio Italien (1880), The Sleeping Beauty (1890), and The Nutcracker (1892). He enjoyed great international acclaim and made tours to the U.S. and across Europe, conducting and promoting his music. Despite his stardom, he was continually unhappy and full of self-doubt, suffering bouts of depression and worrying about public discovery of his sexual orientation.

    Tchaikovsky lived extravagantly, thanks in large part to the generosity of a patroness, Nadezhda von Meck, the widow of a wealthy railroad tycoon. Interestingly, the two never met face to face, but maintained a lengthy and voluminous correspondence that began in 1876, and ended suddenly in 1890. Allegedly Meck’s greedy relatives wanted to end her expensive habit of financing Tchaikovsky, and threatened to expose his homosexuality if she continued to support him. He certainly did not know this, and the abrupt end of their long friendship was yet another major source of depression and embitterment.

    His last work, his Symphony No. 6, premiered in Saint Petersburg on October 28, 1893. A little over a week later, on November 6, 1893, Tchaikovsky was dead; the immediate cause of death was kidney failure. The official report was that he died of cholera after drinking contaminated water on November 2. Within days of his death, the press was raising objections to this account:

    • Precisely because of the known risk of cholera, it was argued, Tchaikovsky would never have drunk water without boiling it first. There were also a variety of conflicting stories about exactly when and where he drank the tainted water.
    • His death came more quickly than one would expect if cholera were the cause.
    • The medical care he received was completely inadequate for someone supposedly suffering from cholera.

    Within the week, his brother Modest published a lengthy account of his brother's death, "to dispel all the conflicting rumors." This version disagreed in some details with the report of Tchaikovsky's doctor, Lev Bertenson. However, despite these inconsistencies, the cholera story endured.

    The explanation of Tchaikovsky's death brought forth nearly a century later by Alexandra Orlova is considerably more chilling and frankly depressing. In 1893 Tchaikovsky had an affair with an 18-year old nobleman named Alexandre Vladimirovich Stenbok-Fermor. The young man's uncle, Count Alexei Alexandrovich Stenbok-Fermor, discovered the liason and wrote an angry letter denouncing Tchaikovsky to his close friend Czar Alexander III. The count entrusted the letter to a lawyer, one Nicholai Jacobi, for delivery to the czar. By sheer coincidence, Jacobi had been a classmate of Tchaikovsky's at the Imperial School of Jurisprudence. On discovering the contents of the letter, chose not to deliver it but instead brought together a “court of honor” – seven of Tchaikovsky’s former schoolmates living in Saint Petersburg, all of them now senior lawyers or distinguished politicians – and summoned Tchaikovsky before them. They told him that they would withhold the letter from the czar, avoiding disgrace and scandal for him and the school, only if he committed suicide.

    It should be noted that homosexuality was certainly not uncommon in czarist Russia – the sin was getting caught. Many of the czar’s courtiers were known to be gay, and the royal court might well have just ignored any scandal on account of Tchaikovsky’s status. We’ll never know. There would not have been imprisonment (as Oscar Wilde would face in England a few years later) or exile, only possible humiliation and loss of social standing."




    The Straight Dope: How did Tchaikovsky really die?

    ---------- Post added 27th May 2012 at 09:02 AM ----------

    "Romeo and Juliet", the score as we understand it now was written as an emotional ode to his 19-year-old lover who committed suicide shortly after the debut of this masterpiece.

    :icon_sad:





    [YOUTUBE]JLxYvSML2Gg[/YOUTUBE]
     
    #1 jsmurf, May 27, 2012
    Last edited: May 27, 2012
  2. WillowMaiden

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    Wow. What an interesting story.

    I had never even heard of this muscian, but I love history, especially of this sort. With the way this man's life played out, I would not be surprised if he drank the contaminated water on purpose, heeding the wishes of his former classmates, not for them, but for himself. He was such a depressed person I could see him seeing that meeting as his "time to call it quits" moment. Look at every relationship in his life. Each failed miserably and only sent him into a deeper depression on top of his natural depression. With another failed relationship that also threatened to ruin him socially (mind you his social status was all he had that went well throughout his years) the only next level of depresion he could fall to was rock bottom equaling death. I am not surprised he committed suicide. I am saddened that a talented man lived such a miserable life even if the sadness did aid to the great music he created. It seems to be the curse of the creatively talented--From their greatest suffering stems their best creations.

    I only hope he finally found happiness.
     
  3. DanA

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    I thought Tchaikovsky dies of da cough... ski.



    *gets booed*
     
  4. djt820

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    So, Tchaikovsky had a thing for twinks. Interesting. And so was the rest of the story for that matter. I literally had no idea he was gay. So this was a pretty good read.
     
  5. PlutonianShore

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    Saint-Saens was gay???? News to me....

    Interesting article. Tchaikovsky is one the composers that I have the most reverence for. His life, though terribly tragic, should serve as a memorial what the dangers of non-acceptance are.

    However (personal opinion) I doubt if he was as sexually active as they state in the article. I rather should think that he was extremely sexually repressed and frustrated , which give some of his pieces an undertone of desperation.

    Still, it's good that you brought this up. Try searching for something on Francis Poulenc and Leonard Bernstein next :wink:
     
  6. jsmurf

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    Yep, he was gay and was similar to Oscar Wilde in his tastes... :grin:


    Watch this for more insight:


    [YOUTUBE]Who killed Tchaikovsky? Part 1/5 - YouTube[/YOUTUBE]



    [YOUTUBE]Who killed Tchaikovsky? Part 2/5 - YouTube[/YOUTUBE]



    [YOUTUBE]Who killed Tchaikovsky? Part 3/5 - YouTube[/YOUTUBE]



    [YOUTUBE]Who killed Tchaikovsky? Part 4/5 - YouTube[/YOUTUBE]




    [YOUTUBE]Who killed Tchaikovsky? Part 5/5 - YouTube[/YOUTUBE]




    Yes, it's 100% known he was gay (and so was his brother Modest). What is not proven however is whether he died of forced suicide due to his sexuality or the cough.
     
  7. BradThePug

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    This is interesting. I knew that he was gay, but I did not realize how that impacted his life and his compostions.
     
  8. Steve712

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    So many Western composers and musicians were gay. For composers, there is Tchaikovsky and Saint-Saëns of course, Bernstein and Poulenc as was mentioned, as well as Schubert, Samuel Barber, Copland, Britten, John Cage, Sorabji, Corelli, with dubious speculation on Beethoven, Chopin and others. Gay pianists include Richter, Horowitz, Stephen Hough, Van Cliburn, Jorge Bolet, Earl Wild, etc.
     
  9. djt820

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    The guy's a fucking gentleman.
     
  10. Transse

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    Thats a great post!
    I never read about Tchaikovsky's sexual orientation althought I read one book about his life but there is only about the affairs with that Madam and so , there is nothing about that he was gay .About his death I read a few possibilities...