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Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op.13
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The great Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, a leading figure of the Romantic era, was born in Votkinsk, a small town in Vyatka Governorate in the Russian Empire. He came from a family with a long line of military service, as his father, Ilya Petrovich, had served as a lieutenant colonel and engineer in the Department of Mines and his grandfather served as city governor of Glazov in Vyatka. His great-grandfather was a Ukrainian Cossack named Fyodor Chaika (the name Tchaikovsky is the derivative of the Ukrainian family name ‘Chaika’ - ‘seagull’), who distinguished himself under Peter the Great at the Battle of Poltava in 1709. Tchaikovsky’s mother, Alexandra Andreyevna, was the second of Ilya’s three wives, eighteen years younger than her husband, and of French origin on her father’s side. Both of young Pyotr’s parents were trained in music, as a posting to a remote area of Russia often demanded entertainment, whether in private or at social gatherings. Tchaikovsky had six siblings and became closest to his sister Alexandra and twin brothers Anatoly and Modest.
Under his governess, he was a quick learner and by the age of six he had become fluent in French and German. He had begun piano lessons from the age of five and within three years he was as skilled at reading sheet music as his teacher. His parents, initially supportive of his musical endeavours, hired a tutor, bought an orchestrion (a barrel organ that could imitate elaborate orchestral effects) and encouraged his piano study. However, in 1850 they decided to send him to the Imperial School of Jurisprudence in Saint Petersburg, from which they had both graduated. This establishment principally served the lesser nobility and they hoped it would prepare their promising son for a career as a civil servant. The only musical careers available in Russia at that time, unless you were a member of the affluent aristocracy, were as a teacher in an academy or as an instrumentalist in one of the Imperial Theatres; these positions were regarded as on the lowest rank of the social ladder, with no more rights than afforded to peasants. The father’s income was growing increasingly uncertain, so Tchaikovsky, aged ten, was dispatched to two years boarding at the preparatory school, 800 miles from his family home.
This early separation from his mother caused an emotional trauma that would stay with him for the rest of his life and was intensified by her death from cholera in 1854, when he was fourteen. The loss of his mother also prompted Tchaikovsky to make his first serious attempt at composition, a waltz in her memory. Isolated, Tchaikovsky compensated for his loss through friendships with fellow students that became life-long, including with Aleksey Apukhtin and Vladimir Gerard. The school provided for students to regularly attend the opera and Tchaikovsky would improvise at the school’s harmonium on themes he and his friends had sung during choir practice. Meanwhile, he continued his piano studies under Franz Becker, an instrument manufacturer that made occasional visits to the school.
In 1855, Tchaikovsky’s father funded private lessons for his son with Rudolph Kündinger and questioned him about a musical career for his son. While impressed with the boy’s talent, Kündinger did not deem him talented enough to become a composer or even professional performer. Tchaikovsky was advised to finish his course and then try for a post in the Ministry of Justice. At the age of nineteen, he graduated as a titular counsellor, one of the lowest positions in the civil service. Appointed to the Ministry of Justice, he became a junior assistant within six months and a senior assistant two months after that; however, he was not destined to remain in the service for much longer...
During this time, the Russian Musical Society (RMS) was founded by the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna and her protégé, pianist and composer Anton Rubinstein. Although previous Tsars and aristocrats had focused almost exclusively on importing European talent, the aim of the RMS was to fulfil Alexander II’s wish to foster native talent. In 1861 Tchaikovsky attended RMS classes, a precursor to the Saint Petersburg Conservatory, in music theory taught by Nikolai Zaremba at the Mikhailovsky Palace. He studied harmony and counterpoint with Zaremba and instrumentation and composition with Rubinstein. This time spent at the Conservatory allowed the young pianist to develop into a musical professional, familiarising himself with European principles and musical forms that were not exclusively Russian or Western. This mindset became important in Tchaikovsky’s reconciliation of Russian and European influences in his compositional style.
When Tchaikovsky graduated in 1865, Rubinstein’s brother Nikolai offered him the post of Professor of Music Theory at the soon-to-open Moscow Conservatory. Though the salary was only fifty roubles a month, an offer of paid music work delighted Tchaikovsky and he accepted the post at once. He was further heartened by news of the first public performance of one of his works, his Characteristic Dances, conducted by Johann Strauss II at a concert in Pavlovsk Park on 11 September 1865.
Anton Rubinstein was impressed with Tchaikovsky’s burgeoning talent and later declared him to be “a composer of genius” in his autobiography. Nevertheless, Rubinstein was less pleased with the more progressive nature of Tchaikovsky’s student work. Subtitled Winter Daydreams and dedicated to Nikolai Rubinstein, Symphony No. 1 in G minor, Op.13 was composed just after Tchaikovsky accepted his professorship and it is generally regarded as his first notable work. Work on the score began in March 1866, as he wrote day and night, overstraining his mental and physical health. He suffered from insomnia, as well as pains in the head, which he feared were strokes and became convinced he would not live to finish the symphony. His brother Modest later claimed that the writing of the piece cost Tchaikovsky more labour and suffering than any of his other works. Even so, he remained fond of the symphony, writing to his patroness Nadezhda von Meck in 1883 that “although it is in many ways very immature, yet fundamentally it has more substance and is better than any of my other more mature works.”
In 1866 Rubinstein and Zaremba clashed with Tchaikovsky when he submitted his Symphony No. 1 for performance by the RMS in Saint Petersburg. The elder composers refused to consider the work unles...
